Category: News Feeds

It’s long been a trend for Biglaw firms to reduce the amount of staff that is needed to support attorneys, but the economic upheaval of the coronavirus crisis seems to have supercharged the issue. This fall, many firms have restructured and rightsized their ranks, and the latest to slash its staff headcount is Hogan Lovells.

With $2,246,050,000 gross revenue in 2019, the firm came in 8th place on the most recent Am Law 100 ranking. But despite this huge sum, the firm is moving ahead with layoffs among its business services staff in the U.S. and Mexico, acknowledging that “the pandemic has played a role.” According to a memo from Richard Lorenzo, regional managing partner of the Americas, and Michael Davison, the firm’s deputy CEO, 43 employees will be impacted by the layoffs, “representing around 4% of Americas-based Business Services employees.” All those affected will receive severance packages that “recognize[] the realities of the current market.”

Lorenzo and Davison go on to note that there are “no plans for any further reductions at this point.” Best of luck to all those who are affected by the layoffs at Hogan Lovells.

(Flip to the next page to read the Hogan Lovells memo in full.)

If your firm or organization is slashing salaries, closing its doors, or reducing the ranks of its lawyers or staff, whether through open layoffs, stealth layoffs, or voluntary buyouts, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our vast network of tipsters is part of what makes Above the Law thrive. You can email us or text us (646-820-8477).

If you’d like to sign up for ATL’s Layoff Alerts, please scroll down and enter your email address in the box below this post. If you previously signed up for the layoff alerts, you don’t need to do anything. You’ll receive an email notification within minutes of each layoff, salary cut, or furlough announcement that we publish.

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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.

In 1947, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom led 20 other countries to negotiate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The agreement strove to promote economic stability and regulate international trade between member states but did not address labor standards. The GATT’s successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), also fails to establish labor standards while urging states to conduct trade with a view toward raising standards of living and ensuring full employment.

The WTO’s lack of definitive labor standards led to advocacy for a stronger link between trade and labor rights. As a result, a majority of free trade agreements (FTAs) now include labor provisions.

In 1992, the United States, Canada, and Mexico signed the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) as an accessory agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAALC provides for the freedom of association, the right to strike, protection of migrant workers, and several other labor rights. Following the NAALC, in 2000, the United States entered into an FTA with Jordan that included labor standards within the actual agreement. The United States has continued to sign FTAs that include labor provisions with countries across the world, such as Chile, Singapore, Australia, Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman.

In practice, however, the labor provisions perpetuate a disappointing narrative. In 2008, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and six Guatemalan worker organizations complained to the U.S. Office of Trade and Labor Affairs that the Guatemalan government violated its obligation under the Dominican-Republic Central American FTA (CAFTA). The workers filed the complaint under CAFTA’s Enforcement of Labor Laws provision. The complaint claimed that the Guatemalan government failed to ensure the right to freedom of association by barring labor inspectors from accessing factories and did not compensate unfair dismissals by enforcing domestic court judgments. According to the complaint, the Guatemalan government did not even investigate the murder of union leaders.

An arbitral panel considered the labor dispute and found that Guatemala did fail to enforce its labor laws. The unions were right! Guatemala violated its own labor laws. But the panel concluded that Guatemala did not gain a competitive advantage with its labor violations and, therefore, did not breach the FTA.

The dispute between the unions and Guatemala is just one example of inadequate labor provisions. To remedy FTAs we must put labor rights at the center and invite representatives from labor groups to join trade advisory committees. Does anyone believe that labor groups would have consented to a process that required a panel to first determine that a labor violation was “affecting trade or investment” in order to conclude that their had been a violation of the FTA?

In addition, as Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed, that we establish a set of standards that countries must meet as a precondition for any trade agreement with the United States, one of the standards would require every trading partner to recognize and enforce core labor rights of the International Labor Organization. Warren also argues that we should replace the weak process of urging governments to enforce labor provisions with independent commissions that monitor violations, respond to complaints, and investigate complaints.

The only way to advance labor rights in trade is for labor advocates to sit at the helm.

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Harvard Law School and Lateral Link have a special relationship. Our founder and CEO, Michael Allen, is a proud and active HLS alumnus. The head of our partner practice, Gloria Sandrino, also graduated from Harvard Law. We believe we have worked with more Harvard Law alumni as candidates than practically any other recruiting firm.

Why? One reason so many HLS alums work with us is that by doing so, they are effectively giving back to their alma mater.

In 2015, Mike Allen established the Lateral Link Scholarship Fund at Harvard Law School, with an initial commitment of $250,000. Whenever Lateral Link makes a placement of an HLS alum into a law firm or other legal employer, 10 percent of the placement fee goes into the Fund, which supports financial aid at the Law School.

The ties between HLS and Lateral Link have deepened further with our latest recruiter hire: Amanda Mindlin, HLS class of 2014. She works with lawyers, law firms, and in-house legal departments throughout the East Coast, helping candidates find great wonderful new opportunities and helping employers find superb new talent.

Earlier this week, I spoke by phone with Amanda about her legal career, her move into recruiting, and why she decided to join Lateral Link.

DL: Hello, Amanda, and welcome to Lateral Link! You never know where anyone is working from these days – where am I catching you right now?

AM: Right now, my husband and I are in Babcock Ranch, Florida – America’s first solar-powered town – but we’re moving to Sarasota soon.

DL: And you’re a longtime Floridian, as I recall?

AM: Yes. I grew up in Sarasota, went to the University of Florida for college, and am a lifelong Florida Gators fan. Although I studied abroad a few times, I only lived in another state while I was at HLS.

DL: What led you to trade the Florida sunshine for three years in cold and snowy Cambridge?

AM: I never planned on going to law school. I majored in political science, which I loved, and wanted to pursue a Ph.D. to become a professor. But around the time of my graduation in 2010, a number of my professors were getting laid off because of recession-related budget cuts, so they advised me against that.

My roommate at the time was preparing to take the LSAT, so I signed up for a prep class with her and ended up doing surprisingly well. With my grades and LSAT score, going to law school was the path of least resistance.

DL: How did you like law school?

AM: I loved it! It was so much fun. I took great classes and met so many incredibly interesting people. I sang opera growing up, so I participated in Parody, the law school musical, which was a blast. And I saw snow for the first time.

DL: Did you always plan on returning to Florida?

AM: Actually, I considered staying in Boston. I spent my 1L summer working in-house at MassMutual, which was great, and I spent my 2L summer in Boston at Bingham McCutchen.

Bingham was having issues at the time – it ultimately went under in 2014, the year I graduated – so early in my 3L year, I applied for federal clerkships.

Luckily, even though I applied late in the cycle, I got an interview with Judge Middlebrooks of the Southern District of Florida. The interview couldn’t have gone better – we spent much of it chatting about Gator football – and he made me an offer on the spot, which I immediately accepted.

It wound up being an amazing year. I couldn’t have clerked for a better judge. For law students interested in litigation, a federal clerkship is a wonderful experience if you can get it.

DL: And then how did you find your first job post-clerkship?

AM: I met my now-husband during my clerkship. He was based in Miami but was eager to get out and encouraged me to look for opportunities up in West Palm, where I was clerking. There are only so many firms in West Palm, so I interviewed with most of them, including Shutts & Bowen.

The firm has an excellent reputation, and my judge spoke very highly of them. They had a patent trial before my judge at the time (which I was recused from), and I was impressed with them in the courtroom.

I’d long been interested in pursuing IP litigation. Shutts was really the only major firm in West Palm with an IP group, so it was a pretty easy decision!

DL: How did you like your time at Shutts & Bowen?

AM: I couldn’t have been at a better firm. I loved my group – my husband and I still hang out with the partner I worked with most closely. And they really gave me the freedom to pursue the work I was most interested in.

My issue was that I’m a pretty social person, and I found the practice of law to be extremely isolating. Writing is probably my greatest strength, so I wound up doing a lot of brief writing – which by its nature involves spending a lot of time by yourself researching and writing.

It quickly became obvious that I needed a job with more social interaction. My sister-in-law, a successful executive recruiter, suggested I pursue legal recruiting, which sounded like it would be a perfect fit for me.

DL: And has it been?

AM: Absolutely! As a recruiter, I’m constantly talking to other people – associates, partners, recruiting coordinators, colleagues – and I’m constantly meeting interesting people from different backgrounds.

There’s so much diversity in the job; it doesn’t get boring. Every candidate is different, and every search is different. I work across different practice areas and cities – New York, Boston, D.C., Florida – so I’m constantly learning about different fields of law and legal markets.

DL: What do you enjoy the most about recruiting?

AM: The matchmaking aspect. I really get to know my candidates – to the point where sometimes I know what they’re looking for better than they do. For example, sometimes a candidate will tell me that they only want to apply to Biglaw firms, but I suggest that they consider this one boutique – and then they end up going to that boutique over several Biglaw firms, and loving it there.

My candidates have been very happy at the firms I’ve placed them at, which is extremely rewarding. Some of them were miserable and thinking about leaving law before we started working together, but as it turned out, they just weren’t at the right firms.

DL: You came to Lateral Link as an experienced recruiter, having worked at another legal search firm before this. What drew you to Lateral Link?

AM: First, Lateral Link’s excellent reputation within the legal profession. When I was thinking about switching recruiting firms, I spoke to many different people – contacts from my HLS network, lawyers and recruiting professionals at law firms, people at other recruiting firms – and everyone spoke highly of Lateral Link. I wanted to be at a firm with a strong reputation, which makes it easier to connect with candidates and with law firms.

Second, Lateral Link is a welcoming place to recruiters coming from other recruiting shops. I was struck by how many of my colleagues here used to work at other top search firms.

Finally, I was drawn to Lateral Link’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. So many of Lateral Link’s recruiters, especially its leaders, are women and/or diverse, and as a result, many of Lateral Link’s candidates are women and/or diverse as well. I’m very proud to be part of this team.

DL: And we are very proud to have you – a Harvard Law School graduate, former federal law clerk, and former associate at an Am Law 200 law firm – joining us. Welcome again to Lateral Link, Amanda!

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. This post is by David Lat, a managing director in the New York office, where he focuses on placing top associates, partners and partner groups into preeminent law firms around the country.

Prior to joining Lateral Link, David founded and served as managing editor of Above the Law. Prior to launching Above the Law, he worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. David is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.

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Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices worldwide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.

A lawsuit filed last week against the University of Southern California by a law school graduate, Courtney Whittier, alleges the school’s “replete with sexual misconduct,” and that there’s a “policy of indifference” to misconduct claims. The complaint alleges violations of the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

According to the complaint, Whittier alleges she attended a school-sanctioned event at a bar in December of 2017, after which she was raped by a fellow USC student. As reported by the ABA Journal, after Whittier reported the rape to the dean, she alleges the school failed to properly handle the claim:

Whittier alleges that the school’s Title IX coordinator pressured her not to initiate a Title IX investigation. When the school did conduct an investigation, it violated its own policies by allowing the alleged perpetrator to review Whittier’s evidence before submitting his own evidence, Whittier claims. The alleged perpetrator was also allowed to submit additional evidence that was never revealed to Whittier, the suit says.

“Most egregiously,” the suit says, “USC predetermined the outcome of plaintiff’s complaint in favor of perpetrator before finishing its investigation.” The suit cites an alleged statement by the Title IX coordinator that she would find for Whittier “over [her] dead body.”

According to the complaint, Whittier’s alleged attacker was represented in the Title IX proceedings by a lawyer who had previously sued the school on behalf other students accused of sexual misconduct. Whittier says this led the school to find in favor of her alleged rapist.

In the Title IX investigation, Whittier’s case was handled by an “Investigator Doe.” Doe filed a lawsuit against USC in July 2020 also alleging violations of Title IX. Whittier says this is when she became aware of the scope of the problem at USC:

Investigator Doe said in the suit they had no training in Title IX investigations, which was a violation of a prior consent decree between USC and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, according to Whittier. The agreement was reached after the office concluded that the school violated Title IX in the way that it responded to sexual misconduct reports, Whittier said.

Investigator Doe alleged that they were removed from Whittier’s investigation after opposing a decision to allow the alleged perpetrator to review evidence before he submitted evidence, a violation of USC policy, Whittier alleged.

USC said of the complaint, “We are reviewing the lawsuit in detail.”

Read the full complaint below.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

This is a pretty screwy set of allegations.

Disney’s former CFO Lawrence Rutkowski claims in a housing court affidavit that Willkie Farr partner A. Mark Getachew is squatting in Rutkowski’s mansion. Housing court in Connecticut is different than your local housing court.

Apparently, Rutkowski rented a Connecticut mansion to Getachew, but now Getachew isn’t paying rent and with the pandemic eviction ban in place, Rutkowski has no recourse.

“It is clear that they have no intention of paying rent — now or in the future because they know Governor [Ned] Lamont keeps extending the ‘no-eviction’ moratorium.”

Running this through the affidavit-to-English translator, Rutkowski’s saying “it is clear that they seem to expect me to comply with state law even though it’s not convenient for me,” which is not the most compelling argument out there. Obviously the eviction moratorium is intended to help families who can’t make ends meet in this crisis and not, say, Biglaw partners, but that’s where the next wrinkle comes in.

Because according to court filings, Getachew isn’t stiffing Rutkowski on rent for the fun of it. Getachew actually brought the housing court case in the first place after discovering that Rutkowski’s house required a number of repairs that Rutkowski hasn’t reimbursed. Getachew claims to be withholding rent to cover the cost of the repairs.

But the Getachews claim that Rutkowski lied when he said the pool, hot tub and waterfall “were in good working condition,” with their complaint alleging that Rutkowski knew there were problems with the pool before signing the lease.

The Getachews say the pool, air conditioning system and other aspects of the house were plagued with problems that forced them to shell out their own money for repairs in just their first three months there.

It’s hard to get teary for someone whose complaint is a malfunctioning waterfall, but if you’re paying $11K/month, you have a right to expect things to work. Rutkowski claims everything could be fixed for about $3,000, yet Getachew racked up over $46,356.22 in repairs. The New York Post echoes the Rutkowski affidavit’s framing of this as a ridiculous sum, but if a high-end pool has broken pipes underground, it gets expensive pretty quickly. Even if it’s not $46K, it’s definitely more than $3,000. Hell, $3,000 won’t even pay for a new winter cover for a pool.

In any event, you never expected to see Biglaw, squatting, and Disney all in the same headline, but it’s 2020 and here we are.

Ex-Disney CFO claims couple squatting in his $2.2M Connecticut mansion [New York Post]

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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.

Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played the titular character in Black Panther died in August at the age of 43. He succumbed to colon cancer, having been diagnosed on 2016. Boseman, like many, died intestate, that is, without a last will and testament.

Anyone over 18 needs a last will and testament regardless of their net worth, familial structure, or liabilities. For many, the first time they hire an attorney is to seek estate planning documents like a last will and testament, power of attorney or healthcare proxy. It is surprising when celebrities such as actors and singers, individuals who are surrounded by lawyers and who often have accumulated a lot of wealth, do not have these necessary documents. But then again, procrastination and fear know no boundaries, just as tragedy strikes all walks of life.

Boseman’s wife, Simone Ledward, has petitioned the California courts to be named the administrator of her husband’s estate. Boseman and Ledward, who had dated for five years, married in early 2020. The marriage gives Ledward the standing to petition the court for control of the estate, and it also positions her as the estate’s sole beneficiary as Boseman does not have any children.

For those with illnesses, particularly terminal conditions, marriage can sometimes be a tool to address estate issues. Marrying an individual gives that person standing to make healthcare decisions during one’s lifetime and in certain circumstances, to petition for control of one’s estate if there is no will. If a spouse is excluded from a last will and testament, that spouse has standing to object to the last will as the surviving spouse. Marriages prior to death are sometimes not even known to the extended family and more distant relatives who may question the validity upon discovery. The existence of a spouse may displace distributions to surviving parents or more remote relatives. A spouse will also diminish the children’s share of an estate, an issue that arises sometimes with second marriages.

In Boseman’s case, although he does not have children, he does have two surviving parents. Had he died without a last will and testament prior to his marriage, his parents would inherit his estate. Boseman’s estate is valued at almost $1 million, but this just refers to the probate estate, meaning assets without a joint owner or named beneficiary. Additionally, monies held in trust pass pursuant to the terms of the trust agreement.

Fighting a progressing disease is arduous from both a physical and emotional perspective. Many ill clients are unable or unwilling to address the ideas required to implement an estate plan and, as such, wills and trusts never get signed. This results in additional administrative tasks, time, and resources. It is therefore imperative that we address the need for these important documents when we are healthy and when there are no looming emergencies.

Besides Black Panther, Boseman also played the title role in Marshall, the biopic about the first African-American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Justice Marshall once famously said, “We cannot play ostrich.” His wise words may just as well be applied to each of our realities in knowing that we must plan for incapacity and death. We cannot ignore or hide from the inevitable. In 42, Boseman played baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who stated, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” As such, leaving an organized estate plan that expresses one’s wishes is the greatest legacy one can leave for loved ones.

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Cori A. Robinson is a solo practitioner having founded Cori A. Robinson PLLC, a New York and New Jersey law firm, in 2017. For more than a decade Cori has focused her law practice on trusts and estates and elder law including estate and Medicaid planning, probate and administration, estate litigation, and guardianships. She can be reached at cori@robinsonestatelaw.com.

As was expected following Ajit Pai’s announcement that the FCC would be moving forward with the rulemaking process to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Act in response to a petition from NTIA — instigated by the President’s unconstitutional executive order, which came about because Twitter suggested people research the facts,following Trump tweeting blatant disinformation regarding elections and ballots — the FCC’s General Counsel Tom Johnson has released the FCC’s legal explanation for how it could possibly have authority here.

The shorter answer is that it has no authority here. It hasn’t had authority over websites on the internet ever. Indeed, when the Cox/Wyden bill that became 230 was being debated in Congress, they made it quite clear in floor speeches that the intent of their bill was to prevent the FCC from having any authority over websites. That was the point. As Cox said during a floor speech:

Some have suggested, Mr. Chairman, that we take the Federal Communications Commission and turn it into the ‘Federal Computer Commission’ — that we hire even more bureaucrats and more regulators who will attempt, either civilly or criminally, to punish people by catching them in the act of putting something into cyberspace. Frankly, there is just too much going on on the Internet for that to be effective….

[This bill] will establish as the policy of the United States that we do not wish to have content regulation by the Federal Government of what is on the Internet —that we do not wish to have a ‘Federal Computer Commission’ with an army of bureaucrats regulating the Internet….

And no one — least of all the FCC — has ever argued otherwise.

In fact, throughout the various net neutrality fights, many at the FCC including the majority in the current FCC have argued — vehemently, often in court and under oath — that the FCC has no authority whatsoever in this area. Here’s FCC chair Ajit Pai just two years ago, as highlighted by the Washington Post:

Pai’s announcement broke from his past public comments on the issue, according to experts. Asked at an August 2018 event about the FCC’s ability to police social media, for example, the chairman stressed that the agency “does not regulate them” and does not “have the authority under the laws that have been passed by Congress and the Constitution, of course, under the First Amendment.”

“So from that perspective, they are not going to be regulated in terms of free speech,” Pai continued, stressing that these tech companies should instead commit to transparency. He said consumers and competition otherwise would correct any ills: “If they want to focus on cats to the exclusion of dogs, ultimately, it’s a market that’s going to capitalize. There are a lot of dog owners out there who say it’s a step too far. . . and they’ll move to some other platform.”

“The government doesn’t have a role in solving every single ill that we identify on these platforms,” Pai said.

Well, that’s embarassing.

But even more embarrassing and potentially legally messy, is the fact that this very same FCC has been arguing in court pretty much the exact opposite of what they’re now arguing here. This is the key part:

To understand why the Commission has authority to interpret Section 230, it helps to understand how that section became part of the Communications Act. In 1934, Congress adopted the Communications Act in its original form, establishing the FCC as an independent federal agency charged with regulating interstate and international communications. Four years later, Congress added Section 201(b), which delegated to the Commission the power to “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out the provisions of this Act.”

Since then, the most consequential set of amendments to the Communications Act arrived in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which updated the Act for the then-nascent Internet age. Section 1(b) of that Act made clear that, except where otherwise expressly provided, each of the 1996 Act’s provisions were to be inserted into the Communications Act of 1934.

Title V of the 1996 Act was named the “Communications Decency Act of 1996.” Among other provisions, this Title included Section 509, named “Online family empowerment.” Consistent with Section 1(b), Congress instructed in Section 509 that “Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 . . . is amended by adding at the end the following new section: Section 230.” Thus, Section 230 was born and became part of the Communications Act of 1934.

Basically, they’re saying that they have the authority to interpret CDA 230 under Section 201(b) of the Communications Act. This is (admittedly) somewhat broad power granted to the FCC to set regulations — but for common carriers as classified under Title II. At least that’s how it’s always been interpreted. That was a key part of the Net Neutrality fight. Would the FCC classify broadband internet access as such a common carrier under Title II, and if they did, then they could put in place a few simple rules to guarantee that these common carrier internet access providers couldn’t block or favor certain services.

Here, the FCC literally skips all of that and just acts like it’s obvious and not even in question that every website is somehow a Title II service. This is… insane? It also goes against everything that this very same FCC said in Ajit Pai’s “Restoring Internet Freedom Order” (RIFO) that took away Tom Wheeler’s Title II classification for broadband access and the associated net neutrality rules. From Pai’s own order:

On this record, claims of authority to adopt conduct rules governing ISPs that also offer telecommunications services have many shortcomings. The Open Internet Order contended that ISPs that also offer telecommunications services might engage in network management practices or prioritization that reduces competition for their voice services, arguably implicating section 201(b)’s prohibition on unjust or unreasonable rates or practices in the case of common carrier voice services and/or section 251(a)(1)’s interconnection requirements for common carriers. The Open Internet Order never squares these legal theories with the statutory prohibition on treating telecommunications carriers as common carriers when they are not engaged in the provision of telecommunications service or with the similar restriction on common carrier treatment of private mobile services.

In other words, in the net neutrality scenario, the FCC is intoning, seriously, that it has no authority to use 201(b) in cases in which the broadband providers are not providing common carrier telecommunications services.

Yet, now, this very same FCC is claiming its clear that you can use 201(b) on non-common carrier, non-telecommunications-providing, websites?

Incredibly, in the FCC’s justification, they claim that the law doesn’t require at all what they had claimed it required before as a justification for getting rid of net neutrality:

They note that most of Section 201(b) deals with rules that apply to common carriers and argue that Congress did not intend to treat social media companies and other covered websites as common carriers. But the general grant of rulemaking authority at the end of Section 201(b) contains no reference to common carriers; it simply empowers the Commission to make rules that are “necessary in the public interest to carry out the provisions of this Act,” without qualification. For this reason, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Alliance for Community Media v. FCC, 529 F.3d 763 (6th Cir. 2008), held that Section 201(b) gave the Commission authority to interpret ambiguous provisions in the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992. Notably, that Act by its terms applies to cable operators, not common carriers. The Court reasoned, relying on Iowa Utilities Board, that it was sufficient that the 1992 law amended the Communications Act and incorporated the relevant provisions therein. The same reasoning applies to Section 230.

Got that? Even though we said before that it required telecommunications services from a common carrier, we can ignore that now.

It gets even worse. In Pai’s RIFO, they even point to Section 230 as evidence of why the internet is an information service over which they have no authority, and not a telecommunications service.

We also find that other provisions of the Act support our conclusion that broadband Internet access service is best classified as an information service.219 For instance, Congress codified its view in section 230(b)(2) of the Act, stating that it is the policy of the United States “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.” This statement confirms that the free market approach that flows from classification as an information service is consistent with Congress’s intent. In contrast, we find it hard to reconcile this statement in section 230(b)(2) with a conclusion that Congress intended the Commission to subject broadband Internet access service to common carrier regulation under Title II.

And yet, now they suddenly think that they can regulate the internet? Yup. Because they think the public are idiots.

Nor does it matter that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Comcast v. FCC, 600 F.3d 642 (D.C. Cir. 2010), and the FCC itself in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, agreed that Section 230(b) was merely a statement of policy and not an affirmative source of authority. The Commission need not rely on Section 230(b) as the source of its authority in this contemplated rulemaking. Instead, the Commission can comfortably use Section 201(b) to resolve ambiguities in the text of Section 230(c)

Basically, the FCC under Pai is now turning around everything he said to kill net neutrality (even though in that case there was a strong argument that broadband is a traditional common carrier telecommunications service), and instead saying that of course the FCC gets to regulate speech on websites.

Or, as Adam Thierer noted, night is day with this new FCC justification:

It’s Opposite Day At The FCC: Rejects All Its Own Legal Arguments Against Net Neutrality To Claim It Can Be The Internet Speech Police

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Congress, With Nothing Important On Its Hands, Seeks To Rush Through Nomination Of Anti-230 FCC Commissioner
Appeals Court Reinstates Injunction Blocking Federal Agents From Assaulting Portland Journalists
Cuomo’s NY Broadband Pledge Under Audit After Coming Up Short

For the first time in a decade, antivirus software pioneer McAfee Corp. will be a publicly-traded company again sometime today. Yesterday, its shares priced at $20 apiece, at the low end of its projected range.

The company and some of its investors sold 37 million shares for $20 apiece Wednesday, according to a statement. McAfee had marketed 31 million shares for $19 to $22, while its shareholders offered 6 million shares.

We’re sure there are good, fundamental reasons for this: While McAfee posted a profit for the first half of the year as compared to a $146 million loss in the first half of last year, its net income was just $31 million over that period on $1.4 billion in revenue, the latter number itself up a smidge from the year-earlier period. Still, we’re sure McAfee would have preferred not to go public while its namesake—who, in fairness, has had nothing to do with the company in more than 25 years—sits in a Spanish jail cell awaiting extradition to the U.S. on charges of tax evasion vis-à-vis his cryptocurrency ventures, especially since such things tend to bring back to the surface all sorts of other unsavory things.

* A lawyer for Edward Snowden claims the whistleblower has received permanent residency from Russia. Guess he’ll be going without Hot Pockets for a while longer… [New York Daily News]

* A judge has thrown out the Trump Campaign’s lawsuit against New Jersey’s mail-in-voting plans. [Politico]

* A Pennsylvania lawyer, who was disbarred in 2000 for substance abuse issues and criminal convictions, was denied reinstatement, even though he completed rehabilitation. [Bloomberg Law]

* President Trump has seemingly selected his pick to replace Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the Seventh Circuit. [Chicago Tribune]

* Walmart has sued the federal government in anticipation of being litigated against for opioid claims. [Wall Street Journal]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.