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Ex-Tinder VP Whitney Wolfe is suing the dating-app company for sexual harassment, largely stemming from alleged mistreatment by co-founder Justin Mateen. According to Reuters, Wolfe’s sexual harassment suit has named IAC/InterActiveCorp, Tinder, and Match.com as defendants, alleging that executives removed her title as a co-founder because of her gender. Tinder is a popular dating app that attempts to romantically link users via their mobile devices. What are Wolfe’s sexual harassment claims against Tinder?...

US v. Nance, 09-3786, concerned a defendant’s challenge to his 180-month sentence for receiving child pornography. In affirming the sentence, the court held that the district court did not err in calculating defendant’s criminal history score using his conviction that had been considered as part of a pattern of activity involving the sexual exploitation of a minor under section 2G2.2(b)(5), as note 3 to section 2G2.2 creates an exception to the general rule that relevant conduct may not be considered when computing a defendant’s criminal history score....

Lacey Phillips and Erin Hall are an unmarried couple who decided to purchase a home together in 2006. Their first application for a mortgage was rejected by Associated Bank. They next applied to Fremont Investment & Loan (“Fremont”), through a referral, Brian Bowling, one of Hall’s clients. Unbeknownst to Phillips and Hall, Bowling was a “crook” (Judge Posner’s words), “who brokered fraudulent loans.” Fremont accepted loan applications based on “stated income,” that is, they didn’t verify applicants’ income....

The California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention (STEP) Act is a comprehensive piece of anti-gang legislation that, amongst other remedies, allows the state to ask for an injunction prohibiting gang gatherings and other related behaviors. In 2009, the Orange County District Attorney filed for an injunction against alleged members of the Orange Varrio Cypress (OVC) street gang. The terms of the injunction, which covers a 3.78-square mile area in the City of Orange, prohibited the affected members from gathering, throwing up gang signs, and being out after 10 p....

In a dispute between a bar and a city over a liquor license with hours restrictions, district court’s conclusion that the plaintiff was likely to prevail on its due process claim and faced irreparable harm if forced to continue operating under the more limited hours restriction in granting the preliminary injunction is affirmed where: 1) plaintiff has a protected property interest in a liquor license with the same hours as other license holders in the city as nothing in the text of the ordinance suggests that the council intended to amend the hours of operation section or to exclude plaintiff from its effects; 2) plaintiff has shown that it has been deprived of that property without due process of law as it did not receive a pre-deprivation hearing or any of the other protections; and 3) district court did not abuse its discretion in its balancing of the preliminary injunction factors given the strong likelihood of success of the merits, the concrete and irreparable harm to plaintiff’s outweighs any interest advanced by the city in continuing to enforce the hours limitation....

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Elonis, ballyhooed as the “Facebook threats” case or the “rap lyrics” case. Commentators have proclaimed that this case will determine the fate of free speech on the Internet. But this is really a simple case of criminal threats that just happened to be made on the Internet. The issue is analog, not digital. A “true threat” is a category of unprotected speech, but to whom is the speech threatening?...

In an inmate’s 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action against prison officials alleging that the confiscation of his Dungeons and Dragons game materials and imposition of a ban on D&D play violated his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection, district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the prison officials is affirmed as, despite the inmate’s large quantum of affidavit testimony asserting that D&D is not associated with gangs and that the game can improve inmate rehabilitation, he has failed to demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact concerning the reasonableness of the relationship between the ban and the prison’s clearly legitimate penological interests....

“Mister Chief Justice, may it please the Court?” A recent study rated male lawyers as they argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, and nothing correlated with success quite like the masculinity of the lawyers’ voice while uttering that phrase. But the real shocker? The more masculine the voice, the less likely the advocate was to win the case, according to the study. Is it a statistical fluke? And were there any other interesting findings?...

Can’t get enough of Justice Scalia? Want to know when Justice Sotomayor makes a stop in your town? Figuring out how to stalk your favorite Supreme Court justice isn’t as hard as it might seem, thanks to a handy map that lets you know where the justices have been, are, and will be. SCOTUS Map is a project of Victoria Kwan and Jay Pinho and regularly lists the public appearances of the Supreme Court nine....

If you’ve been waiting to plan your fall trip to D.C. in hopes that the Supreme Court would hear a political question argument, then you can start making travel plans. The Supreme Court hearing schedule for October 31 through November 9 on Monday has been released. The twelve cases on the docket range from a State Department political question, to the standard criminal fare. The full schedule is below. Monday, Oct 31:...

On Monday, September 12, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in Awad v. Ziriax, a case about the constitutionality of a 2010 law banning Oklahoma courts from citing or using Sharia law. Oklahoma voters approved a “Save our State” constitutional amendment in November 2010. The law was written to prohibit judges from using international laws as a basis for decisions, reports ABC News. Awad and the American Civil Liberties Union claim that Oklahoma’s amendment, by singling out the Sharia, expresses a government preference for one religion over another in violation of the Constitution....

Defendant’s drug and firearm sentence is affirmed where the district court properly enhanced defendant’s sentence pursuant to U.S.S.G. section 2K2.1(b)(6) because the presence of multiple loaded firearms and ammunition in defendant’s bedroom, in close proximity to the processed marijuana and marijuana plants on the perimeters of his property, was not the result of accident or coincidence, but rather was conveniently made available to facilitate the manufacture of marijuana. Read US v....

In an action by a lender seeking to recover assets from a borrower that were seized by the government, a ruling for the government is reversed where the lender preserved its argument that it was a bona fide purchaser by stating the issue to the district court with sufficient clarity to give the court and opposing parties notice that it was asserting the issue. Read US v. Huntington Nat’l. Bank, No....

Felon in possession of a firearm conviction affirmed US v. Johnson, 09-3264, concerned a challenge to a conviction of defendant for being a felon in possession of a firearm. In affirming the conviction, the court held that the district court’s comments did not chill defendant’s constitutional right to testify. Further, the district court did not err in denying defendant’s motion to suppress, nor in refraining from considering defendant’s mid-trial ineffective assistance of counsel claim....

Defendant’s convictions for arson, mail fraud, conspiracy to commit arson and mail fraud, and the use of fire to commit another felony, arising from his burning down his mother’s supermarket to help her collect insurance money, are affirmed as, under the Blockburger combination approach, Congress intended separate punishments for defendant’s convicted offenses. Read US v. Xiong, No. 09-1410 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin...

If you keep up with current political events in the United States, or even if you don’t, you’ve probably heard mention of filibustering. But what is it, why does the U.S. Senate do it, and why are people talking about getting rid of the filibuster? Filibuster Definition and Explanation Because Senate rules do not impose time limits on senators speaking, and voting procedures for bills can only start after a speaker’s time ends, filibustering arose as a way to essentially talk or otherwise delay Senate business for so long that voting cannot happen....

The High Court has accepted five new cases for argument in the upcoming term. Notably, the Court also rejected a big case involving a Guantanamo Bay detainee who has been held for over 15 years without being charged. The rejection came with a separate opinion from Justice Breyer explaining that the man could be held indefinitely as long as the terrorist organizations al-Qaeda and the Taliban were enemies of the United States....

The Supreme Court will soon rule on a Third Circuit decision defining the role of disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), after the Court accepted certiorari on Monday. The case involves a New Jersey subdivision with a traditionally non-white population that faced a significant change in demographics once the town decided to redevelop the area and housing at market rate, reports Reuters. How will the Supreme Court view the evaluations of the Third Circuit when they decide this case in 2014?...

Need help beating procrastination? Hang on, we’ll get back to that in a minute. For now, let’s talk about emotional intelligence. You know, it’s that other IQ that starts with EQ? The point is, it’s about time to use your feelings instead of your brain to get over procrastination. Here’s how: Emotional Intelligence Christopher Rim, an education consultant who writes for Forbes, says you can defeat procrastination with emotional intelligence. He said he did it successfully at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence....

Back in 2012, Californians decided to double down on punishment for registered sex offenders. Proposition 35 required sex offenders to provide law enforcement with a list of their “Internet identifiers,” which could include email addresses, Facebook accounts, or even a user name on an obscure online forum. (Note that Prop. 35 was largely about increasing penalties for human trafficking; the part about sex offender Internet accounts was barely ever mentioned.) Failure to provide law enforcement with written notice of additions or changes to these identifiers, within 24 hours, would subject the offender to criminal penalties....