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It was really no surprise that Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in the lastest death penalty case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Sotomayor expressed her views on it long before she made it to the highest court. In 1981, she signed an internal memo for an organization opposing the death penalty. Conservatives jumped on it during her confirmation hearing in 2009, but of course that went nowhere. Now she’s in the driver’s seat, even if her colleagues don’t see it....

By now, you probably know what the Obamacare subsidies case is all about. We’ve written about it plenty, after all. The outcome of the case will depend on what remedy the Court chooses to fashion to deal with what seems like an obvious drafting error – the provision that limits the availability of insurance subsidies to those who use state-built exchanges, rather than the federal exchange which covers the many states which declined to build their own....

Overstock.com doesn’t just sell discounted goods; it also responds swiftly to a sexual harassment claim. Tuesday, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a former employee’s hostile work environment claim against Overstock, noting that the online discounter had done exactly what it needed to do to handle the situation. Bertsch’s position is that she worked in the face of Latimer’s sexual harassment, which Overstock knew but ignored. When she complained, the company criticized her, threatened reassignment, and eventually fired her....

The United States Supreme Court recently declined to review a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s 2018 sexual assault conviction. The Pennsylvania court concluded that Cosby should not have faced criminal charges for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004—because in 2005, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor publicly promised not to prosecute him. Castor has said that he chose not to bring charges so that Cosby could not invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in Constand’s then-pending civil case....

San Francisco sued pharmacy companies for pushing opioids on the public by misleading people about the addictive dangers of the prescription drugs. In City and County of San Francisco v. Purdue Pharma, the municipality alleges that Purdue Pharma and other companies aggressively marketed Oxycontin and other drugs knowing their high potential for abuse. The painkillers have contributed to an epidemic that has killed tens of thousands of Americans. The lawsuit says the drugs were meant for people who suffer acute pain, but the defendants encourage opioid use for “the masses who suffer from common chronic pain....

If the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Doe v. Reed didn’t dissuade from signing petitions, will a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision could change your mind? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing arguments in an emergency motion today regarding the release of Referendum 71 signers’ names. Referendum 71 was a failed attempt to overturn Washington SB 5688, also known as the “Everything but Marriage” law, which afforded domestic partnerships all of the protections of marriage without the title....

To travel the length of Virginia’s third congressional district isn’t an easy task. You’d need a boat, a plane, and a whole lot of time to follow the district from its northern corner outside Richmond, across the James River, around and over Newport News, and finally down to certain Norfolk neighborhoods. It’s a district that would drive many cartographers nuts, and that was exactly the point. The district was originally designed as the state’s only majority-minority district....

After this last Super Bowl, millions of beer drinkers were likely scratching their heads wondering if the beers they love contain corn syrup. That’s thanks to the advertising brilliance of Bud Light, which, conveniently, does not use corn syrup when brewing Bud Light. However, Bud Light is now facing litigation from MillerCoors, who have been skewered by their budget brewing nemesis in the Super Bowl ad campaign featuring the Bud Light Knights returning a mis-delivered barrel of corn syrup to Miller Lite and Coors Lite....

Defendant’s firearm possession conviction is affirmed where the district court properly denied defendant’s motion to suppress evidence because: 1) the use of handcuffs by the police was reasonable under the circumstances, coming as it did after the discovery of a controlled substance; 2) the search of defendant’s person was reasonable under the circumstances; and 3) the officers had good reason to detain defendant pending further investigation. Read US v. Albert, No....

Conviction for firearms possession is affirmed where: 1) the district court properly denied defendant’s motion to suppress evidence found in defendant’s car as a warrantless search of the car and the bag found in the engine compartment was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment; and 2) the court properly refused to suppress evidence obtained from a search of an apartment as the officers had probable cause to search the apartment, the evidence was also admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine, and the occupant of the apartment voluntarily gave her consent to the search....

In an environmental case, district court injunction requiring the defendant to clean up a contaminated site is affirmed where the government’s claim to an injunction was not discharged in bankruptcy and thus can be renewed in a subsequent lawsuit as the government’s equitable claim entitles it to require defendant to clean up the contaminated site at defendant’s expense. Read US v. Apex Oil Co. Inc., No. 08-3433 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois....

District court’s disqualification of defendant’s retained counsel from representing him in a prosecution for conspiracy to distribute cocaine because the attorney was also representing an alleged co-conspirator in sentencing proceedings is reversed and remanded for retrial as the district court’s disqualification order violated defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to choose his own counsel, and, under Gonzalez-Lopez, this constitutional violation is a structural error not subject to review for harmlessness. Read US v....

There’s just something about Pennsylvania, porn, and the race for governor. Last month, a guy who starred in a “torture porn” flick showed up in a campaign ad for Tom Wolf, the Democrat running for governor. It was worth a laugh or two – not the least bit because the star’s day job is as an attorney, and in the movie he played a cannibalistic attorney – but really, it was much ado about nothing (especially for Wolf, who leads by double digits)....

In habeas proceedings of a defendant convicted of aggravated battery and attempted murder when he chased his ex-girlfriend onto a city bus, stabbing her and a passenger multiple times, district court’s denial of his habeas petition is affirmed where: 1) a motion for an extension of time to seek a certificate of appealability in this instance suffices to serve as the functional equivalent of a notice of appeal; and 2) defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim is simply without merit....

Challenge to Water Stations in Bighorn Sheep Habitat In Wilderness Watch, Inc. v. US Fish & Wildlife Serv., No. 08-17406, an action claiming that the Forest Service’s actions in building water stations in a bighorn sheep habitat violated the express prohibition on the development of structures in the Wilderness Act, the court reversed summary judgment for defendants where a generic finding of necessity by the Service did not suffice, because the Service was required to make a finding that the structures were “necessary” to meet the minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of conserving bighorn sheep....

The people behind Ponzi schemes are usually quite ruthless. When they get caught, it’s no surprise that courts can be equally ruthless when handing out judgments. Paul Zada, the mastermind behind the sham investments of Zada Enterprises, faces a judgment of $112 million. This hefty judgment will in part go to pay back investors whom Zada defrauded. One investor, a former hockey player of the Red Wings, lost $40 million in Zada’s scam....

Peta Lindsay was the Peace and Freedom Party’s chosen candidate for President of the United States in 2012. One small problem: she was 27 years old. California, predictably, refused to put her name on the ballot due to her obvious ineligibility. She sued, claiming First Amendment and Equal Protection violations, as well as a violation of the Twentieth Amendment. (Yeah, we had to look it up too.) In any case, this went exactly as you would expect....

In Brooks v. Holder, No. 09-3805, a petition for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissing petitioner’s appeal from the immigration judge’s order of removal, the court denied the petition where a New York State conviction of one count of criminal possession of a weapon in violation of N.Y. Penal Law section 265.03(1)(b) satisfied the definition of a “crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. section 16 such that petitioner in deportation proceedings was removable and also ineligible for cancellation of removal....

In a product liability action based on injuries plaintiff allegedly sustained by taking defendant’s drug, the district court’s order dismissing plaintiff’s claims against certain defendants and denying plaintiff’s motion to remand is reversed where there was sufficient compliance with the Mississippi Tort Claims Act’s pre-suit notice requirements to state a claim against the hospital that administered the drug and its physician-employees. Read Bounds v. Pine Belt Mental Health Care Resources, No....

Sixty-five years ago today, the Supreme Court ended school segregation by law in the United States, overturning the previous “separate-but-equal” doctrine. That decision, Brown v. Board of Education, declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” but it did not ensure perfect racial integration for schools. The decision dealt only with government-mandated or government-authorized segregation, and decades later, studies show segregation for black students has gotten worse. So on its birthday, here’s a look at the landmark case, and some of its effects....