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Public Policy
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August 20, 2024
Feds Say Chevron Doesn't Change Auto Standards Litigation
The federal government told the D.C. Circuit that the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion axing federal agency deference doesn't aid Republican-led states' and industry's attempt to undermine tighter greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles.
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August 20, 2024
FDIC Challenged Over 'Kafkaesque' Enforcement Proceeding
A former small business financier battling Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. enforcement claims has asked a D.C. federal court to issue an emergency order staying the agency's "Kafkaesque" administrative proceeding against him, arguing that it deprives him of his constitutional right to a jury trial.
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August 20, 2024
DOJ, SD County Resolve Indigenous Voting Barrier Claims
The U.S. Department of Justice has secured an agreement with a South Dakota county and its officials to end the federal government's allegations that the municipality failed to make registration and early voting opportunities equally available to Native American voters.
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August 20, 2024
FCC Urged To Boost Middle-Mile Support For Alaska Telecoms
Alaskan telecoms are telling the Federal Communications Commission that their state needs special rules for middle-mile support, saying that Alaska's short construction season, roadless areas and other unique challenges mean that more support will be needed to achieve widespread connectivity.
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August 20, 2024
Ariz. Tribe Wins Pause Of Lithium Project Construction
An Arizona federal judge has granted the Hualapai Indian Tribe's bid for a temporary restraining order in its lawsuit seeking to halt U.S. government approval of a lithium exploration project that it says threatens the life of a sacred medical spring used for cultural and religious purposes.
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August 20, 2024
Don't Nix 'Band Manager' Approach In 4.9 GHz, FCC Told
Public interest groups have urged the Federal Communications Commission to preserve its original plan to use a national band manager to oversee a 4.9 gigahertz spectrum revamp rather than turning it over to FirstNet through a nationwide license.
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August 20, 2024
Colo. Justices To Hear Claims-Clock Debate In Xcel Death Suit
The Colorado Supreme Court said Monday it would hear an appeal by Xcel Energy and a city over whether the deadline for an accident victim's father to sue started when his daughter was hit by a car or when she died weeks later.
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August 20, 2024
USDOT Floats Vehicle-To-Everything Deployment Plan
The U.S. Department of Transportation is setting out an aspirational timeline for vehicle-to-everything infrastructure deployment, saying it wants to see the technology deployed on 50% of the nation's highways by 2031.
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August 20, 2024
New Fed Rule Will Help Tribes Sponsor Watershed Projects
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service said it has decided to amend its regulations for watershed projects, so Native American tribes and tribal groups can better carry out improvements for flood prevention and conservation.
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August 20, 2024
Ala. AG Can't Prosecute Aiding Abortion Travel, DOJ Says
The Alabama attorney general's threats of criminal prosecution against individuals and corporations who assist others in traveling to obtain lawful abortions out of state violates the constitutional right to travel, the U.S. Department of Justice told an Alabama federal judge in a court filing Monday.
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August 20, 2024
NC Panel Nixes Black Property Owners' Revived Bias Fight
A North Carolina state appeals court handed the city of Kinston a win Tuesday for a second time in a discrimination lawsuit that the state Supreme Court recently revived, finding that Black property owners' claims that the city unfairly demolished their properties aren't viable because they never completed an "adequate" administrative appeals process.
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August 20, 2024
SF Police Can't Sue Navy Over Toxic Shipyard, 9th Circ. Says
A group of San Francisco police officers cannot pursue their suit alleging the U.S. Navy misled the city into leasing a former naval shipyard that was not properly decontaminated following its use during the Cold War, which led to the officers suffering health problems, the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday.
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August 20, 2024
DHS Watchdog Says ICE Needs To Better Monitor Migrant Kids
The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said the agency needs to better monitor the status and location of unaccompanied migrant children after their release from federal custody to better protect them.
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August 20, 2024
Amgen's Drug Price Suit An Issue For Legislature, Judge Told
A Colorado nonprofit that advocates for the poor told a federal judge Tuesday that Amgen's lawsuit over the state's drug price cap system is little more than a disagreement with lawmakers' policy choices disguised as a constitutional issue.
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August 20, 2024
Wash. Judges Won't Upend Tobacco Payout Ruling
A Washington appellate court on Monday rejected attempts by Philip Morris and other tobacco companies to pay the state less under a 1998 master settlement agreement, upholding an arbitrator's determination that the state was enforcing a law covering payment.
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August 20, 2024
FCC Says No To 8 Nonprofit Stations In Texas
The Federal Communications Commission says it is not approving eight applications for new low power FM stations because the Christian entities that applied for them appear to actually all be part of the same organization, which does not qualify as an educational nonprofit.
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August 20, 2024
Utah Tells Justices Feds Must Relinquish Land In State
The federal government is unconstitutionally hoarding and profiting from public lands in Utah, and the state is missing out on economic and development opportunities that are rightfully its own, it told the U.S. Supreme Court in a proposed lawsuit filed Tuesday.
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August 20, 2024
Credit Union, 'Dreamers' Get Final OK To Settle Loan Bias Suit
A California federal judge gave the final stamp of approval to a class settlement offering cash to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and other immigrants who alleged a Chicago-based credit union denied them loans due to their immigration status.
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August 20, 2024
US Sanctions Ex-Haitian President Over Drug Trafficking
The Biden administration on Tuesday sanctioned a former president of Haiti, claiming he abused his position to facilitate drug trafficking.
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August 20, 2024
EPA Urges DC Circ. To Uphold Particulate Matter Rule
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is defending its decision to ratchet down a fine particulate matter air pollution standard, telling the D.C. Circuit that states and industry groups challenging it aren't seriously questioning the scientific support for the change and misread the Clean Air Act to argue that the agency overstepped.
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August 20, 2024
DOI Issues 1st Floating Offshore Wind Energy Lease
The U.S. Department of the Interior on Monday announced its first-ever floating offshore wind energy research lease, which will allow for up to 12 floating wind turbines off the coast of Maine.
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August 20, 2024
UN Dives Into Murky Waters Of Taxing Digital Services
The United Nations has its sights set on cross-border services in the digital economy as its framework convention on tax takes shape, but it remains unclear how countries will define that broad and hotly contested topic as they work toward a treaty.
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August 20, 2024
IRS Fee Hikes Threaten Tax Justice For Small Businesses
The Internal Revenue Service is expected to continue raising the cost for private letter rulings that clarify tax matters and provide taxpayer certainty, prompting concerns among tax professionals that economic justice may become unattainable for small businesses unable to bear these escalating costs.
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August 20, 2024
Colorado County Says Aetna Owes $1.1M In Rebates
Aetna Life Insurance Co. is withholding more than $1 million in pharmacy rebates from a Colorado county under an inapplicable early termination clause after local leaders switched to United Healthcare for health insurance services in 2023, according to a federal lawsuit.
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August 20, 2024
Anthropic Hit With Another Copyright Suit Over LLM Training
Anthropic PBC was hit with a proposed class action Monday in California federal court from a group of journalists and authors alleging the artificial intelligence giant is exploiting their copyrighted materials to train its large language model, Claude, without permission or a license, and has become enormously successful at their expense.
Expert Analysis
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A Timeline Of Antisemitism Legislation And What It Means
What began as hearings in the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce has expanded to a House-wide effort to combat antisemitism and related issues, with wide-ranging implications for education, finance and nonprofit entities, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
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California Adds A Novel Twist To State Suits Against Big Oil
California’s suit against Exxon Mobil Corp., one of several state suits that seek to hold oil and gas companies accountable for climate-related harms, is unique both in the magnitude of the alleged claims and its use of a consumer protection statute to seek disgorgement of industry profits, says Julia Stein at UCLA School of Law.
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Criminal Enforcement Considerations For Gov't Contractors
Government contractors increasingly exposed to criminal liability risks should establish programs that enable detection and remediation of employee misconduct, consider voluntary disclosure, and be aware of the potentially disastrous consequences of failing to make a mandatory disclosure where the government concludes it was required, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.
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Opinion
States Should Loosen Law Firm Ownership Restrictions
Despite growing buzz, normalized nonlawyer ownership of law firms is a distant prospect, so the legal community should focus first on liberalizing state restrictions on attorney and firm purchases of practices, which would bolster succession planning and improve access to justice, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.
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New La. Managing Agent Law May Portend Growing Scrutiny
Recent amendments to Louisiana’s managing general agent regulations impose expansive new obligations on such agents and their insurer partners, which may be a sign of heightened regulatory, commercial and rating agency scrutiny, say attorneys at McDermott.
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Trending At The PTAB: Multiple Petitions In IPRs
Recent Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions and a proposed rulemaking indicate the board’s intention to continue to take a tougher stance on multiple inter partes review petitions challenging the same patent, presenting key factors for petitioners to consider, like the necessity of parallel filings and serial petitions, say Yinan Liu and Cory Bell at Finnegan.
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FERC Rule Is A Big Step Forward For Transmission Planning
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's recent electric transmission system overhaul marks significant progress to ensure the grid can deliver electricity at reasonable prices, with a 20-year planning requirement and other criteria going further than prior attempted reforms, say Tom Millar and Gwendolyn Hicks at Winston & Strawn.
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Series
After Chevron: Rethinking Agency Deference In IP Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Chevron deference could make it simpler to challenge the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s proposed rule on terminal disclaimers and U.S. International Trade Commission interpretations, says William Milliken at Sterne Kessler.
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Tricky Venue Issues Persist In Fortenberry Prosecution Redo
Former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry was recently indicted for a second time after the Ninth Circuit tossed his previous conviction for improper venue, but the case, now pending in the District of Columbia, continues to illustrate the complexities of proper venue in "false statement scheme" prosecutions, says Kevin Coleman at Covington.
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Series
Solving Puzzles Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Tackling daily puzzles — like Wordle, KenKen and Connections — has bolstered my intellectual property litigation practice by helping me to exercise different mental skills, acknowledge minor but important details, and build and reinforce good habits, says Roy Wepner at Kaplan Breyer.
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1st Gender Care Ban Provides Context For High Court Case
The history of Arkansas' ban on gender-affirming medical care — the first such legislation in the U.S. — provides important insight into the far-reaching ramifications that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti next term will have on transgender healthcare, says Tyler Saenz at Baker Donelson.
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CFPB's New Registration Rule Will Intensify Nonbank Scrutiny
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recently finalized nonbank registration rule aimed at cracking down on repeat offenders poses significant compliance challenges and enforcement risks for nonbank financial firms, and may be particularly onerous for smaller firms, say Ketan Bhirud and Emily Yu at Cozen O'Connor.
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Series
After Chevron: FCC And Industry Must Prepare For Change
The Chevron doctrine was especially significant in the communications sector because of the indeterminacy of federal communications statutes, so the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of the doctrine could have big implications for those regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, bringing both opportunities and risks for companies, say Thomas Johnson and Michael Showalter at Wiley.
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Series
After Chevron: Uniform Tax Law Interpretation Not Guaranteed
The loss of Chevron deference will significantly alter the relationship between the IRS, courts and Congress when it comes to tax law, potentially precipitating more transparent rulemaking, but also provoking greater uncertainty due to variability in judicial interpretation, say Michelle Levin and Carneil Wilson at Dentons.
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Series
After Chevron: Environmental Law May Face Hurdles
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning Chevron deference could prove to be as influential as the original 1984 decision, with far-reaching implications for U.S. environmental laws, including rendering recently promulgated regulations more vulnerable to challenges, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.