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In a challenge to the National Indian Gaming Commission’s (NIGC) approval of an Indian tribe’s proposed casino, dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where the NIGC did not have a duty under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to make an Indian lands determination in 1993 before approving the tribe’s non-site-specific proposed gaming ordinance. Read North Cty. Community Alliance v. Salazar, No. 07-36048 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted March 11, 2009...

Is anyone surprised that the Obama administration is skipping en banc review and heading straight to the Supreme Court? In January, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel decided that three members of the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutionally appointed during a Senate recess. Because the NLRB only has five seats — and it can’t operate without a quorum — that ruling means that over 200 NLRB decisions are in jeopardy....

Transgender students in a Pennsylvania school district may continue to use boys or girls bathrooms, according to their gender identity. That’s the net effect of a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review an opinion of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. In Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, the appeals court said transgender students can use bathrooms or locker rooms of their choice. It was a victory for transgender students in the school district, which serves about 2,000 high schoolers....

A recently filed federal wrongful death lawsuit in Tennessee alleges excessive force in relation to law enforcement’s controversial killing of Michael Dial in April 2017. The officers involved in the shooting were cleared of wrong doing by the county, which believed the officers acted reasonably. However, Sheriff Oddie Shoupe’s statements, captured on audio from the scene after the shooting, belies the county’s belief and could be strong evidence for Dial’s survivors....

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is old. That’s not meant as an insult, it’s just a fact – a fact that makes his current pace all the more impressive. Here are a few fun facts about the retired justice: He actually witnessed Babe Ruth’s infamous called shot; He grew up in Chicago during the Prohibition; He was the third-longest serving Supreme Court justice and the second-oldest at the time of retirement....

This post was updated on December 13, 2022. The holiday season is a time for celebrating and for spending time with family. And where there are celebrations, libations are sure to follow. But all that holiday drinking doesn’t need to lead to drinking and driving charges. Here are some general legal tips and holiday-specific advice for avoiding DUIs this holiday season, from our archives: 1.Creative Campaigns Hope to Curb Holiday Drunk Driving Law enforcement officials don’t just want to punish drunk driving – they want to prevent it from ever happening....

District court order revoking defendant’s term of supervised release and sentencing him to imprisonment is affirmed where the court had statutory authority to sentence defendant based on conduct occurring after the issuance of the revocation warrant and did not abuse its discretion in sentencing him to the statutory maximum term of imprisonment based on that conduct. Read US v. Jordan, No. 08-2276 Appellate InformationAppeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri....

Customers may think of Priceline.com with warm and fuzzy feelings thanks to travel discounts and former spokesman William Shatner, but the site doesn’t have a fiduciary duty to disclose its discount-dealing profits to consumers. Plaintiffs Lee Johnson and Joey Marie Kelly initiated a putative class action against Priceline for breach of fiduciary duty and contract arising from Priceline’s alleged failure to disclose to its “Name Your Own Price” customers that a successful bid for a hotel room will generally exceed the amount Priceline pays the hotel vendor....

A mere nine days after oral argument, the Seventh Circuit on Thursday affirmed a trial court decision striking down same-sex marriage bans in Indiana and Wisconsin. It’s the latest in a near-unanimous string of court rulings to strike down such bans as unconstitutional. Like other courts, the Seventh Circuit didn’t afford strict or even intermediate scrutiny to the same-sex marriage bans, as the U.S. Supreme Court has never applied such a high level of review to cases involving sexual orientation....

Customers aren’t always right, but then again, business owners and their employees make big mistakes all the time too. However, one mistake businesses should be careful not to make involves refusing service to customers when a law might prohibit doing so. Simply put, while a business may “reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” that right is limited by federal, state, and local laws. For instance, you may not refuse service to a customer because of their race, national origin, or disability....

If a Federal Judge belongs to an all-white, all-male club, is it an issue? Is he partaking in racial discrimination? Now, let’s throw in the fact that this is no small club. It has 600 voting members, all white males. Does that change things? Well, according to The New York Times, a 10-8 decision of the Judicial Council of the Sixth Circuit allowed Judge George C. Paine II to keep his membership in the Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville....

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) and the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) of Pennsylvania have filed a joint amicus brief in a case that is on appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The two organizations lend their voices in a case challenging two federal criminal statutes that, according to them, violate First Amendment free speech rights and Fourteenth Amendment privacy rights. Soon to be before the Third Circuit for the second time in its long procedural history – we wonder how the Third Circuit will decide....

Negligent Construction Advice Lawsuit In Affiliated FM Ins. Co. v. LTK Consulting Servs., Inc., No. 07-35696, an action asserting that defendant provided negligent design advice to the Seattle Monorail System that resulted in fire damage, the court reversed summary judgment for defendant where a party with a contractual right to operate commercially and extensively on another’s property may bring a suit in tort against a third party for damage to that property....

In US v. Torres, No. 09-1771, the court of appeals reversed defendant’s drug conspiracy conviction, holding that the trial evidence was insufficient to permit the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he had knowledge that the purpose of the conspiracy of which he was found to be a member was the distribution of narcotics. In US v. Hernandez, No. 09-1421, the Second Circuit vacated defendant’s drug conspiracy sentence, on the ground that the district court evidently started with an assumption–invalid after so long an interval–that the baseline for the re-sentencing was the sentence imposed in 1991, and thereby failed to properly consider the factors set out in 18 U....

Bees – and their keepers – won an important legal victory last Thursday when the Ninth Circuit ordered the EPA to cancel its approval of a toxic insecticide connected to bee deaths. The Ninth Circuit panel ruled that the EPA had approved Dow Chemical’s use of sulfoxaflor as a pesticide without sufficient evidence about its potential effects. The ruling is particularly important as sulfoxaflor, marketed commercially by Dow as Transform and Closer, is a neonicotinoid, a type of insecticide seen by many as connected to Colony Collapse Disorder, or the mass die off of bees....

Order Compelling Discovery Affirmed In Chevron Corp. v. Berlinger, No. 10-1918, respondents’ appeal from an order compelling disclosure of respondents’ film outtakes for use in proceedings in foreign tribunals, the court affirmed where, given all the circumstances of the making of the film, as reasonably found by the district court, particularly the fact that respondent’s making of the film was solicited by the plaintiffs in a foreign litigation for the purpose of telling their story, and that changes to the film were made at their instance, respondent failed to carry his burden of showing that he collected information for the purpose of independent reporting and commentary....

Let’s say you have an employee who leaves his job. Things become awkward between the two of you. What would you do? Normal people would simply avoid each other. Maybe un-friend one another on Facebook. Normal people aren’t fun to read about. Thankfully, the subjects of today’s Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case are extraordinary people. Nidal Bazzi worked for Marwan Haidar for several months. When the relationship between the two became strained, Haidar allegedly decided to get Bazzi arrested....

It should come as no surprise that Kentucky – famous for the Kentucky Long Rifle – allows workers to lawfully carry concealed weapons on the job. After all, “Brown Bessie” was America’s first firearm. She cleared the frontier, won the Revolution, and made U.S. history as much as any settler. So in Kentucky, they stand united behind their guns. And so did Bruce Holly. He had a concealed weapons permit, and he kept a gun in his car at United Parcel Services....

On the most recent episode of the Michael Avenatti legal drama, one of the now-infamous lawyer’s former clients, and the defendant they went after, have come forward due to Avenatti’s alleged shenanigans. And this time it doesn’t involve any adult entertainers, nor politicians. Apparently, a couple years ago, Avenatti facilitated a settlement paid by Hassan Whiteside, of the Miami Heat, to his former girlfriend, Alexis Gardner. But, perhaps given the story that’s being reported, we should say a settlement Whiteside paid to Avenatti, because, allegedly, he kept the bulk of it for himself....

In US v. Birbragher, No. 08-4004, the Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant’s drug conspiracy conviction and sentence, holding that 1) it was well settled that 18 U.S.C. section 841 applied to defendant, as the owner and operator of a company involved in an alleged conspiracy with doctors and pharmacists to distribute controlled substances outside the scope of their professional practice; 2) the Controlled Substances Act, as it existed when defendant engaged in the conduct alleged in the indictment, was not unconstitutionally vague as applied to defendant’s ownership and operation of his company; and 3) the court enforced defendant’s waiver of his right to appeal and declined to address the merits of his claim....