With 2022 in the rearview mirror, it’s time to think about what changes the new year may bring into our lives. One way to do that is to look at the new state and federal laws that went into effect on Jan. 1. As usual, there are thousands of them, so the task of making sense of them can be daunting. Still, it’s possible to identify recurring issues and themes, so we’ve sifted through many of these new laws to look for trends....
If at first you don’t intercept a speeding motorcyclist, run him over with a police cruiser? The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a police officer who “intentionally” rammed a speeding motorcyclist was not entitled to qualified immunity in civil litigation resulting from the incident because he had clearly violated the motorcyclist’s constitutional rights. Thomas Germany was killed in 2008 while riding a motorcycle across an empty field after a low-speed police chase, when Deputy Sheriff Danny Davis rammed the motorcycle that he was riding....
The parties to the case didn’t request an en banc rehearing, but at least one judge did. Smithkline Beecham was a landmark case for gay rights in the Ninth Circuit, even though the case started as a civil suit over HIV drug pricing. A juror was stricken after mentioning his partner during voir dire, presumably on the basis of his sexual orientation. In January, the Ninth Circuit reversed local precedent and held the heightened scrutiny applied to same-sex discrimination (and by extension, Batson protections apply)....
Defendant’s conviction for maliciously damaging a building by means of an explosive is affirmed where the introduction of recorded statements by officers who interrogated defendant constituted hearsay, but did not prejudice him because the evidence against him was overwhelming. Read US v. Collins, No. 08-3119 Appellate Information Filed August 4, 2009 Judges Opinion by Judge Lucero Counsel For Appellant: John K. Henderson, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Wichita, KS For Appellee:...
People who have never visited states where marijuana is legal might imagine them as places where pot smokers loll about in public parks or street corners as they toke away on shared joints. If so, they’re wrong. Even though 21 states have legalized the recreational use of cannabis, that doesn’t mean residents there are free to smoke in public. A few states allow licensed cannabis retailers to operate “lounges” for consumption, but that’s as public as it gets for most pot smokers in the U....
Is it a bad sign when your tech company needs help with its tech? Since you asked, the answer is: not really. “Tech” covers a lot of issues, so sometimes it takes specialists. That’s why Google is looking for outside help to work on artificial intelligence. After all, doesn’t everybody who is not a robot need help with AI? Help With AI Google has organized an advisory group to help develop AI....
The Washington State Bar Association looks a bit like a falling tree these days. It started when its former president was charged with stealing from the association. Then there was the sexual harassment claim against a state bar executive. But things really started coming down when lawmakers proposed eliminating the organization. In Washington right now, somebody is yelling “Timber!” Supreme Take Over Rumors about the demise of the Washington Bar are not exaggerated....
A federal appeals court gave a family the green light to sue their neighbors for growing marijuana in violation of laws against criminal enterprises. The growers may have been doing business legally under state law, but not federal law. The U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs alleged sufficient damages to invoke the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act. “Marijuana is a controlled substance under the CSA. 21 U.S.C. sec....
“This state’s statute criminalizing abortion … has never been repealed. It has remained unenforceable as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade and its progeny.” This is true: Despite decades of Supreme Court precedent enforcing the constitutional right for women to have an abortion (even if it chipped away at the scope of that right), Alabama never took its original abortion ban off the books. And the state hasn’t been shy about its intentions when it comes to criminalizing abortion – just last year, the Eleventh Circuit begrudgingly struck down Alabama’s restrictive abortion procedure law....
Advertise.com, Inc. v. AOL Advertising, Inc., No. 10-55069, involved Advertising.com’s appeal from a preliminary injunction barring it from using a designation or trade name that was confusingly similar to AOL’s ADVERTISING.COM trademark. The court of appeals vacated an injunction in favor of plaintiff in part on the ground that Advertise.com was likely to rebut the presumption of validity and prevail on its claim that ADVERTISING.COM was generic. As the court wrote: “Advertise....
Redd v. Wright, No. 06-4315, involved a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action arising out of plaintiff inmate’s confinement in tuberculosis hold following his refusal to submit to tuberculosis testing. The court of appeals affirmed summary judgment for defendant, on the grounds that 1) prior precedent did not “clearly foreshadow” a holding that the testing policy, as applied in this case, violated plaintiff’s free exercise rights; 2) it could not reasonably be said that the defendants acted in violation of clearly established Eighth Amendment law by implementing the policy; and 3) it was not clearly established that plaintiff was entitled to some kind of notice that religious objectors could be exempt from the policy....
Bilski v. Kappos, No. 08-964, involved a patent application seeking protection for a claimed invention explaining how commodities buyers and sellers in the energy market could protect, or hedge, against the risk of price changes. The Court affirmed the denial of the application, holding that 1) the machine-or-transformation test is not the sole test for patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. section 101; 2) Section 101 precluded a reading of the term “process” that would categorically exclude business methods; and 3) even though petitioners’ application was not categorically outside of section 101 under the two atextual approaches the Court rejected today, that did not mean it was a “process” under section 101....
Partap v. Holder, No. 05-75777, involved a petition for review of the BIA’s decision affirming an immigration judge’s denial of petitioner’s claim for cancellation of removal and denying his motion to remand. The court of appeals affirmed the denial of the petition, on the grounds that 1) petitioner’s unborn daughter did not meet the statutory definition of “child” in 8 U.S.C. section 1101(b)(1) at the time of his hearing before the immigration judge, and the BIA therefore did not err in determining that the unborn child was not a qualifying relative for purposes of cancellation of removal; and 2) because petitioner did not tender any evidence showing “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship,” the BIA did not abuse its discretion in declining to enter a remand order....
Informally, we’ve been celebrating fathers in the U.S. for a little over 100 years. And we’ve been officially recognizing the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day since 1966. But when it comes to the law, fathers have had specific rights and responsibilities for centuries. And in recent years, the fathers’ rights movement has sought to expand those rights in family law scenarios. So, with this Sunday being Father’s Day, here’s a look at the fathers’ rights movement and the rights and responsibilities of fathers in the legal context....
The Boston City Council might have a devil of a time dealing with a recent challenge to the way it conducts its meetings. Like many city councils, the one in Boston likes to start its meetings with an invocation. The selection of each meeting’s “faith leader" is left to individual councilors, and they have included Christian pastors of various denominations, imams, and rabbis. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, though, they have never included a Satanist....
You know what stinks about class-action settlements? Sometimes, the payout for the consumer is absolutely meaningless. This Hewlett-Packard settlement is a perfect example. Consumers sued because HP supposedly misled them about their cartridges’ true ink levels (causing premature replacement), hid expiration dates, and engaged in a few other practices that made their wallets sad from 2001 to 2010. What was the objection? As always, it was excessive attorneys’ fees. Why the ambiguity?...
In an antitrust action, district court’s grant of judgment on the pleadings and dismissal on grounds that state action immunity applied to all defendants is vacated and remanded where: 1) defendant Westchester County Health Care Corporation is entitled to the same status as a municipality for purposes of the state action immunity analysis, and the behavior by WCHCC was a foreseeable consequence of the authorizations in WCHCC’s enabling statute; and 2) a private party is not exempted from the active supervision prong of the Midcal test simply by virtue of purporting to act pursuant to a contract with a governmental entity that itself would be entitled to state action immunity, and on remand the private defendants-doctors must therefore show that they were actively supervised by WCHCC in order to share in its immunity....
Child pornography sentences can vary widely. In February, we told you about a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision finding that a one-day sentence and a $100 fine was too lax a penalty for child pornography charges. This week, the Sixth Circuit addressed the opposite end of the sentencing spectrum: whether a life sentence for child pornography charges is excessive punishment A three-judge panel upheld Stephen Hammonds’ life sentence for child pornography, finding that then-District Court Judge Bernice Donald did not err in following the U....
Have you ever been to the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in New York? While I was a struggling law student, I lived there and I would often see drug baggies on the street, and an occasional prostitute at work in her John’s car. Now, it’s like Disneyland on crack. In the latest case of gentrification, a group of citizens sued their township claiming disparate impact under the Fair Housing Act. How will the Supreme Court decide?...
When the Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor decisions were handed down, many of us reacted positively to the outcomes. The defeat of DOMA Section 2 eliminated the complexity of differing state and federal definitions of marriage and extended equal treatment and benefits to all state-recognized marriages. However, the Court’s decisions, which found standing in Windsor, but not in Perry, brought forth a number of unresolved issues, including murkiness in standing standards, separation of power conundrums, and that fragmentation of marriage rights across the states with no full faith and credit requirement....
