Discrimination

* The effort to hijack “religious freedom” to legalize discrimination continues to be plagued by members of Satanic Temples invoking the same law to secure personal freedoms that governments routinely curtail. [Huffington Post]

* Cy Vance is barring donations to his campaign from lawyers with business before his office, resolving a conflict that was obvious to everyone but him. [ABC News]

* Mary Jo White admits Debevoise made a mistake in naming confidential witnesses in its report that functionally exonerated the University of Rochester in a massive sexual harassment investigation. Well, when they’re described as “confidential” witnesses this would seem to be a mistake. [American Lawyer]

* Prosecutors want to retry Senator Menendez and have a list of demands for the new trial like, “not letting defense attorneys talk.” [New Jersey Law Journal]

* HLS students open a startup bringing AI into document categorization following in the proud tradition of Harvard undergrads who dropped out to become tech moguls. [Legaltech News]

* Discrimination suit against Winston & Strawn hinges on what it means to be a “partner.” In other words, can firms placate attorneys with empty titles without accepting the consequences? [Litigation Daily]

* Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered map gets the benchslap. [NPR]

* Ogletree slapped with $300 million gender discrimination suit. You’d have thought a labor and employment firm could have avoided this. [The Recorder]

* Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Brown doesn’t boast a Twitter presence. [UPDATE: He does… but the point is it’s more conventional than the car’s] But his Toyota Camry has its own Twitter handle. Hmm. I guess he doesn’t buy American. [Texas Lawyer]

* It’s Copyright Week 2018, and EFF wants your help in raising awareness about the abuses going on out there. [EFF]

* Law360 names the practice groups of the year. [Law360]

* Just how much can Trump transform the Ninth Circuit? [McClatchy]

* Supreme Court takes on the Texas gerrymandering dispute. Read into this what you will. [Courthouse News Service]

* Republicans calling for pot legalization to fix public services. Just another day in bizarro world. [Newsweek]

* Trump team decries Kate Steinle verdict as jury finds their preferred political talisman not guilty of murder. [SF Gate]

* IRS needs $1.7 million in back taxes? X gon’ give it to you. [Law360]

* Judge Pryor thinks court packing is stupid, which probably burned all his bridges with the Heritage Foundation. [National Law Journal]

* Pay for in-house counsel is up… women still lag behind. [Corporate Counsel]

* Black women in law face discrimination on two fronts. It’s almost like they sit at the intersection of oppressions. [American Lawyer]

* Judge orders handcuffs to prevent spanking. [ABA Journal]

* Even Texas can’t defend voter suppression anymore. [Texas Tribune]

* More M&A firms join the AI train. [American Lawyer]

* Ted Cruz is angry that the ABA calls unqualified people unqualified. Everyone gets an A in Professor Cruz’s class! [National Law Journal]

* “A Rutherford couple reportedly got an unwanted house call over the weekend from a lawyer who was completely naked except for a tight-fitting T-shirt and a pair of black high heels.” Go on.[NY Daily News]

* You had me at “sexual enterprise,” you magnificent RICO complaint you. [The Recorder]

* The NFL is going to war with Jerry Jones, so grab your popcorn. [CNBC]

* Barclay’s prevails over a former employee’s sex discrimination claim and her race discrimination claim. Seems as though it’s been forever since Kimberle Crenshaw pointed out exactly why this is a problem. [Law360]

* What do law firms and despotic regimes have in common? Probably a lot, but one thing is a non-existent succession plan. [American Lawyer]

* The SEC pursues fewer actions for dramatically less money as it largely abdicates its watchdog role. What could possibly go wrong? [Corporate Counsel]

* A deep dive into whether or not ex-convicts should be able to serve as lawyers. [Bloomberg]

* Law firm files complaint arguing that Disney stole the script to Pirates of the Caribbean. Amazing because it was never clear to me that there was a script to that movie. [CBS]

* Former Dentons associate Michael Potere pleads guilty to lesser charge in extortion case where he allegedly broke into the firm’s system and threatened to hand over embarrassing material to Above the Law. The lesson is: if you have compromising information about your employer don’t try to extort your firm — just hand it directly to Above the Law. [The Recorder]

* A lot of people are chiming in to say that Trump’s decision to interview U.S. Attorney candidates is improper because it breaks with tradition or because he currently faces a special counsel investigation. That’s all true, but what should really raise red flags is in an administration riddled with open jobs and a floundering legislative agenda, the only thing a president under investigation seems to care about is picking his prosecutors. [Litigation Daily]

* We all kind of suspect that SCOTUS advocacy is largely a self-reinforcing old boys’ club, but here’s the data. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* Chadbourne’s gender bias suit may be getting bigger. [Law360]

* Yes, RBG’s famous workout is now available in book form (affiliate link). [National Law Journal]

* In-house counsel say they want more from their law firms. And yet, I’m assuming they don’t want “more bills” from those firms for all this extra work. [Corporate Counsel]

* AUSA suspended for affair with FBI agent. What’s the ethical dilemma? We all know the FBI is shacked up with the U.S. Attorney’s Office anyway. [Law.com]

* Trump calls for changes to the tax laws to punish the NFL. I think this is a reference to the NFL’s tax-exempt status… which they gave up in 2015. But hey, he’s upset over a picture of players kneeling from 2014, so they’re still a year behind on this stuff over in the West Wing. [Reuters]

* Living in limbo: Kirkland’s income partners are supposed to go up and out, but upon closer examination they’re going up and… wildly well-compensated purgatory. [Law.com]

* Winston & Strawn want arbitration in their gender bias suit based on a clause in the applicable partnership agreement. Get used to this, because by this time next year every job will be forcing arbitration if the Supreme Court has anything to say about it. [Am Law Daily]

* Today in unintentionally sad: two elite female attorneys fight over a song pretty clearly about date rape. [The Recorder]

* Apple GC Bruce Sewell is retiring. Very symbolic of someone at Apple to stop working just when they release a new product. [Corporate Counsel]

* What are the seven worst words from your past for your jury to hear? Because “I think we got away with it,” have to be up there. [Law360]

* An interview with former Magic Circle lawyer Tom Vaughan MacAulay about his new book Being Simon Haines (affiliate link). [Legal Cheek]

* We’ve found Justice Washington’s notes in a circuit case he heard in 1823, which is kind of fun. [Concurring Opinions]

* Winston & Strawn becomes the latest firm slapped with a gender bias suit. The article is fixated on the fact that the plaintiff went to high school with Obama, but the more fascinating aspect of the story is that it “has not yet been previously reported,” which I think means there’s a time machine involved. [The Recorder]

* As a general rule, if someone contemporaneously points out, “we’re laundering money,” it should raise a red flag. [Law360]

* A new bill would exempt law firms from laws against abusive debt collection practices because some people don’t think the legal profession is objectionable enough and maybe a policy carveout allowing them to send Rocko out to crack client heads might just do the trick. [Detroit News]

* It’s a shotgun wedding! If you replace “shotgun” with “risk that a material witness would be compelled to testify against me.” [Lowering the Bar]

* BarBri seems to have successfully escaped the $50 million antitrust lawsuit it faced. [Law.com]

* Velcro has a music video urging people to call their product “hook-and-loop” to protect their trademark. Because if you want to reverse decades of informal association, try to convince people to use the stupidest name ever. [Velcro]

* Could a Vulcan adopt a human child? Sure, but who wants to be a Vulcan? Tell me if I can ever realize my dream of being adopted by Zaphod Beeblebrox. [Legal Geeks]

* Here’s a disturbing video of a couple of ICE agents harassing an American citizen. Oregon lawmakers are calling for a federal investigation. When I recently spoke to former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, she explained how her office put in tremendous effort to ensure that immigration enforcement agents on the ground understood their legal limits. It would seem this administration is less focused on that. [ACLU of Oregon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glb0LJ7XX_k

* Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained a warrant for targeted ads that were purchased by Russia-linked Facebook accounts during the 2016 election. The fact that Mueller was able to get a warrant “may be the biggest news in the case since the Manafort raid.” [Business Insider]

* Speaking of the Russia probe, yet another lawyer has joined Robert Mueller’s team. Say hello to Kyle Freeny, a former kindergarten teacher with a law degree from Harvard who transferred from the Justice Department’s money-laundering unit to contribute her talents to the ongoing investigation. [POLITICO]

* Sorry, kids, but lawyers are very, very, very expensive: Since the president has left his one-time associates high and dry, Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign advisor, has been forced to drain his children’s college fund to pay for legal representation in the Russia probe. Horrible… [Washington Examiner]

* “It’s not about the cake. It is about discrimination.” When the Masterpiece Cakeshop case is argued before SCOTUS, Justice Anthony Kennedy — the man who wrote the opinion that legalized same-sex marriage in America — will likely be the deciding vote. Will be betray his legacy for free speech? [New York Times]

* Columbia Law School is offering students credits to meet their 40-hour pro bono requirement for graduation if they volunteer for the Columbia Human Rights Law Review’s Trump Human Rights Tracker, which keeps tabs on President Trump’s actions and their impacts on human rights. [FOX News]

* As we continue to reel from Judge Posner’s retirement, here are some of his best quips. Unfortunately lists like these will always miss something. Like my personal favorite: “Yeah, but, you know, the problem with the balancing test is there’s nothing on your side of the balance!” [National Law Journal]

* The high price of becoming a partner. [American Lawyer]

* Top Kasowitz Benson partner jumps ship… could this be more fallout from the ill-fated attempt to defend Trump? [New York Law Journal]

* The government’s been in a slump at the Supreme Court. [Empirical SCOTUS]

* A deep dive into the Chadbourne discrimination suit. [Bloomberg Businessweek]

* If you’ve not followed the phenomenon of running payday lending from tribal lands, here’s an in depth look at a $2B lawsuit over the practice. [Law360]

* Some predictions about the upcoming law school application cycle. Here’s another one… a bunch of people will end up in debt for no good reason. [US News]