Election Law

* 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]

* Michael Cohen is suing Buzzfeed over publishing the Trump intelligence dossier. He says the Russia collusion allegations are “not legitimate” but to paraphrase Judge Judy, “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s a Russian prostitute.” [Bloomberg]

* Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz is embroiled in boring, plodding lawsuit which actually sums up his offense pretty well. [Deadspin]

* The IRS is getting into the Bitcoin game. Maybe they can explain blockchain in terms that don’t involve magic. [Forbes]

* Justice Sotomayor bluntly confronted Noel Francisco over the administration’s 180 on voting rights. Francisco didn’t have a clear, straightforward  answer ready which is weird because “we managed to slip in the back door of the White House so we’re basically the Allstate Mayhem guy but for the Constitution” would’ve been a perfectly acceptable and honest answer. [National Law Journal]

* Meanwhile, a federal judge threw out a challenge to Alabama’s strict voter ID law finding the state had an important regulatory interest in combatting the voter fraud crisis that they can’t string together any evidence of. Jeez, maybe Brett Talley would have actually improved the Alabama federal bench. [NPR]

* For your daily reminder that Texas is a jerkweed backwater, the woman accused of drunkenly destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars in art faces a possible life sentence because Texas couldn’t figure out how to put the death penalty on it. [Texas Lawyer]

* Kirsten Gillibrand will use her blue slip to block the nomination of Greenberg Traurig’s Geoffrey Berman for the SDNY U.S. Attorney post. Or, more accurately these days, Kristin Gillibrand will use her blue slip to do absolutely nothing to slow down the nomination of Geoffrey Berman for the SDNY U.S. Attorney post. [New York Law Journal]

* Skadden avoids sanctions in Vijay Singh suit. Remember when the PGA was accusing people of doping… in golf? [Law360]

* The “20th Century Disney” deal helped make this a very happy holiday season for a bunch of Biglaw firms. [American Lawyer]

* “Did Alabama just violate federal voting law?” I’m going to go ahead and assume the answer is “yes” until proven otherwise. Now there’s an idea! We could have some sort of statute that presupposes changes to voting laws in places like Alabama are bad until proven otherwise. A law that requires that they get, I don’t know, “preclearance” for election law changes. [Slate]

* The Net Neutrality law suits are piling up and throttling the FCC’s plan to move forward at full speed. [National Law Journal]

* Remember when Nate Newton was arrested for having 213 pounds of marijuana in his car? Well this arrested Georgia football player is, like, the complete opposite of that. [Slate]

* Vivia Chen discusses Heidi Bond, focusing on how systematic abuse has the power to make people with all the objective markers of success feel incompetent. [The Careerist]

* WSJ declares that it’s cool to go to law school again. There’s no way this leads to another bubble. [Wall Street Journal]

* There are a lot of reasons why Sedgwick is going out of business but one of them has to be partners who had enough spare time to build stuff like this. [The Recorder]

* 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]

* Appellate court rules that Facebook friends aren’t necessarily “friends.” If they’re in your Top 8 on MySpace on the other hand…. [Law.com]

* Guy drove a car into a crowd holding vigil over a trans woman killed by police. But, you know, there was violence on both sides… many sides. [Huffington Post]

* Can this lawyer achieve Middle East peace? Nope. [NBC News]

* Texas courts strike down the state’s latest voter suppression effort. [Politico]

* The CFPB goes easier on those that self-report. In a functioning justice and regulatory system that’s true of every government agency, but these days that’s newsworthy. [National Law Journal]

* Partner pink slips abound in advance of Biglaw mergers. [Am Law Daily]

* Second Circuit ends the Newman relationship test. New York defense lawyers respond with “What, me worry?” [Law360]