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Illinois was the last holdout state to enact a concealed carry law (check out Slate’s helpful map) – not that it wasn’t heavily contested. The controversy started when the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a portion of an Illinois law making it illegal for persons to carry weapons in public as a violation of the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights. The court stayed its mandate for 180 days, effectively giving Illinois lawmakers time to enact a law that complied with its ruling....

Earlier this week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a prior opinion in an employment lawsuit involving Board of Education of the City of Chicago and the alleged improper firing of nearly 750 teachers from Chicago public schools. The case was previously ruled on by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, but the Board had requested that the case be retried, claiming that the court had erred with regards to its application of Illinois law....

Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 08-103, involved a class action alleging copyright infringement, in which the Court of Appeals vacated a settlement class certification order for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. As the Court wrote: “In this case, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a copyright holder’s failure to comply with [17 U.S.C.] section 411(a)’s registration requirement deprives a federal court of jurisdiction to adjudicate his copyright infringement claim....

The Internal Revenue Service isn’t kidding around when it comes to tax evasion. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the IRS by upholding the convictions of the owners of the Day School for Children in New Castle, Delaware. While this sounds like a run-of-the-mill boring tax case, the facts are somewhat egregious. Well, they’re egregious in the sense that this couple actually thought they could get away with going under the table so blatantly....

If your momma told you not to interrupt somebody, she was on to something that legal researchers have now discovered. According to a new study, the frequency of interruptions between the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court correlates to their voting patterns. As you might intuit, the divisions increase with the interruptions. “We find that on average a judicial pair is 7 percent less likely to vote together in a case for each interruption that occurs in the case between the judicial pair in the oral argument,” law professors say....

A federal district court in Brooklyn has no authority to expunge a valid conviction of a woman who said her arrest record had prevented her from securing a job as a health aide. The Second Circuit opinion did take sympathy on the woman and suggested that Congress should consider allowing federal judges to have the ability to erase old convictions. Exemplary Life The woman who sought to clear her arrest records was convicted in 2001 for her part in a staged car accident scheme, but she had since lived an “exemplary” life, according to the ABA Journal....

Carey Dean Moore died by lethal injection. It took about 20 minutes for the drugs to do their work. Moore was executed for murdering two men in five days. It took almost 40 years for the legal system to do its part. In Nebraska, everything about the death penalty changed during that time. The last thing that mattered legally in Moore’s case was one of the drugs injected into him....

This week, after the High Court closed for a day to honor the late President Bush, it heard arguments in the highly-watched Gamble case, which involved a rather risky challenge to settled Supreme Court precedent involving the separate sovereign exception to double jeopardy. One of the reasons this case has become so highly-watched is due to the potential implications it could have for Paul Manafort, or anyone else connected to President Trump that may face federal charges and could benefit from a pardon....

Arbitrability of union’s grievances Karl Schmidt Unisa, Inc. v. Int’l Union United Auto., Aerospace, & Agric. Implement Workers of Am., UAW Local 2357, 09-4001, concerned an employer’s suit against a union and two employees, seeking a declaratory judgment that the union’s grievances regarding the supplemental retirement benefit are not arbitrable. Related Link: Read the Seventh Circuit’s Full Decision in Karl Schmidt Unisa, Inc. v. Int’l Union United Auto., Aerospace, & Agric....

Dismissal for Failure to Serve Summons Affirmed In Kurka v. Iowa Cty., No. 09-2849, an action alleging gender discrimination and retaliation against Iowa County, the court affirmed the dismissal of the action for failure to timely serve the summons, holding that 1) finding good cause based on the clerk’s error alone, as plaintiff suggested, would improperly shift the burden to effect service from plaintiff to the clerk and undermine the purpose of Fed....

How did the legal cases of 17 Capitol riot defendants end up in the hands of law clerk Ryan Marshall for almost two weeks, and why is Marshall facing felony charges? Marshall is a recent law school graduate working for John Pierce, together representing several defendants implicated in the Capitol attack. Pierce’s use of Twitter rivaled that of former President Donald Trump before he was banned from the platform. Marshall’s legal license is now in jeopardy....

You could say the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate is having its “day in court” with 93 pending cases (as of today). It may even be outpacing same-sex marriage legal challenges. This week, the Little Sisters filed their appellate brief in the Tenth Circuit as they challenge the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado’s ruling that a preliminary injunction be denied. The contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act is not without controversy, and in fact the Supreme Court is hearing a challenge this term as it applies to for-profit, secular businesses....

If you want to possess a firearm in Illinois, you need a Firearm Owners Identification card, or FOID. FOIDs aren’t hard to get. A driver’s license, recent photograph, and $10 are all that’s required of most applicants. But if you’re between the ages of 18 and 20, you’ll also need a parent’s consent. If mom and dad won’t sign off, you have to jump through a few administrative hoops. That extra hassle for teens who want guns isn’t unconstitutional, the Seventh Circuit ruled on Monday....

In plaintiff-garnishors’ suit against defendant-banks for conversion, alleging that the defendants unlawfully used garnished funds to satisfy service fees to the banks, district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims is affirmed where: 1) the National Bank Act (NBA) does not preempt general state debt collection laws, including those regulating both banks’ and others’ rights to collect debts; 2) the plaintiffs’ have failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted as any interpretation is preempted by the NBA’s grant of authority to the banks to collect fees without interference; and 3) although the issue of setoffs is not necessary to the holding, the district court’s invocation of the doctrine of setoff is vacated because the doctrine is applicable only to debts....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action challenging under the First Amendment a high school’s decision that a music piece could not be played at a graduation ceremony because it could be seen as endorsing religion, judgment for defendants is affirmed where the district’s action in keeping all musical performances at graduation entirely secular in nature was reasonable in light of the circumstances surrounding a high school graduation, and therefore it did not violate plaintiff’s right to free speech....

Given that the Ninth Circuit is a perennial contender for most frequently reversed, it was not a huge surprise to see the Supreme Court toss one of their decisions in the shredder. It was a bit surprising, however, to see it happen so quickly – before oral arguments began, and on the same day the Court released an orders list clearing much of its summer cert. petition backlog. Why did the Supreme Court give the Ninth Circuit the quick and swift rejection, like a gowned and gaveled Dikembe Mutombo?...

DWI has taken on new meaning: Driving While Intexticated. In 2011, 23% of auto crashes involved cell phones, and text messaging while driving makes a crash 23x more likely. And while Slate reports that 41 states have enacted some sort of cell phone usage while driving prohibition, the laws have had little effect on the statistics. Last week, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court sought to change that, reports CBS....

In an ERISA case, judgment granting defendant-Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s (MetLife) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim against Sharp Electronics (Sharp) is affirmed in part where: 1) the court did not act inconsistently with the law of the case doctrine as its first ruling was not binding, and in any event the case had changed with Sharp’s amended cross-complaint against MetLife; 2) ERISA does not impose the type of fiduciary duties alleged and only imposes liability for Plan losses, and not for attorney fees and other costs incurred by Sharp in defending an employee’s suit; and 3) the district court did not err when it dismissed Sharp’s claim for indemnification....

If you thought holiday miracles were restricted to December celebrations, then prepare to have your heart warmed. Frank Shoemaker has a reason to give thanks this week after the Nebraska DMV respected his free speech rights - not to mention Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals precedent - and granted his request for a personalized license plate reading NE 420. Shoemaker, a farmer and former lawyer, is sponsoring a petition drive for Proposition 19, a state ballot measure to legalize marijuana in Nebraska next year, reports Reuters....

For many, the first semester of law school feels like learning to read all over again. Not only have many of us never laid eyes on a court opinion before, but our textbooks are riddled with terms from a language no one speaks: Latin. But fear not, we’ve been there and we’re here to help. Here are a few of the terms I wish I had known before beginning law school:...