At Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, a required first year course is labor history. You learn about the guilds, about the rioters and the Pinkertons hire to beat them, about the horrific treatment of industrial workers in the age of Robber Barons and the birth of unionism. As my girlfriend at the time proclaimed one day after Roger Keeran’s class, “I want to be a Wobbly!”

The problem is that was history, a different time and different circumstances, long before the Wagner Act was born and the AFL-CIO flexed its might. A great many arguments about what we should do today are grounded in things that happened many years ago, ignoring everything that’s happened since. It’s true for civil rights. It’s more true for unionism. Continue reading →

Suit was brought, and summarily tossed in the Southern District of Florida by Judge Robin Rosenberg for lack of standing. The suit sought a declaratory judgment that Trump was disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Plaintiffs ask the Court to enter a declaratory judgment barring Defendant from (1) seeking the office of President of the United States and (2) participating in the Florida Presidential primary election in 2024. Plaintiffs assert that Defendant is ineligible to serve as President under the Fourteenth Amendment because of his alleged participation in events that took place at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, and related activities. The Court concludes that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction and dismisses the Complaint.

Continue reading →

There were two things 21-year-old Ta’Kiya Young knew with certainty that day. The first was that she was pregnant. The second was that the police officers had ordered her to get out of her car. She didn’t.

There were two things the two Blendon Township, Ohio, police officers* knew that day. There was an accusation that Ta’Kiya Young had stolen bottles of alcohol from Kroger and that she refused to comply with the order to get out of the car. Instead, she decided to drive away. Continue reading →

They don’t call New Jersey the “garden state” for nothing (unless its because you can’t fit the state of oil and gas refineries on a license plate), but for a brief and shining moment, the meadowlands of Jersey were almost the epicenter of masked wrestling in the western hemisphere. After all, so much unused space, except for the occasional mob hit victim’s final resting place, shouldn’t go to waste, or so wannabe wrestling promoter Pee Wee Nugent thought. Continue reading →

It was 2017 when K.C. Johnson made the request under the Freedom of Information Act for documents and emails relating to the origin of the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter that created the foundation for the campus peer-to-peer sex adjudication that has thus far launched more than 500 federal suits. It took five years, but K.C. finally received a response.

In 2017 I filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking various OCR documents regarding the Dear Colleague letter’s origins. And finally — this August — the Education Department complied. I received 838 highly redacted pages. The department, for instance, redacted all contemporaneous talking points for the media blitz that Russlynn Ali, head of OCR at the time, undertook to promote the letter. It also redacted all draft versions of the guidance document and, incredibly, even a PDF of the Dear Colleague letter itself from OCR’s website. Nonetheless, significant chunks of material remained, and they enhance our understanding of this transformative policy change.

Continue reading →

According to reports, one-time lawyer Rudy Giuliani had issues with affording to fund his criminal defense in Georgia, assuming he can find a lawyer willing to represent him. It’s tough times for the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York who went on to be mayor of New York City.

In court on Monday, the former New York City mayor said the legal quagmires have left him effectively out of cash. He even appears to have responded to some of the money crunch by listing for sale a 3-bedroom Manhattan apartment he owns for $6.5 million. Continue reading →

While the Third Circuit, in an opinion by Senior Judge Anthony Scirica, didn’t come out and hold that the district court erred in holding Pennsylvania’s adoption of a variation of ABA Model Rule 8.4(g) was constitutional, it all but sloughed off the complaints of FIRE’s Zach Greenberg when it held he lacked standing to challenge the nefarious rule.

In a facile decision of stunning naïveté, the court held that the ramifications of a lawyer speech code prohibiting knowing harassment, defined in such vague terms as to cover pretty much anything, in any aspect of the practice of law based on “race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, and socioeconomic status” had yet to be sufficiently established. Zach pre-emptively sought to enjoin the rule, arguing that it would form the basis for discipline, or chill his speech, when he taught continuing legal education courses. Continue reading →

Georgia criminal defense lawyer and former Fault Lines colleague, Andrew Fleischman, explains in a New York Times op-ed some of the legal and tactical problem arising from the scope and breadth of the Georgia indictment against Trump and his 18 co-defendants.

By assembling a sprawling, 19-defendant RICO indictment with 41 counts, District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County has brought the sort of charging instrument that has typically led to monthslong trials, complicated appeals and exhaustion for the participating attorneys. Now, as some co-defendants seek federal removal while others demand speedy trials in state court, we are starting to see the costs of complexity. Continue reading →

Trump’s response to the Georgia indictment was to call it a travesty of justice as he did nothing wrong, but was just “challenging an election.” The accuracy of his claim aside, he’s been indicted, meaning that a grand jury found that there was probable cause to believe that he committed enumerated crimes. An indictment is merely an accusation, and when the accusation is that crimes have been committed, the mechanism by which our society determines guilt is a trial.

There being almost no chance that these accusations won’t end with a jury trial, unless dismissed before trial, Trump’s fate will be determined by twelve good citizens and true. This, Jesse Wegman contends, is the legitimate means by which guilt is decided. Continue reading →

Aside from the question of whether the six sisters could sue pseudonymously, the substantive issue raised in Westenbroek v. Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity was whether it violated the rights of sorority sisters when the University of Wyoming chapter admitted a transgender woman as a member.

District Judge Alan Johnson disposed of the case swiftly.

Embittered by their chapter’s admission of Artemis Langford, a transgender woman, six KKG sisters at the University of Wyoming sue their national sorority and its president. Plaintiffs, framing the case as one of first impression, ask the Court to, inter alia, void their sorority sister’s admission, find that KKG’s President violated her fiduciary obligations by betraying KKG’s bylaws, and prevent other transgender women from joining KKG nationwide. A “woman”, say Plaintiffs, is not a transgender woman. Continue reading →