Category: News Feeds

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is great at making headlines. When we last heard from her, she publicly announced for that she’d been secretly undergoing chemotherapy for her fifth battle with cancer. At the time, she noted that it had been “yielding positive results.”

Her course of treatment must be going really well, because thanks to a viral Twitter post, we now know that Ginsburg has made her first public appearance since her cancer announcement. It looks like the justice officiated an outdoor wedding this past weekend — during a pandemic, when she’s at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 due to her age and her illness.

Check out the tweet that’s been making the rounds, below:

The bride, Barb Solish, is the director of marketing and communications for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and Ginsburg is a family friend. With nary a mask in this beautiful picture, where Ginsburg is seen standing barely taller than the lectern, the bride wrote in a follow-up tweet, “And don’t worry, we tested negative!”

They don’t call her the Notorious RBG for nothing. We hope she remains safe and sound and that her health continues to improve.

Ginsburg officiated a wedding over the weekend [The Hill]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The California legislature can’t force the state supreme court to retroactively accept bar scores between 1390 and 1430 as passing, but they’ve made their feelings known on the subject. HR 103 begged the judiciary to adopt its own standard and allow scores from the last five years to be counted for the purpose of licensure, which would allow past examinees to count scores that would pass under the newly adopted 1390 standard.

In the end, the resolution wasn’t even controversial, passing by unanimous consent sometime after midnight.

Nor should it be controversial. If you maintain that the bar examination produces consistent measures over time — which California does — then a 1400 in February is the same as a 1400 now and there’s no reason to treat them differently. Add in that it minimizes the number of applicants that have to take the looming disaster of the next bar exam administration and it’s a no-brainer. These are all points that were adequately briefed and then summarily ignored by the justices.

It’s another instance of legislators getting out ahead licensing reform of the issue where bar examiners and courts have faltered, with New York and Hawai’i both calling for the cancellation of the bar exam for different reasons. Score another one for responsive government!

Whether or not the court heeds the calls coming from the legislative branch remains to be seen.

Earlier: California Holds Hearing On Retroactive Bar Exam Score Resolution
California Bill Recommends Lowering Cut Score Retroactive To 2015
California Supreme Court Refuses To Apply New Cut Score Retroactively

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Welcome listeners to this COVID-19 Special Report podcast presented by our friends at Wolters Kluwer and hosted by Evolve the Law Contributing Editor, Ian Connett (@QuantumJurist).

This report features Tim Feldman, Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare Compliance & Reimbursement at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. Tim oversees product development across a vast suite of practice tools and workflow solutions to help professionals stay ahead of regulatory developments and effectively manage compliance activities.

Listen in as Tim and Ian examine the rapidly evolving healthcare regulatory compliance system, including legal and compliance technology trends, the rise of telehealth, and what to expect in this year’s election cycle as it relates to healthcare policy in light of the pandemic.  All of this and more on this week’s COVID-19 Special Coverage Podcast.  Thank you for listening!

The arms race is on. The recruitment of college athletes by athletic departments has always been a battle based on which programs can most persuasively pitch the unique opportunities that players will be provided to reach the next level, whether it be the coaching staff, training facilities, or history of propelling individuals to the professional ranks.

However, with four states (Florida, California, Colorado, and Nebraska) creating new laws that will allow college athletes to earn money from the use of their names, images, and likenesses, more than 30 other states considering similar legislation, and the NCAA promising legislative proposals to reform its prohibition on athletes exploiting their publicity rights, universities are entering a new realm of recruiting athletes. They are pitching their social media metrics, the companies that are based in or around the cities in which they are located, and the tools that they are equipped to provide athletes as they are about to be given, for the first time, a right to earn money in exchange for their valuable endorsements.

While Florida is technically set to be the first state to allow college athletes to commercially exploit their names, images, and likenesses (with an effective date of July 1, 2021), the NCAA has declared that it expects its own legislation to be approved by January 31, 2021, with effective dates no later than the start of the 2021-22 academic year. That would create change for athletes at schools across the country, irrespective of jurisdiction. As such, athletic departments outside of those states that have passed legislation on the issue of name, image, and likeness are preparing for what they expect to come — some creation of rights for college athletes to put them in a similar position as their colleagues on campus who have zero restrictions with regard to the commercial exploitation of their publicity rights.

The University of Texas has come out of the gates with an impressive pitch to prospective recruits as to why they should strongly consider Texas Athletics. The program, titled LEVERAGE, was announced on August 31 with a press release and video that boasts of personal branding, brand management, business formation, and entrepreneurship tools for students, opportunity management offerings and over 120 technology companies, more than 50 gaming companies and at least 40 major business headquarters based in Austin.

There is no mistaking the purpose of the efforts at the University of Texas; its athletics department is interested in capitalizing off of its size and strength, but worried that schools in states that have already passed laws related to name, image, and likeness are off to an early lead in attracting top recruits. Texas Football coach Tom Herman’s statement in the LEVERAGE release furthers this truth.

“With the NIL opportunities coming in the near future, the establishment of the LEVERAGE program is a personal development area where we will provide unmatched resources when it comes to building our players’ brands,” Herman said. “The people they will meet, opportunities at their disposal and the resources our first-class Football and Athletics programs will provide are second to none, and this program is just another great reason to be a Texas Longhorn.”

Herman’s statement is based on the belief that either the NCAA will choose to remove its current prohibition on college athletes earning money off of their names, images or likenesses, or that there will be separate federal action by way of Congress enacting a national law, such as the legislation introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio in June. However, the only state that has guaranteed its athletes the ability to exploit their publicity rights as of July 1, 2021 is Florida. It should be expected that schools in the Sunshine State, as well as athletic departments in all other states, begin to develop and announce programs that bear similarities to what Texas has unveiled by way of its LEVERAGE program.

While it appears that Texas Athletics is choosing, at least for the time being, to provide tools to athletes in-house, there may be opportunities for external third parties to provide resources and training such as financial literacy, opportunity management, compliance assistance, and content creation capacities to athletic departments that choose to follow in the footsteps of the University of Texas. I am part of a team that is going to announce such an offering in the very near future as a viable third-party solution to level the playing field.

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Darren Heitner is the founder of Heitner Legal. He is the author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, published by the American Bar Association, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. You can reach him by email at heitner@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DarrenHeitner.

COVID has forced us to have a serious talk about the bar exam. The anachronistic test invented to screen attorneys entering the profession without any formal legal education simply makes no sense in a world where almost every jurisdiction now requires a three-year degree from an ABA-accredited school to enter the profession. Most years we just shrug off this fact, but in the midst of a global pandemic, as some states feverishly jam applicants into convention halls in the name of taking the test, the ritual rings hollow. The crisis provides an opportunity to take stock and ask if we really need this thing after all and if there isn’t a better way to regulate the profession than asking people to quiz people from memory about doctrines they will never see in practice and then never check in with them again over the rest of their four decade career.

One person who didn’t need the crisis to have serious doubts about the bar exam is Greta Van Susteren. Five years ago, she videotaped a message of encouragement to everyone taking the bar exam and explained exactly how she feels about the test from her perspective as a legal analyst who practiced for years and has taught as an adjunct.

Yup.

Over the weekend, the video earned a second jolt of fame when current examinees found it and realized that, if anything, it’s more relevant now than it was then. Van Susteren joined in on social media to add support to the effort to reform professional licensing.

#Scam indeed.

And it’s all in the name of a mad quest for cash that only hurts the applicants.

Personally, I think she undersells the competition aspect, especially in states like Delaware and California. Adding to the mountain of debt upon law school graduates is more of an effect than a purpose, but that doesn’t blunt her point.

As for a replacement mechanism, Van Susteren has an answer.

Diploma privilege it is!

It may not be the ideal solution absent the pandemic. There are law schools out there that are very close to the definition of “#scam” themselves and a long-term diploma privilege solution must work hand-in-hand with a more robust accreditation process that can guarantee graduates are prepared to practice law. But the “crisitunity” afforded by COVID doesn’t provide the luxury of waiting and could greatly advance the reform effort by allowing a longitudinal study of the fitness of a class admitted without the exam.

As one might expect, the diploma privilege world swiftly embraced Van Susteren as a high-profile ally in a struggle that far too often gets denigrated as “kids who don’t want to take the exam.”

As they say in political Twitter, “welcome to the resistance.”

Except, Greta’s been with the resistance since before it even got rolling and she has the YouTube receipts to prove it.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

HARARE – A Zimbabwe court has ordered an investigation into death threats made against a jailed opposition MDC MP, allegedly by a prison boss.

Job Sikhala has been arrested on charges of inciting public violence amid protests in the country against corruption and human rights abuses.

Sikhala has been in prison for over a week now.

He is facing the same charges as journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and opposition activist Jacob Ngarivhume – that of inciting public violence.

All are in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison and, the trio feels unsafe.

Sikhala’s legal representative Harrison Nkomo said, “what we placed before the courts is that Mr Sikhala is afraid for his life because there were death threats that were made to him whilst in prison. Secondly, the issue of COVID-19 in the cells and the court has directed that prison must investigate and report to the honourable court within 48 hours”

A Harare-based private company, Impala Car Hire, is being condemned on social media after one of its vehicles was used to kidnap Tawanda Muchehiwa, the cousin of ZimLive editor, Mduduzi Mathuthu last month.

People are demanding the firm release the details of the person who hired the vehicle to carry out the abduction.

 Detained Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono. (Photo: zwnews.com / Wikipedia)

After spending six weeks in remand prison applying for bail a record three times, incarcerated journalist Hopewell Chin’ono on Monday 31 August sent a distress call to his lawyers that he was “seriously ill” and in need of urgent medical attention.

His lawyer Doug Coltart immediately visited Chin’ono, who is on remand at the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, where condemned hardcore criminals are kept.

Coltart told Daily Maverick, “Hopewell has been visited and examined by his own doctor and the symptoms of headache and fever are all consistent with Covid-19.

“Swabs have been taken and [we are] now awaiting test results after which the legal team would want Hopewell Chin’ono to be admitted at a hospital soonest. He has been given medication for the meantime.”

The jailed journalist is being represented by a team of lawyers comprising lead lawyer advocate Taona Nyamakura, Roselyn Hanzi (director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights), Coltart and Beatrice Mtetwa.

Chin’ono was arrested on 20 July, as was Transform Zimbabwe opposition leader Jacob Ngarivhume. The two are charged with “incitement to participate in a gathering with intent to promote public violence”.

The journalist’s Twitter handle @daddyhope was deleted as soon as he was arrested at his home in Harare, while Ngarivhume has denied owning a Twitter handle under his name, @jngarivhume.

The two men have been denied bail on numerous and separate instances since their arrest and are being held at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison while awaiting trial. Through his Twitter handle Chin’ono frequently called out corruption by state officials, leading to the arrest and dismissal of the Minister of Health and Childcare Dr Obediah Moyo. Moyo was involved in a US$60-million Covid-19 government procurement scandal which sucked in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s sons Collins and Sean Mnangagwa.

Zimbabwe fires health minister for alleged embezzlement

Moyo and his co-accused, Drax International country representative Dilesh Nguwaya, are both out on Z$50,000 bail.

On 14 August, High Court judge Justice Helena Charewa granted an application filed by Chin’ono and Ngarivhume, allowing them to exercise their rights to doctors of choice and access to PPE. The two were also allowed to communicate with lawyers in private, but their access to food and clothes was subject to reasonable admin restrictions.

Compliance with the High Court order by state actors has been selective, with Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services (ZPCS) officials refusing Chin’ono special food from outside prison which he requires because of his medical condition. Chin’ono’s lawyers were advised that the prison administrative measures did not allow access to food that is not purchased online from “reputable sources”.

Chin’ono, an international award-winning journalist and Nieman fellow, appealed to the High Court on 28 August after his application for bail based on changed circumstances was denied by magistrate Ngoni Nduna.

Chin’ono’s lawyer Mtetwa believes that state actors are acting in defiance of court orders and the law and are out to persecute and frustrate her for representing the jailed journalist. On 25 August police manning the gates at Rotten Row Magistrate’s Court refused Mtetwa access to court premises unless she produced her licence to practice. The incident happened in full sight of the media and one police officer verbally insulted Mtetwa.

Chin’ono was arrested on 20 July and the State alleges that he “incited people to revolt against President Mnangagwa’s administration during some planned anti-govt protests called for on 31 July”. He is set to appear in court on Wednesday 2 September when a ruling on his appeal for bail, based on “changed circumstances”, will be handed down by Justice Tawanda Chitapi at the High Court. DM

Impala Car Rental has provided online tabloid ZimLive with a name, address and company name of the individual it says hired the Ford Ranger – but checks shown the information is likely fake.

Impala, which counts government departments as its biggest customers, holds vital evidence which could lead to the identification of the abductors, but the company has declined requests to share documents, insisting that it would only give this information to the police.

Over a dozen state agents driving in at least five vehicles took part in the abduction which was captured on CCTV. Muchehiwa, who suffered life-threatening kidney damage, was accused of involvement in the planning of anti-government demonstrations that were planned for July 31, but he has not been charged with a crime.

While Muchehiwa was dragged away and bundled into the Ranger to be tortured, his two cousins and an official from the opposition MDC Alliance who were travelling with him were taken to a police station – confirming that the abductors were known to the police.

Muchehiwa’s lawyer Nqobani Sithole said with police implicated in the abduction, they fear the investigation is going nowhere.

Impala owner Thompson Dondo said police were yet to contact them for an examination of the vehicle, or to retrieve documents connected to the vehicle’s owner.

The company’s customers must supply proof of residence, a mobile phone number, copy of driver’s licence and a copy of ID or passport which are then verified before they are allowed to drive away in Impala vehicles.

Dondo said all their vehicles had trackers to lessen the risk of theft, and they also had means to disable them remotely.

He said the individual who hired the vehicle was a regular customer who has used their vehicles for at least a year, including recently when he was involved in an accident while driving their Toyota Quest.

Dondo named the customer as Moses Chokure of 2447 Domboramwari in Epworth, a poor neighbourhood of Harare. He also said Chokure claimed to own a company called Snowball Enterprises.

When ZimLive requested the documents including the booking form the customer used when taking out the Ranger, Dondo baulked.

The tabloid sent teams to Epworth to find the given address but the numbers appeared to end with 2430. Locals said Epworth which developed out of informal settlements had carried out a rationalisation process which led to a re-numbering of stands making it difficult to find addresses.

We checked for Chokure’s name against the current voters’ roll, starting with the main polling stations at the two Domboramwari schools, but there was no-one with the surname Chokure.

In fact, there is no voter in Zimbabwe with the surname Chokure.

A search with the company registry on Monday also showed that there was no company called Snowball Enterprises, although there is one with the name Snowball Trading whose directors do not include a Moses Chokure.

When confronted with these findings, Dondo said: “Clearly, the act (supplying false information) was criminal.”

A social media campaign has been launched to boycott Impala until Dondo turns publicly over documents, and the tracking data which it is believed will show where the vehicle went, and provide possible locations for where Muchehiwa was tortured.

Bulawayo’s Criminal Investigations Department has changed the investigating officer in the case, according to Muchehiwa’s lawyer Sithole. The new lead investigator started work on Monday.

“We have no confidence that the police are up to the task. We have a situation where the perpetrators are the investigators and you don’t have to be a malcontent to conclude that this is an undesirable situation requiring an independent investigation,” Sithole said.

Tendai Biti, a lawyer and vice president of the opposition MDC Alliance called for a “judicial inquiry” into Muchehiwa’s abduction.

Muchehiwa’s family has asked lawyers to explore the possibility of private prosecutions should the state fail to bring charges against the agents, four of whom have been named online.

Post published in: Featured

Map of Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s births and deaths registry has not issued out birth certificates for children born after March 30 this year when the government imposed a lockdown on various activities to curb the spread of COVID-19.

According to Herald Newspaper, Only burial orders are being processed under the decongestion program.

The law stipulates that a child must be registered within 42 days of birth, but the Registrar-General’s Office has told parents not to worry as every unregistered birth would be tracked as soon as the circumstances allowed.

Acting Registrar-General Henry Machiri said no penalties would be levied for late registration since the prevailing law had been overtaken by COVID-19 prevention regulations passed by the government.

Although he could not provide numbers to give a full picture of the backlog, the department acknowledged the ballooning gap.

“These restrictions have created a backlog. All children born before the period will be registered after the containment measures have been lifted.

“Once the restrictions are lifted, the department will put in place measures to ensure that all births that occurred during the lockdown and all unregistered births born before the period are registered,” he said.

The department says it intends to put its decentralized structure to good use when the issuing of documents resumes.

On average, Zimbabwe records just over 400,000 births annually.

Post published in: Featured