Supreme Court

* Depressed about how awful the Supreme Court is right now? Maybe it’s not the worst. I mean it’s still bad, but there’s room for hope. [Vox]

* AI is not an artist. Judge reject copyright for AI generated artwork. [Law360]

* Biden administration wants to be able to block you. The Solicitor General will argue to the Supreme Court that government officials that blocker social media users on their own personal accounts do not violate the First Amendment. [Law.com]

* So, this is how Hunter Biden’s plea deal fell apart. [Politico]

* Asa Hutchinson understands the 14th Amendment, thinks Donald Trump is likely disqualified from running for president. [The Hill]

* White House Counsel Stuart Delery is leaving the job next month. Where will the revolving door land? Probably Gibson Dunn. [Law360]

* State judge blocks Texas law that barred Houston — and only Houston — from running its local elections after the city started electing Black women. [AP]

* NY Times mulls suing OpenAI to prevent GPT from learning how to compose whataboutism takes that put David Brooks out of a job. [NPR]

* We knew Thomson Reuters planned to buy Casetext for $650 million. It’s now official. [Legaltech News]

* Yes, you can lose your job for posting about committing vehicular manslaughter against Black people. [Reuters]

* Supreme Court could improve its legitimacy by hewing closer to rigorous policy analysis. They can’t even do rigorous historical analysis, how are they supposed to do rigorous policy analysis? [Milken Institute Review]

* Before getting indicted for joining criminal coup-spiracy, Ken Chesebro was a Larry Tribe research assistant. [ABA Journal]

* EEOC considers renewing race and gender pay reports. Raising concerns about litigation from anti-affirmative action forces who are so sure that discrimination doesn’t exist that they don’t want anyone checking their work. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Fired attorney calls cops on partner. [Roll on Friday]

* Fifth Circuit judges anoint themselves pharmaceutical scientists to determine that the FDA probably didn’t understand mifepristone when its scientists exercised their statutory and regulatory authority. So now judges are historians, neurologists, and drug scientists. Yale and Harvard JDs really prepare you to be jackasses of all trades! [Reuters]

* Speaking of judges acting as neurologists, the Federal Circuit backtracked to avoid that charge and cited Judge Pauline Newman’s reticence to hand over medical records of a cardiac event as the key justification to ban her from the court. Which fails their own twisted rationale since a risk of heart attack has no bearing on a judge’s faculties. But in any event, they’re cardiologists now, too. [Law360]

* It took a matter of hours for Trump supporters to publicly circulate the names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors. [NBC]

* By nixing student loan forgiveness, the Supreme Court likely also jacked the market by robbing it of 401(k) investment. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Law firms are generally uninterested in a fully remote workforce — which is understandable in some practice areas. But somehow this is going to get conflated with hybrid work models and some dumb firm is going to think it has cover to fully end working from home — to the delight of the firms looking to poach. [American Lawyer]

* Fox News needs a new CLO after the last one presided over the company accumulating upwards of a billion in liability. Who would want this job? [Corporate Counsel]

* Freshfields managing partner races in FIA bronze level events in his spare time. [LegalCheek]

* Keep track of who’s who in the latest indictment. [Politico]

* Meanwhile, Abbe Lowell and Winston & Strawn have stepped up their collective role in the Hunter Biden case, arguing that the original plea agreement included binding government promises that didn’t evaporate just because the judge rejected the deal. [Law360]

* CFPB going after data brokers selling people’s personal data. Yet again, the government agency making the most direct, tangible impact for people is the one that still worries that every election might be its last. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Justice Department urges Supreme Court to deal with unconstitutional social media laws out of Texas and Florida. [Reuters]

* Has “flexibility” lost all meaning when it comes to law firm office scheduling? No. Just because some law firms try to engage in flexibility newspeak, doesn’t actually change its meaning. [American Lawyer]

* AI may not be ready to replace lawyers, but the California Innocence Project is leveraging the tool to assist in pursuit of justice. [ABA Journal]

* London Kirkland team headed to Paul Weiss resigned on a Sunday in a power move. [LegalCheek]

* Supreme Court steps in to block opioid settlement that would’ve immunized the Sacklers. Looks like someone needs to start buying some luxury vacations for Clarence! [CNN]

* FEC looking into campaign deepfakes. Not to offer Donald Trump free advice, but he might want to embrace AI and argue that all those election calls were just malicious AI phonies. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Law firm closing up shop after nearly a century in business. [Law.com]

* Ed Blum is taking his effort to stamp out diversity from the classroom to the boardroom, going after a venture capital firm that invests in Black-owned businesses. [Reuters]

* University of California drawing back from Lewis Brisbois over the email scandal. Though those guys aren’t there anymore so this is more of a “how did you let this happen?” penalty. [Law360]

* Caltech and Apple have settled lawsuit over Wifi. With that kind of money, maybe they can join the Big Ten too. [9to5Mac]

* Is an LLM worth putting off a Biglaw job? [LegalCheek]

* Another day, another several hundred grand worth of unethical and undisclosed gifts for Clarence Thomas. [ProPublica]

* ABA encouraging law firms to redouble efforts to expand diversity… before the Supreme Court makes it illegal. [Bloomberg Law News]

* Lawsuit alleges private attorney took on upwards of 600 indigent client criminal cases, collecting huge sums from the city, and then not doing any work. That’s not totally true… the lawsuit alleges that the lawyer was quite diligent about filing motions for fees. [ABA Journal]

* Treasury announcing regulations to curb money laundering through real estate. Maybe Manhattan will be affordable again in 15 years! [Reuters]

* A Wisconsin police department refuses to divulge the name of officers who shoot people citing victim’s rights laws and arguing that if they shot someone they must have felt threatened and therefore are the real victims. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]

* Don’t use AI to write your firm’s web content reports the department of obvious things. [Search Engine Journal]

* Ninth Circuit says text spam is not covered by the TCPA. Great! Just in time for generative AI to remove almost every entry barrier to mass text spamming. [Law360]