Gay Rights

Non-Sequiturs: 03.28.13

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* Real Housewives “star” Porsha Williams Stewart found out about her husband, former Pittsburgh QB Kordell Stewart, filing for divorce from the media. She shouldn’t have been surprised. Slash was always elusive. [USA Today]

* An anonymous Twitter account wreaks havoc on UK law students. One Tweet: “#LawTips: edit the Wikipedia page after copying it to avoid plagiarism.” Here’s a pro tip: if you’re copying Wikipedia for law school, you’re doing it wrong. [Legal Cheek]

* How out of control is tuition? At 26 law schools, recent graduates with $160,000 in annual income are STILL eligible for the federal IBR program intended to relieve the debt burden on impoverished students. [Constitutional Daily]

* As our own Juggalo Law pointed out, the NFL engages in some awfully shady sexual orientation profiling. [Sports Law Blog]

* You’d think the Republicans would be all for funding scientific endeavors to prove that rape victims in the animal kingdom “have ways of shutting that down.” [Jezebel]

* UNLV Law Dean Nancy Rapoport takes issue with Professor Derek Muller’s ranking of “Career Baristas” out of law school. If there was one dean who was going to know the statistical angles, it was going to be the one in Las Vegas. [UNLV Law Blog]

* Ever wanted to watch video of the folks from Lawyers, Guns & Money discussing Game of Thrones? Sure you have! And that’s why we invented jumps…

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The DOMA Arguments at SCOTUS: Five Money Quotes

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Looking at my notes from today’s United States v. Windsor argument on DOMA at the U.S. Supreme Court, “$Q” is everywhere. That’s my shorthand for “money quote.” The merits part of the argument was $Q after $Q, moments that made an impact, in some cases if only to show where a justice might be headed.

Here are five. Look forward to bringing you more in-depth analysis of the argument in the next couple of days.

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Morning Docket: 11.05.12.

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* Campaign Lawyers are ready to go to the mattresses. Actually, they’re already there. [Bloomberg]

* You can see why they’re nervous. The race is close. Don’t forget to vote. [FiveThirtyEight]

* And don’t let them suppress your vote. [Blog of the Legal Times]

* Because you know if you are trying to vote in Florida and might be a Democrat, they’re going to try to take your vote away. [Huffington Post]

* When you step back and look at it, the legal landscape for gays and lesbians is shockingly different than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. Yeah, I know a bunch of you care about marginal tax rates on Americans making over $250,000 way more than basic civil rights, but still. [New Yorker]

* Lawyers have really been working under difficult conditions in the aftermath of the storm. [National Law Journal]

* But the storm hasn’t stopped lawyers from looking out of new opportunities. [Thomson Reuters News and Insight]

* Donor secrecy up for review. [Los Angeles Times]

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Morning Docket: 06.01.12

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No, not that gavel...

* Dewey retired partners with unfunded pensions get a seat at the table for this bankruptcy circus? Yeah, but only because the U.S. Trustee did something unheard of and appointed a committee of former partners as creditors. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Yesterday was definitely a great day to be gay on the east coast. In addition to the First Circuit’s DOMA decision, a New York appellate court ruled that being called gay is no longer defamatory per se. [New York Law Journal]

* Milberg is the latest firm to dump Paul Ceglia of Facebook lawsuit fame, but Dean Boland, his other lawyer, says the Biglaw firm just “serve[d] as a distraction.” Somebody please give this man a dislike button. [Buffalo News]

* Humblebrag of the day by Judge Alsup of Oracle v. Google fame: he’s written lines of code “a hundred times before.” He also squashed Oracle’s API copyright infringement claims like bugs. [Courthouse News Service]

* Remember Kimberly Ireland, the Kansas attorney who falsely accused Judge Kevin Moriarty of waxing his gavel beneath the bench? She got a retroactive two-year suspension. [ABA Journal via Legal Profession Blog]

* Elizabeth Warren has confirmed that she told Harvard Law and Penn Law that she was a Native American, but only after she had been hired. She didn’t get any action of the affirmative variety, no sir. [Associated Press]

* Recent law school graduates are a little more desperate than we thought they were. At least 32 people have already applied for that BC Law job advertising a salary below minimum wage. [Boston Business Journal]

* Activision settled a lawsuit with two Call of Duty developers, but isn’t worried about an effect on its financials due to a strong third quarter performance. And you can thank your damn Elite packages for that. [PCMag]

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Morning Docket: 12.27.11

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Paul Clement

* If defending unpopular clients is cool, consider Paul Clement Miles Davis. He’s the lead lawyer in three politically charged cases going up before SCOTUS in the new year. [LA Times]

* Joe Arpaio’s going to have a tough time racially profiling Hispanics in 2012. What’s a man to do without verification powers and the ability to detain people on suspicion alone? [WaPo]

* A summary of the NLJ’s 2011 year in review round-up: all of this was a preview of what’s to come in 2012. And what’s to come? Same sh*t, different docket number. [National Law Journal]

* C&F fail: the California Supreme Court is busy worrying about Stephen Glass, a guy who took his “creative writing” efforts a bit too far. [San Francisco Chronicle]

* The Hollywood actress suing IMDb for revealing her age has to reveal much more thanks to this ruling. She’s got two weeks to amend her complaint to include her name. [The Wrap]

* “Oh my God, the law school has gone crazy.” Don’t blame the messenger, but UVA Law’s headlines on ATL are totally self-inflicted. Here’s Elie’s take on the collar-poppin’ action. [C-VILLE]

* Larry Ribstein, partnership law guru, business law blogger, and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Illinois College Law, RIP. [Truth on the Market]

* Robert Morvillo, New York trial lawyer and white-collar defense pioneer, RIP. [WSJ Law Blog]

* John Lawrence, plaintiff in the landmark LGBT rights case of Lawrence v. Texas, RIP. [NY Times]

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Morning Docket: 12.20.11

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* The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Obamacare over three days in March. Let’s fast forward to June so we can see how Election 2012 is going to turn out. [Blog of Legal Times]

* The Grinch definitely stole AT&T’s Christmas this year, and even a team of Biglaw superstars couldn’t save the day. The company’s merger deal with T-Mobile is now officially dead. [Am Law Daily]

* A bed and breakfast owner told this lesbian couple aloha before they could even say aloha, and now they’re suing. And here I thought that Hawaii specialized in tiny, gay bubbles. [Washington Post]

* James Franco doesn’t just get bad grades on Rotten Tomatoes. José Angel Santana, one of his former professors, has filed a lawsuit saying NYU fired him for giving the actor a “D.” [Reuters]

* Snooki, Jersey Shore’s drunken munchkin, is being sued for $7M over a licensing deal gone bad. The worst part is that even if she paid up, she’d still have oodles of money in the bank. [Daily Mail]

* Sick of law school? Get all of your bitching down on paper, and turn your rage-filled manifesto into a short story for submission to the JLE Legal Fiction Contest. [National Law Journal]

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Morning Docket: 11.11.11

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Angelica Marie Cecora, Oscar's latest lady-friend

* A bill to repeal DOMA made it past the Senate Judiciary Committee, but members of the Senate don’t do dick (unless it’s in an airport bathroom), so it’s probably not going anywhere. [Blog of Legal Times]

* Next on the gay rights news beat, after waiting around for 18 months, WilmerHale attorney Edward DuMont has refused to be the last belle at the ball. He’s asked Obama to withdraw his Federal Circuit nomination. [ThinkProgress]

* “Be careful of what you do, ’cause the lie becomes the truth.” Sound familiar? Conrad Murray says the King of Pop deceived him. Oh, boo hoo. Come on, MJ warned you about this stuff via song lyrics back in the eighties. [CNN]

* When a lawyer’s wife allegedly hires you to kill her husband, the easy way out isn’t to burn down his law firm. You kind of need to make sure that he’s in there first. [KBZK]

* Oscar de la Hoya’s got bigger problems than this kinky lawsuit. He’s probably more worried about getting runs in his stockings, to be honest. [New York Post]

* Snitches don’t get stitches in Mexico. They get their freakin’ heads chopped off. And now I wait for a drug cartel to come and murder me. [Daily Mail]

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Being Out In-House: The LGBT Lawyer Experience in Corporate America

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Yesterday I participated in a panel at the Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference, sponsored by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA), entitled “Attitudes & Opinions: Generation Y Speaks about their Workplace in 10 Years.” The spirited discussion covered a wide range of topics relating to Gen Y’s workplace attitudes.

I also attended a number of other interesting events. In the afternoon, I checked out “Special Considerations: The In-House Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Lawyer Experience.”

If you’re interested in LGBT issues or in-house diversity issues, keep reading to find out what the panelists had to say….

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Morning Docket: 09.20.11

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* “The road to this day has been long”… and hard. That’s what he said. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has finally been put to bed, and the next logical step would be to ditch DOMA. [PostPartisan / Washington Post]

* “Citizens United has been good for gay rights.” Well, at least it’s been good for something. Are we allowed to like the ruling in this case now? Bueller? Bueller? No? Okay, just checking. [New York Times]

* And another one gone, another judge bites the dust. $43K wasn’t enough to keep Justice Joseph Covello on the bench. How many more will it take to get a decent raise? [New York Law Journal]

* The First Circuit turned it around on Joel Tenenbaum, reinstating a $675K judgment against him. Charles Nesson couldn’t comment on the decision because he was crying. [Boston Globe]

* Ten-year sentence edition: Samuel Logan’s dad wishes he was still a judge on the Tenth Circuit so he could benchslap the sh*t out of his son for trying to seduce a 14-year-old. [Kansas City Star]

* John Banzhaf continues to fight for coeds’ right to party at Catholic University, but it’s not looking good because it’s hard to immaculately conceive when boys live in the same dorm. [WSJ Law Blog]

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Bar Review Diaries: The Final Countdown

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This is the Final Countdown. Exactly a week from now, many of you will be stuck at desks for upwards of two days, working to finish that little formality they call the Bar Exam. This is the last time we’ll hear from our Bar Review Diarists before they cross the threshold.

They are leaving behind their anxiety, fear and anger about the test. They are starting to accept their fate — whether that means proudly entering laywerhood in the next few weeks… or sometime next February.

Let’s check in on Mike, Mariah and Christopher one last time before they leap out of the nest, hoping to fly on wings of truth and justice…

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