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In an action for employment discrimination and retaliation, district court’s grant of summary judgment for defendant is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff failed to produce enough evidence to support an inference that defendant’s failure to promote was in retaliation for his protected activity; 2) the alterations to plaintiff’s job were not materially adverse and insufficient to dissuade a reasonable employee from filing a discrimination charge; and 3) the court properly determined that certain comments made by other employees were either hearsay or irrelevant to the issue of whether plaintiff was terminated for a retaliatory purpose....

Many people consider summer to be the best time of year. For most students, it’s two months of freedom from classrooms and homework. And, while working adults don’t have the same luxury of freedom, it’s still a fun time with longer days and weekends filled with days at the beach, BBQs, and outdoor events with friends and family. But, the beautiful weather and outdoor fun don’t mean that criminal laws take a break, particularly when it comes to alcohol-related crimes....

SECOND UPDATE, October 10, 2014, 2:33 p.m.: The Supreme Court has just issued an order lifting the stay on same-sex marriages in Idaho, less than three days after Justice Kennedy’s surprising initial stay. UPDATE, October 8, 2014, 12:54 p.m.: Justice Kennedy has issued a new order, dropping the stay in Nevada. Gay marriage can proceed in Nevada, but it’s still on hold in Idaho. Meantime, BuzzFeed reports that the conservative Nevada district court judge who ruled against gay marriage in 2012, and was ordered to issue the injunction (blocking the ban), has self-recused....

Story after story this year has highlighted the tough year that farmers are having. A much wetter than normal spring and summer in the Midwest has hampered crop growth. Worse, though, is the country’s ongoing trade war with China, which has closed off one of America’s biggest export markets for soybeans. But a change in federal law late last year has given some struggling farmers a new lifeline: hemp. Once caught up in our country’s seemingly never-ending reefer madness, it is now legal to grow hemp across the U....

Stimulus checks of $1,200 are now flowing to Americans across the country, giving them a small financial lifeboat to help get through the coronavirus pandemic’s upheaval of daily life. But it turns out that there are millions of our fellow U.S. citizens who will not be getting these checks. Many of the categories of people who will miss out (high-wage earners, students, many elderly and disabled people) make sense. However, there was one group of Americans shocked to learn that they won’t be getting financial relief: U....

Conviction and sentence for drug crimes is affirmed where: 1) the issue of the testimony of officers as both fact and expert witnesses was waived as there was no objection to the officers testifying in both capacities during trial; 2) any error in the government’s failure to disclose the names of the testifying experts was harmless as defendant knew the names of the expert officers and the subject of their intended testimony before they testified; and 3) the court did not err in sentencing defendant to the lowest end of the career offender Guidelines range as it began with the Guidelines as its benchmark and did not deviate from them after it balanced the 18 U....

Action Claiming Improper Disclosure of Juvenile Records In Van Zee v. Hanson, No. 10-1588, an action alleging that defendant violated plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment rights by disclosing his juvenile records to an Army recruiter, the court affirmed the dismissal of the complaint where 1) plaintiff had (at least) constructive notice that the district court intended to consider matters outside the complaint when the court, by memorandum to counsel, requested copies of any release forms plaintiff signed when enlisting in the Army; and 2) the court need not determine whether plaintiff had a property interest in the confidentiality of his juvenile records, because he waived any interest he might have had....

Prisoners’ constitutional rights are curtailed when they’re serving hard time. For convicted terrorists in U.S. prisons, rights are even more limited. According to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, that’s A-OK. Since his arrest, the CBA CLE Legal Connection reports that Al-Owhali has been subject to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), which impose special restrictions on his imprisonment. Starting in 2004, Al-Owhali’s SAMs prohibited him from corresponding with his nieces and nephews through letters....

Over the past several years, “Right to Work” laws have been in vogue. Twenty-four states now have these laws, according to The Washington Post, which prevent unions from requiring workers either to join a union or pay a fee to support the union. Today, two days before the Indiana Supreme Court is slated to hear a similar case, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a challenge to Indiana’s right to work statute, finding that it wasn’t preempted by federal labor law....

Leave it to a lawyer to take a popular video game like “Among Us” and ruin it with legal analysis. But like anyone who’s been to law school, sometimes I can’t help but notice the legal issues that pop up in a fictional world. If you aren’t familiar with the game, here are the highlights: Using their PC or mobile device, players find themselves on a two-dimensional space rig as crewmates, adorable space-suited characters who can wear a variety of objects as hats....

Action for Violation of Cargo Preference Laws In Am. Cargo Transp., Inc. v. US, No. 08-35010, an action against the Department of State Agency for International Development, alleging a violation of federal cargo preference laws and requesting injunctive and declaratory relief, as well as damages for unjust enrichment, the court affirmed summary judgment for defendant where 1) claims for injunctive and declaratory relief under 46 C.F.R. section 381.5 were moot because the U....

The Supreme Court released its order list Monday, and two notable cases originating in the Tenth Circuit were on it. One case deals with a procedural issue, and seeks clarification on the pleading requirements for seeking removal to federal court. In the other case, the Court was asked to weigh in on whether New Mexico’s public accommodations statute violated the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelling speech. Here’s a breakdown of the two cases:...

A federal appeals court dealt another blow to Pennsylvanians suing over a nuclear facility they claimed caused cancer. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals said they could not prove the facility damaged them. In affirming a dismissal of consolidated cases against the successor to Nuclear Material and Equipment Corp., the court may have ended a battle for more than 70 plaintiffs. “Plaintiffs are missing critical elements, and therefore their claims fail,” Judge D....

Simonia v. Glendale Nissan/Infiniti Disability Plan, No. 09-56025, concerned plaintiff’s appeal from the district court’s denial of his motion for attorney’s fees under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The court of appeals affirmed on the ground that, even assuming plaintiff achieved some degree of success on the merits, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court’s conclusion that fees are nonetheless inappropriate after applying the Hummell factors....

Progressive Ins. Co. v. McDonough, No. 09-2520, involved an action against an insurance company for policy proceeds arising out of a car accident. The court affirmed summary judgment for defendant, holding that the criminal-act exclusion in the policy precluded recovery because the perpetrator pled guilty to intentionally hitting plaintiff with his car. In US v. Cochrane, No. 09-2191, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s sentence for aiding and abetting the possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, on the ground that, although the district court addressed defendant’s objections at the sentencing hearing, the district court failed to put the burden on the government to prove defendant’s disputed theft conviction, and the district court also failed to conduct an evidentiary hearing on the disputed theft conviction....

In an action brought by the operator of two bookstores that sell non-obscene sexually oriented material and restrict admissions to adults only challenging Tennessee’s Adult-Oriented Establishment Registration Act, denial of a preliminary injunction is affirmed where: 1) the district court did not err in determining that plaintiff has not shown a substantial likelihood of succeeding on the merits of the challenge to the “adult bookstore” definition; 2) the district court was correct in finding no substantial likelihood of success on the merits of plaintiff’s claim that the Act punishes operators of adult establishments on the basis of strict liability; 3) the district court did not err in finding that plaintiff did not show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of plaintiff’s challenge to the Act’s penalty provision; and 4) plaintiff’s remaining claims are rejected....

Divorce often brings out the worst in people. Even the most even-keeled of spouses can lose it emotionally when the marital final curtain comes down. Suddenly, their partner’s bad habits, weird sexual tics, and tawdry indiscretions become fair game to share with the world. It’s time to air some dirty laundry. This impulse has probably been around since marriage first existed. But since the Internet gained popular use 20 years ago, the nuclear option of airing dirty laundry online has been irresistible for many warring spouses....

Teeth whitening may not be “the practice of dentistry.” Who knew? On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, 6-3, that the determinations of a state regulatory board can be actionable as antitrust if the board is composed of market participants who are using the power of the state to shut out competition. The Court’s opinion extended the doctrine of state-action antitrust immunity to include state regulatory agencies composed of private market participants....

Age discrimination is heading back to the Supreme Court in the 2013 Term, and the challenge in question matriculated from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to consider “whether state and local government employees may avoid the Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act’s comprehensive remedial regime by bringing age discrimination claims directly under the Equal Protection Clause and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.” The case, which the Seventh Circuit decided in August 2012, is Madigan v....

“Reformed” wrong-doers fighting felon in possession of a firearm charges shouldn’t expect the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to lend a sympathetic ear to their appellate plight. Last week, the Second Circuit reversed a district court evidence suppression decision, finding that a parole officer’s warrantless search of a storage facility adjacent to a parolee’s home was proper under the “special needs” exception to the Fourth Amendment. Jimmy Lee Barner was released from a New York prison in 2007....