Category: News Feeds

In February 2020, Glorious All Time Functions started developing and constructing a wedding venue at Hillside Park wetland in Harare’s Hillside suburb despite being barred from doing so by High Court Judge Justice Owen Tagu who, on 22 May 2019, prohibited the property developer from undertaking such work.

This compelled Hillside Park Association, represented by Memory Mafo, Paidamoyo Saurombe and Fiona Iliff of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), to file an urgent chamber application for execution of Justice Tagu’s judgment, to suspend all development on the wetland pending the determination of an appeal filed in the Supreme Court by Glorious All Time Functions challenging the High Court’s order.

In terms of the order of Justice Tagu, which is now in effect in terms of the order of Justice Muremba of Tuesday 10 March 2020, the planned development on the Hillside Wetland has been ruled unlawful and Glorious All Time Functions have been ordered to permanently cease all construction work related to the development and remove all machinery on site.

The Hillside suburb wetland is the latest to be saved by ZLHR after the human rights organisation has intervened on several occasions to prevent unlawful developments on wetlands, which are important ecosystems and a critical source of water for City of Harare. 

Post published in: Featured

Sometimes a good legal strategy is a lousy publicity strategy. Case in point, the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF), which is defending itself in a pay discrimination suit by several popular female players by pointing out that they are smaller and slower than the male players, and thus should be paid less for winning than the men are paid when they lose.

“Plaintiffs ask the Court to conclude that the ability required of an WNT player is equal to the ability required of an MNT player, as a relative matter, by ignoring the materially higher level of speed and strength required to perform the job of an MNT player,” argues the USSF in its latest motion. And while they may have a valid point about the Men’s National Team (MNT) and Women’s National Team (WNT) each negotiating separate contracts covering their different schedules and venues, saying that the women are intrinsically inferior makes USSF sound like … an asshole.

As does mentioning that, “Plaintiff Alex Morgan is receiving 75% of her $100,000 annual salary even though she cannot play because she is pregnant.” Although it does, in some sense, bolster the argument that the contracts are different, not because of sexism by USSF, but because the women chose to give each player a decent base salary, rather than compensating individual players based on performance like the men.

USSF has similarly pointed to the $34 million prize differential between the Women’s and Men’s World Cups, as if FIFA could justify an American employer paying women less than men. Here’s USSF President Carlos Cordiero doing just that in an open letter Saturday, on the eve of the SheBelieves Cup game between the USWNT and Spain. Timing is everything!

“I guess if that’s how you want to celebrate International Women’s Day and show support for, not only your players, but future players and girls all over the place, that’s one way to do it,” Megan Rapinoe told The Athletic.

In its most recent motion, in addition to taking multiple swipes at the women’s game, USSF insists that the men play at a higher level, because “[t]here is a significantly deeper pool of competition in men’s international soccer than there is in women’s international soccer.” Simultaneously, USSF argues that the men have a harder job because men’s soccer fans are all hooligans, and, even at home games, the stands are filled with supporters of their Central American opponents.

Opposing fan hostility encountered in these MNT road environments, especially in Mexico and Central America, is unmatched by anything the WNT must face while trying to qualify for an important tournament. (2nd King Dec. ¶ 16.) Even the hostility of fans at home crowds for the MNT in some friendlies can be unlike anything the WNT faces.

This might possibly have something to do with the fact the WNT has won four of the past eight Women’s World Cups, including the most recent rounds in 2015 and 2019. The men’s team is undoubtedly stronger and faster, but they might find more of their own fans in the stands if they won more.

Indeed, there may be strong legal arguments that the women’s and men’s contracts are not comparable for reasons having nothing to do with sexism. But arguing that the women play more games, but carry less “responsibility” because the prize money is lower and their fans don’t throw beer bottles on the field certainly gives the impression the USSF is bunch of sexist jerks.

Alex Morgan v. USSF, Inc. [Defendant’s Memorandum of Points and Authorities, Case 2:19-cv-01717-RGK (C.D. Cal., March 9, 2020)]
US Soccer Doesn’t Want To Give The Women’s Team Equal Pay Because The Men Have “More Responsibility” [BuzzFeed]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

I dithered about what to write this week. I wasn’t going to write about COVID-19. I also wasn’t going to write about the turmoil in the financial markets, only to say that my 401(k) is now a 201(k) and I share everyone’s pain.

Mark Herrmann’s most recent post about how to succeed as a lawyer by not being a damn fool was music to my ears as a former in-house counsel. A-ha! Here is a topic that, no matter how many times in-house counsel tries to tell outside counsel about the importance of deadlines, they almost always fall on deaf ears. (Of course, you don’t mean me, do you?) Why is that?

Contrary to public (e.g. nonlawyer) opinion, lawyers are not paid by the word. If that’s the case, then why is it so hard for lawyers to write concisely and simply? Why is it so hard for outside counsel to follow the directions of in-house counsel and provide her with what she needs and not a treatise? The client hollers at the cost of getting something that is unusable and doesn’t answer the client’s questions. I know why. Being easily understandable would force the outside counsel to opine. We pay for your opinion.

Have you ever considered that the failure to follow the directions of in-house counsel makes her look bad and thus you as well? Think about that before you write a screed that is too long and not read. And don’t forget to consider how your precious billable time is going to get whacked because the pleading or agreement was too long, not read, and thus, essentially useless.

Some outside counsel seem to think that in-house lawyers have nothing to do but wait for your draft. Au contraire. We are useful, not decorative. While you polish that draft to a sparkling shine, inside counsel is putting out fires, practicing preventive law, and cutting outside fees, so that the client doesn’t face outrageous bills. When we say we want a draft by X date and time, that’s not a suggestion. That’s a deadline so that the draft can be reviewed internally, commented upon, and returned in a timely fashion.

Deadlines are imperative in litigation filings as well. If the court won’t accept a late-filed document, why should in-house counsel be expected to drop everything to review a draft of a summary judgment motion that is due that very afternoon? Really, you’re kidding, right? And people talk about stress on outside lawyers, imagine the stress of in-house lawyers who are juggling caseloads that are way beyond the comprehension of mere mortal outside lawyers. How can outside counsel afford to be so cavalier about these kinds of deadlines? You tell me.

I have found that it’s no different as a mediator asking lawyers to file briefs so that I have time to read them (always a good idea before the mediation) and understand them, writing down questions for points that I don’t understand. I ask for briefs at least a few days in advance and then, hopefully, clear up my confusion in a premediation phone call.

May I tell you how many times I have not received briefs until midnight of the day before the mediation? Am I allowed to get any sleep? Do I read briefs while on the toilet? Deadlines seem to be flexible to everyone but me.

Not only does this practice show an appalling lack of courtesy for the mediator’s time, especially if the mediator is doing this pro bono, it also displays an appalling lack of attention management. You can’t just attach as exhibits voluminous motions and discovery responses and submit them all by 11:59 p.m. the day before the mediation and expect the mediator to be fully conversant by 9 a.m. the next day. How do you spell laziness?

(I know, I know, there are in-house counsel who don’t assign work to outside counsel on a timely basis and set unrealistic, unworkable deadlines. A topic for another column. Remind me.)

In an article in the New York Times last year, Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, says that productivity is not an issue of time management, but rather the issue is attention management. I think he’s right.  How many times have we been told to “pay attention,” both as kids and adults? It’s human nature to want to pay attention to what interests us, but we don’t always get to do that.

Grant defines attention management as “prioritizing the people and the projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes.” It’s the “art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places and at the right moments.” Easier said than done when the project that is due is drudgery, such as responding to discovery, filing a motion to compel, or similar root canal-like tasks. But they must be done and on time, so guess who gets the least amount of time to review and comment? Good guess.

We need it when we need it. Few in-house counsel live to torture outside counsel; okay, maybe a few do. Apologies for tardiness by outside counsel are useless. We lawyers often wait until the last minute to submit whatever it may be because the particular project is so tedious that you want to stick a fork in it.

However, you don’t get brownie points for being verbose or late. You don’t get brownie points for paying attention to what needs to be done and when it’s due, in other words, for simply doing your job.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

We’ve all had a lot of fun with the 1MDB scandal, excluding, of course, everyone at Goldman Sachs (most especially 17 current and former executives) and Deutsche Bank (if the latter have even noticed another scandal strewn in with everything else). I mean, it gave us $13 million Vegas parties with Leonardo DiCaprio, the saga of Mr. Kimora Lee Simmons (and his part-time party planning, bigamy and horndogging), a few million dollars worth of diamonds on the person of the wife of the former prime minister of Malaysia, and a $600 million job. (It also gave us “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but nothing’s perfect.)

Unless you have been living in a well-ventilated cave with no internet, you have heard about novel coronavirus or COVID-19. While coronaviruses have been around for a long time, this newly discovered version has no cure and can be fatal, particularly to the elderly and those with weakened immune systems. While some may find this analogous to the flu, this novel virus is serious enough for some cities and even a country to quarantine their entire population in order to try to control the spread.

It has caused a global panic. While I have tried to stay calm, educate myself, and even joke about the virus, I must admit that it is starting to concern me.

I am not scared of the virus itself. I have done my best to minimize the chances of exposing myself to the virus. That means spending more time working from home. I have encouraged clients to send paperwork via email and the cloud. For those who prefer the old ways, I accept regular mail and offer to reimburse them for postage. Since this is tax season, I and other tax professionals have voluntarily self-quarantined ourselves for the next month and a half.

Despite the precautions, I have accepted that I will eventually be infected. This is not because I have eaten at four Chinese and two Korean restaurants in the last week and a half. It is not because I didn’t purchase 36 rolls of toilet paper. Most likely it will simply be because I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I might be strolling at an empty park and Patient Zero just happens to jog past me.

If I do get infected, I take solace knowing that statistically, I am likely to recover. But for the sake of others, I have made plans in case I need to quarantine myself. This mostly involves renewing my Playstation Plus and Disney+ subscriptions.

So what scares me about the coronavirus? The chaos it has caused.

First, it has turned social media into a trainwreck. People are posting pictures and videos of the long lines at Costco. Or the empty shelves where bottled water and toilet paper used to be. Or the rushes to stores that are reminiscent of midnight on Black Friday. Or you might see crowded emergency rooms where people are treated by people in full protective gear. Or stressed out health care workers complaining about the lack of resources and giving ominous warnings. All of this might give some the impression that the rapture is upon us. I get that most people are posting these things with good intentions, but it might not have the effect they desired.

Also, we are getting conflicting opinions, even from health care professionals. Some are saying we should shut down everything and quarantine everyone as they did in Wuhan and Italy. Others are saying to simply wash your hands for twenty seconds, stay home if you feel sick and be careful of your surroundings. I am willing to blow off tirades from internet armchair immunologists, but when credentialed, impartial (hopefully) professionals give differing opinions, it is hard to determine who is credible.

Finally, the timing of this outbreak couldn’t have been worse. As this is a presidential election year, the media has been sensationalizing information and have entertained farfetched accusations and conspiracy theories. Media personalities are saying and doing whatever they have to do to ensure that their candidate or political party controls the government. For the good of the country, of course.

As lawyers, we are trained to advocate for our clients. And while I won’t get into details, I am sure some of us are using the coronavirus to our advantage.

But we are also trained to search for the truth, even if we are not medical professionals. This means detecting bias and speculation, qualifying experts before allowing them to give their opinion, and generally rejecting hearsay.

My hope is that we as lawyers will calm the panic and help people make educated choices by calling out the liars, profiteers, and opportunists, all of whom are taking advantage of this panic for their own personal gain. In these divisive times, we might not change many peoples’ minds, but it is worth a shot. And we should do our best to keep politics out of this. Lives are at stake. There will be grave consequences for any politician who maliciously tries to prevent the public from getting the help they need.

The coronavirus is not only becoming a pandemic, but also a “panicdemic” which is as scary as the virus itself. While the pictures of the long lines at Costco might be informative and even funny, they can unintentionally keep the panic going. To this day, I am still not clear how toilet paper became the new hot commodity item. While lawyers are not medical professionals, I am hoping that we can help those in our sphere of influence see through the lies and sensationalism. We will still debate on what is the proper response to the coronavirus, but as long as the smoke and mirrors are out of the discussion, I can feel less scared about the future.

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Steven Chung is a tax attorney in Los Angeles, California. He helps people with basic tax planning and resolve tax disputes. He is also sympathetic to people with large student loans. He can be reached via email at sachimalbe@excite.com. Or you can connect with him on Twitter (@stevenchung) and connect with him on LinkedIn.

From donor-conceived persons finding out that their mothers’ doctor is their biological father to a sperm bank threatening a client with legal action for using 23andMe and stumbling upon the sperm donor’s mother, I thought I had written about it all. But the latest sperm donation-related lawsuit, filed December 2019 in the United States District Court, Central District of California, is a new level of unexpectedness.

According to the complaint, Plaintiff Bryce Branzell considered becoming a sperm donor in 2008. He provided a sperm sample that was to be used for testing to determine if he would qualify to be a donor. However, immediately after providing his sample, and before even leaving the premises of the sperm bank, he changed his mind. He decided he was not comfortable having children biologically related to him out in the world that he would not know. He let the sperm bank know about his change of heart and was informed that they would not even run testing on his sample, but would destroy it. Simple enough.

Around that same time, a woman named in the complaint as “C.C.” purchased sperm from the same sperm bank Branzell had visited. C.C. looked through profiles and carefully selected a donor, prioritizing that the donor must have agreed to be “open,” meaning that the donor agreed to be identified to any resulting offspring upon turning 18 years of age. C.C. failed to conceive with her first selected donor, but selected a second and became pregnant. Yay!

Donor Siblings = Diblings. In the meantime, the sperm bank gave access to their clients, including C.C., to a website that allowed clients to connect with others that had used the same donor. C.C. connected with another woman, L.M., who conceived with the same donor. C.C. gave birth in July 2009 and L.M. gave birth the following month. The two became fast friends. And, as the complaint explains, “the mothers informed both children that they were conceived with the same donor’s genes, and that the children were half-siblings as a result. This familial relationship was important to both mothers, and to their children.” Diblings! (A now-common term for donor-related siblings.)

Enter The DNA Test. Of course, like so many of these case, surprising facts came to light after the mothers decided to use home DNA kits to learn more about their sons’ ancestry. It turns out, their sons were not, after all, related to each other. L.M.’s son was, as expected, related to the open-ID donor selected by both women. C.C.’s child, however, was not. Instead, her son (T.C.) was genetically related to Branzell — remember him, the gentleman at the beginning of the article who was told his one sample for testing would be destroyed?

C.C. discovered the nongenetic relationship to L.M.’s child right away, the rest of the pieces took a bit of luck. Through the coincidence of Branzell’s half-sister taking a DNA test with the same company, Ancestry.com — and seeing C.C.’s child show up on the platform, the connection was discovered. Branzell, in the meantime, was married with young kids, and was definitely not expecting a DNA test to show that there was a child out there related to him, that he did not know. You know, specifically, what he had feared and why he had changed his mind about being a donor.

Apparently, somehow, instead of destroying Branzell’s sample as the sperm bank said they would, they instead gave it (or at least a part of it?) to C.C. in place of the sample of the donor she had carefully chosen. The complaint astutely notes, “It is hard to imagine the sequence of events required to make an error like this.”

Branzell has brought suit against the sperm bank. Of course, most assisted reproductive technology-related cases have been like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Without specific law, courts have struggled with the various causes of action not fitting well and have especially had difficulties determining damages. How does a court value the harm done in this scenario?

The Causes Of Action. Which did they choose here? At the time of the amended complaint on February 28, 2020, Branzell had brought claims based on the following eleven causes of action:

• negligence
• violation of California’s constitutional right to privacy
• invasion of privacy-intrusion into private affairs
• trespass to personal property
• conversion
• breach of fiduciary duty
• intentional infliction of emotional distress
• negligent infliction of emotional distress
• violation of California Business and Professions Code section 17200 et seq. (prohibits unlawful, unfair, and/or fraudulent business acts or practices)
• violation of California Business and Professions Code section 17500 et seq. (prohibits any unfair, deceptive, untrue, or misleading advertising)
• fraud

I had a chance to speak with one of plaintiff’s counsel about the case. Interestingly, Marcus Spagnoletti of the Spagnoletti Law Firm did not express any ill-will toward the “industry.” Instead, he took the time to stop smoking a cigarette in his headshot to express a deep appreciation for assisted reproductive technology and, specifically, sperm banks. As a father himself, he believes that sperm banks provide a valuable service, allowing hopeful parents-to-be to have the opportunity to experience parenthood.

However, Spagnoletti explained that his client, a former Marine with a wife and young kids, felt a duty to bring this suit in order to protect others from having this happen to them. Spagnoletti sees his role as fourth or fifth down the line of protections to stop something like this from happening. There should have been something else — protocols, regulation, etc., that prevented this. Since those failed, he believes it is necessary to bring a lawsuit to find justice for his client and stop others from being placed in this emotionally wrought position.

Given the struggles courts have had in this area — but also the clear need for accountability for industry players and justice for those harmed — we will be following this case with interest.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.

Fox News loves putting Alan Dershowitz on TV so they can trumpet that he’s a “Democrat” willing to support Donald Trump and complain about Black Lives Matter. Without his purported Democratic affiliation, Dershowitz is another generic MAGAhead, a distinction that could force Dershowitz to face the worst fate imaginable: not being on TV.

But Dershowitz is also cast as a Johnny-come-lately to the right-wing ecosphere which keeps him just alienated enough from his new audience. That appears to be a bit of a problem for him, so, weary of his brand as a Democrat in name only, Dershowitz is now going all Endgame to repair the timeline of his own life so he can be his current flavor of quasi-Republican all along. Just one who was viciously tricked by the Democrats.

“I think President Obama, for whom I voted twice, and would now reconsider my second vote for him, he conned me,” Dershowitz stated, according to TheBlaze “He called me into the Oval Office and he said ‘I have Israel’s back’ and I didn’t realize what he meant is to put a target on it and stab them.”

The crux of Dershowitz’s complaint was a UN resolution that the U.S. didn’t even vote for — but that the U.S. didn’t veto over unanimous 14-0 passage. The resolution scolded the Netanyahu government over its support for settlements in disputed territory and, in fairness, called out Palestinians for contributing to turmoil in the area. Since the resolution had all the influence of a frowny face note and came out at the exact same time that the Obama administration handed Israel a military aid package that Netanyahu even called “historic” only the most hyperbolic observers thought this resolution amounted to some kind of betrayal.

Dershowitz’s argument for why “handing a country tons of weapons” is less important to a nation’s security than “allowing a bunch of people to toothlessly complain” is his belief that the symbolic move “legitimized” criticism of Israel among American liberals. Dershowitz equates this kind of criticism to anti-Semitism given the conflation many make between criticizing contemporary Israeli government policy with the question of whether or not Israel has a right to exist at all. These are obviously severable ideas, but there’s an argument to be had that the former is deployed to Trojan Horse in the latter.

However, if there’s any trope out there Trojan Horsing anti-Semitism into mainstream political discourse, it’s probably this one that Dershowitz steps seamlessly into:

“I have some information as well about the Obama administration — which will be disclosed in a lawsuit at some point, but I’m not prepared to disclose it now — about how President Obama personally asked the FBI to investigate somebody on behalf of George Soros, who was a close ally of his,” Dershowitz affirmed.

It’s possible to think George Soros is a globalist banker quietly using his influence over a black guy to get the deep state to spy on people in a way that has nothing to do with his being Jewish but it’s definitely a popular idea among the anti-Semitic corners of the internet. It seems like the sort of thing someone wouldn’t want to “legitimize” by trumpeting it on a broadcast when you’re admittedly not ready to go to court with it. Feels a bit like throwing gasoline on the alt-right fires for no reason.

In any event, we’re all excited to see where the Dershowitz legacy lands next. Let’s just hope all this tinkering doesn’t end up with Claus von Bulow killing Ron and Nicole.

Alan Dershowitz Says He Was ‘Conned’ By Barack Obama – Says He Would Now Reconsider His 2012 Vote For Him [Union Journal]

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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.

Unless you dive deep into legal nerdom, law review articles aren’t usually something to get excited over. Oh, I’m sure the authors (and their moms) are quite happy over the achievement, but there are so many published every year that, unless the subject directly related to your legal specialty, new articles come and go with barely a notice. That is decidedly not true of Eastern District of Wisconsin District Court Judge Lynn Adelman’s latest piece in the Harvard Law Review.

The article goes hard after the Roberts Court and the conservative majority who has made it their mission to move American jurisprudence to the far right. A move Adelman calls out as “undermining American democracy.” He begins by pulling the mask off the veneer of impartiality that John Roberts, in particular, loves to drape himself in:

By now, it is a truism that Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Supreme Court justice’s role is the passive one of a neutral baseball “umpire who [merely] calls the balls and strikes” was a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Roberts’ misleading testimony inevitably comes to mind when one considers the course of decision-making by the Court over which he presides. This is so because the Roberts Court has been anything but passive. Rather, the Court’s hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy. Indeed, the Roberts Court has contributed to insuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals.

And that’s the opening paragraph, y’all.

Adelman then traces the jurisprudential influences to show how the long arc of history has been bent not just to the right, but the far right under the Roberts Court:

[I]n the last third of the twentieth century in response to a number of economic and political developments, including the egalitarian movements of the 1960s, corporations and wealthy conservative donors began to invest large sums of money in promoting conservative ideas. At the same time, a conservative legal movement emerged, and it provided the context in which all of the members of the Roberts Court’s conservative majority came of age. I note that in conjunction with several other developments, the conservatives’ aggressiveness has contributed to causing economic and political power to became increasingly concentrated at the top. As a result of this concentration, government policies have become less and less responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans. I point out that under these circumstances, it would be highly desirable to have a Supreme Court that could at least play some role in righting the ship as the Warren Court did in the 1950s and 1960s when it addressed such long standing deficiencies of American democracy as segregation, malapportioned legislative districts, and a brutally unfair criminal justice system. Rather than counteracting the anti-democratic trends in the country, however, the Roberts Court reinforces them.

Adelman keeps hitting at the Roberts Court throughout the article, resulting in this dire warning:

We are thus in a new and arguably dangerous phase in American history. Democracy is inherently fragile, and it is even more so when government eschews policies that benefit all classes of Americans. We desperately need public officials who will work to revitalize our democratic republic. Unfortunately, the conservative Justices on the Roberts Court are not among them.

But of course, since it is a federal judge taking a political stand, there’s a fair amount of handwringing going on about whether it is okay that Adelman said what he said. But as Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write for Slate, turnabout is fair play. Conservative jurists make it a habit to “own the libs” — a trend that has only gotten worse since Trump appointees have flooded the federal bench — and Adelman’s writing is no different:

Is it somehow over the ethical line when a progressive judge puts these observations into writing?

Five years ago, we’d have said yes, it goes too far. Under any set of ordinary circumstances, it is always better for life-tenured jurists to stay in their lane, avoid partisan political criticism, and work to preserve the vitally important norms of judicial independence and nonpartisan, oracular judicial temperament. But there remains the question—possibly the abiding question of our time—about whether only one side can remain beholden to norms when the other has eviscerated them.

Evisceration is not an exaggeration. Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has assumed the role of robed Fox News commentator. He disparages women who get abortions, as well as judges who uphold their right to do so. He claims that we can stop mass shootings by shielding police from lawsuits when they accidentally murder innocent people. He intentionally misgenders transgender litigants—as does his colleague, Kyle Duncan, a fellow Trump appointee. Another judge on the 5th Circuit, Edith Brown Clement (a George W. Bush appointee), penned a partisan attack on her colleagues. And, under the influence of Trump’s judges, the 5th Circuit as a whole has begun defying Supreme Court precedent in a series of blatantly political decisions.

There’s something glorious about the clear way Adelman lays out his argument against the Roberts Court, especially for liberals who’ve taken so many Ls over the course of the Trump administration. But the real judge of the validity of Adelman’s arguments will be history.

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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 the first positive test of which we are aware in our community, which is why I’m writing to all of you. If we learn of other positive tests, we will continue the practice of notifying those within our community known to have had close contact with the person in question.

— an excerpt from an email sent by Dean Trevor Morrison of NYU Law School, explaining to students that a faculty member has tested positive for coronavirus. While the faculty member is not teaching this semester and had not been on campus within the past week, they were on campus several times “between eight and 15 days ago.” Anyone who came into direct content with this faculty member has been notified of the diagnosis. NYU Law recently moved all of its classes to an online format as a way to protect students and faculty from contracting coronavirus.

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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.