Net Neutrality

  • Morning Docket: 01.17.18
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 01.17.18

    * The Trump administration is planning to ask the Supreme Court for assistance in dismantling DACA. That is, because “[i]t defies both law and common sense” that a “single district court in San Francisco” has halted the Trump’s plans, the Supreme Court must intervene. [Washington Post]

    * Unlike the vast majority of law review articles, here’s one you may actually care about: According to the Harvard Law Review, Trump’s tweets aren’t law. We’re thrilled to report this isn’t fake news. [National Law Journal]

    * Some law schools are moving full steam ahead in their quest to accept the GRE over the LSAT for admissions purposes, but not this one. Marquette is going to sit around and wait for the ABA to make a decision before it does anything. [Marquette Wire]

    * Twenty-two state attorneys general have filed suit against the FCC in an effort to stop the repeal of net neutrality rules. Cross your fingers that something good happens here before your bill for internet access goes up. [San Francisco Chronicle]

    * Facing a $4.4 billion budget deficit, Governor Andrew Cuomo wants New York to pay for a study to see what the health, economic, and criminal justice impacts of legalizing recreational marijuana would be in the state. [New York Law Journal]

    * Yesterday, New Jersey lawmakers unanimously voted to approve former Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir Grewal’s nomination to be state attorney general. Grewal is the first Sikh attorney general in U.S. history. Congratulations! [NJ.com]

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  • Morning Docket: 11.28.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.28.17

    * While associate bonuses held steady this year, Biglaw’s final 2017 numbers are still up in the air… firms have an inordinate amount of unpaid bills out there. Time to start cracking some heads! [New York Law Journal]

    * Prince Harry is apparently marrying a TV lawyer. [Independent]

    * The squeaky wheel gets the cert. The Supreme Court routinely runs to the rescue of on a few key judges in dissent. [Empirical SCOTUS]

    * Looks like PTAB’s IPR rules are safe. I could go into more detail but the people who care about that already know what it means based on the first sentence. [Reuters]

    * Looks like Michael Flynn really is edging toward a plea deal. [ABC News]

    * Tech GC weighs in on the plan to repeal net neutrality. For some reason, he doesn’t think a half-baked plan based on shoddy, self-serving research makes much sense. Weird. [Corporate Counsel]

    * Interesting analysis of the “commodification” problem in the legal industry. [Forbes]

    * For anyone who attended a for-profit school and got the shaft, the Project on Predatory Student Lending is out there looking to help. [Legal Services Center]

  • Morning Docket: 11.27.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.27.17

    * According to recently released tax records, a mystery donor gave more than $28 million to the Wellspring Committee to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat in Republican hands and help get Neil Gorsuch confirmed. How awesome would it be if that mystery donor were the president himself? [Law Newz]

    * The DOJ says Trump can appoint the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Federal Vacancies Act, but the Dodd-Frank Act says the deputy director will head the agency in the absence of a permanent director. Now we have two dueling CFPB directors, AND there’s a lawsuit. Yay! [The Hill; CNN]

    * FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is so against Chairman Ajit Pai’s “lousy plan” to do away with net neutrality that she wrote an op-ed to plead for help: “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality.” She encourages us to “make a ruckus” about this — and we really, really should. [Los Angeles Times]

    * The layoffs are coming! The layoffs are coming! Along with Sedgwick’s announcement that the faltering firm intends to close its doors in early 2018 comes the news that it will shutter its back office operations center. Up to 75 people are expected to lose their jobs. It’ll be a not-so happy New Year. [American Lawyer]

    * Start placing your bets: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in New Jersey’s sports betting case next week, and is expected to issue a ruling in June. What’s the over/under on the high court overturning the federal ban on sports betting? Come on, SCOTUS, make Atlantic City great again! [NJ.com]

    * Representative John Conyers Jr. will be stepping down from his platoon as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee during an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed his former aides. Even though a settlement was made in 2015, Conyers continues to deny the allegations. [New York Times]

    * The InfiLaw System has been lowering the bar for minority law students for years and years and dooming them to hundreds of thousands of dollars of nondischargeable loan debt, and the man who started it all seems relatively disappointed with what’s happened and the awful outcomes students have seen. [Wall Street Journal]

    * “I think when it’s all said and done, what you’re gonna see is there was nothing racial that motivated this.” The lawyer representing the white University of Hartford student who smeared period blood all over her black roommate’s things to get her to move out doesn’t think his client should be charged with a hate crime. [Hartford Courant]

  • Morning Docket: 11.20.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 11.20.17

    * President Trump has added five names to his slate of judicial candidates to fill a nonexistent vacancy on the Supreme Court. Welcome aboard to Judges Brett M. Kavanaugh (D.C. Circuit), Amy Coney Barrett (Seventh Circuit), and Kevin C. Newsom (Eleventh Circuit), as well as Justices Britt C. Grant (Georgia Supreme Court) and Patrick R. Wyrick (Oklahoma Supreme Court). [New York Times]

    * Did Trump obstruct justice in the Russia probe? We may soon find out. Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested all manner of documents from the Justice Department related to the firing of former FBI director James Comey. [ABC News]

    * In other Trump-related legal news, rather than continuing to have his re-election campaign or the Republican Party foot the bill for his legal representation in the Russia probe, the president has officially started to pay his own legal tab. [Reuters]

    * Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill, who was considering running for governor, bragged about the fact that he’d been “sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females.” After much backlash, he told his detractors to “lighten up” and offered a nonpology. He won’t be running for governor anymore. [Washington Post]

    * FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is about to pull the plug on net neutrality, and Americans are too distracted by Thanksgiving to care. Luckily for us, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wants open hearings to take place before a vote is held. [Slate]

    * “Probation is a trap and we must fight for Meek and everyone else unjustly sent to prison.” In the wake of rapper Meek Mill being sentenced to up to four years in prison for violating his probation, Jay-Z is letting everyone know he’s got 99 problems and the way the criminal justice system treats minorities is one of them. [New York Times]

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  • Morning Docket: 07.20.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 07.20.17

    * Buyer’s remorse: Trump says he wouldn’t have hired Jeff Sessions if he’d known Sessions would follow the law. [New York Times]

    * Your grandma is now officially part of your close family according to the Supreme Court. [SCOTUSBlog]

    * A fitting end to Trump’s “Made in America Week”? Star of “O.J.: Made In America” may get out today (or… get approval to get out in a couple months to be more accurate). [NBC News]

    * White & Case slapped with record fine over conflict of interest. [Law.com]

    * Andy Pincus mouths off about CFPB arbitration rule: “quite an extraordinary moment to see this agency, notwithstanding the election, six months into the new administration, issue this very dramatic and far-reaching rule.” You mean the election where Trump got 3 million fewer votes? Yeah, the CFPB may be more plugged into the will of the electorate than you are. [National Law Journal]

    * New York City has extended the right to counsel to tenants. Here’s one City Councilman’s statement on the measure. [City & State]

    * Second Circuit backhands federal prosecutors over foreign compelled testimony. [Forbes]

    * When GCs become propaganda mouthpieces… a look at what ISP GCs are saying about the need to repeal net neutrality rules. [Corporate Counsel]

    * Things that are a problem: Revenge Porn. Things that aren’t a problem: Revenge Editing. Someone explain that to this college. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

  • Morning Docket: 04.27.17
    Morning Docket

    Morning Docket: 04.27.17

    * Guess who gets to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s new tax plan? Lawyers and their law firms — which are largely organized as pass-through entities — will likely benefit greatly, as they’ll be able to reduce their tax rate from 39.6 percent to 15 percent. [ABA Journal]

    * The Charlotte School of Law may be on the brink of collapse, but the school is heading to court to try to shake off three of the four federal class-action lawsuits that were filed by current students and recent graduates with motions to dismiss. We’ll have more on this later today. [Law.com]

    * The Trump administration didn’t seem to fare very well during oral arguments in an immigration case yesterday. Chief Justice John Roberts certainly wasn’t impressed, and Justice Anthony Kennedy seemed even less so, dropping this benchslap: “It seems to me that your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship.” [Reuters]

    * Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will propose a rollback of the Obama-era net-neutrality rule that regulated broadband internet providers as common carriers. Critics aren’t pleased: “It makes no sense. We cannot keep the promise of net neutrality openness and freedom without the rules that ensure it.” [Big Law Business]

    * Four third-year students at Harvard Law have demanded that the administration provide clarification as to how it assesses applicants who have been accused or convicted of sexual assault. “We put forth a call for transparency and affirmative efforts demonstrating the school takes sexual assault seriously.” [Harvard Crimson]