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Public Policy
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October 24, 2024
Court Pauses $8.5B Handbag Merger For FTC Challenge
A New York federal judge on Thursday paused the planned $8.5 billion merger between the owners of Michael Kors and Coach while the Federal Trade Commission challenges the deal over concerns about "accessible luxury" handbags.
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October 24, 2024
DC Circ. Ruling Endangers Distressed Texas Area, Port Says
The owner of the Port of Brownsville in Texas is urging the D.C. Circuit to consider the devastating impacts a panel's decision to vacate Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reauthorization orders for two major liquefied natural gas projects threatens to impose on the region.
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October 24, 2024
Biden Issues Guidelines For National Security Uses Of AI
President Joe Biden issued a memo Thursday on the development and use of artificial intelligence for national security, directing actions such as shoring up the security of computer chip supply chains and ensuring AI is not used to commit human rights violations.
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October 24, 2024
Conn. High Court Snapshot: $13M Tax Appeals, Will Dispute
The Connecticut Supreme Court's second term of the 2024-2025 season will commence Monday with a dispute over whether an attorney bungled a will that sought to divide a $845,368 TD Ameritrade account among five beneficiaries, only one of whom received any cash.
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October 24, 2024
FCC Finds Fraught Turf In Planning The Future Of 4.9 GHz
The Federal Communications Commission wants to dedicate unused portions of the 4.9 gigahertz band to both public safety and 5G, but has discovered just how hard it is to please everyone in an era of dwindling spectrum resources.
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October 24, 2024
Pa. Justices OK In-Person Votes For Nixed Mail-In Ballots
Voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania whose mail-in ballots are rejected as defective and uncountable haven't technically "voted," and can replace those votes with provisional ballots to be verified and counted, a split state Supreme Court ruled late Wednesday.
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October 24, 2024
Feds Want Leniency For Key Witness At Bankman-Fried Trial
Prosecutors asked a Manhattan federal judge for leniency when sentencing a former FTX executive who they said provided "substantial" assistance and testimony in the successful prosecution of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange's founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
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October 24, 2024
Ohio Judge Urged To Enforce Block On Voting Citizenship Qs
Just weeks before Election Day, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose allegedly restored Buckeye State voting law provisions that a court deemed unconstitutional in 2006 for requiring naturalized citizens to provide additional proof of citizenship, according to an emergency motion seeking to enforce the 18-year-old order.
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October 24, 2024
Hemp Industry Group Sues Texas City, DEA Over Raids
A hemp industry trade group has sued the city of Allen, Texas, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Texas federal court, alleging they raided and seized a small business' hemp inventory and arrested its manager in violation of state and federal law.
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October 24, 2024
EPA Finalizes New Standards For Lead Paint Dust
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it's finalizing standards to better protect people from lead paint dust exposure, reducing the level considered hazardous and the levels that can remain after abatement work.
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October 24, 2024
DOL Says H-2A Farmworker Protections Must Remain
The U.S. Department of Labor urged a Georgia federal court to uphold its new protections for foreign H-2A farmworkers, arguing that conservative-led states' bid to block its rule should fail because safeguarding foreign workers is key to ensuring better pay and conditions for American-born farmworkers.
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October 24, 2024
Minn. Tax Court Won't Cut Value Of $1M Home
A residential property in Minnesota was correctly valued by a local assessor at about $1 million, the state tax court ruled, saying the owners' sales comparison analysis of the value was insufficient to cast doubt on the county's determination.
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October 24, 2024
Mass. Justices Reject Meta, Google 'Wiretap' Claims
Massachusetts' highest court on Thursday found that website operators' use of tracking software like Meta Pixel and Google Analytics does not violate the state's wiretap law, drawing a sharp dissent from one justice who said the legislature will now need to "correct" the court's mistake.
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October 24, 2024
Mining Eligible In Final Regs For Energy Manufacturing Credit
The U.S. Treasury Department's final rules released Thursday on a valuable tax credit for manufacturing key components and materials used in clean energy technologies allow producers to take into account the costs to mine and extract critical minerals.
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October 24, 2024
State Dept. Counterterrorism Expert Joins Jenner In DC
A former U.S. Department of State counterterrorism expert and National Security Council director has left public service for his first-ever role in private practice, joining Jenner & Block LLP's team in Washington, D.C., as special counsel, the firm announced Thursday.
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October 23, 2024
Boeing Machinists Reject Labor Deal, Prolonging Strike
A majority of roughly 33,000 Boeing employees represented by the International Association of Machinists voted Wednesday to reject a new labor contract that included a 35% wage increase over four years, prolonging a nearly six-week strike that has hampered Boeing's production and cash flow.
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October 23, 2024
Conn. Judge Rejects Utility's Defenses In Site Cleanup Battle
An Avangrid Inc. unit hasn't sufficiently rebutted the Connecticut government's claims that it's taking too long to clean up the long-defunct English Station power plant site in New Haven under a partial consent order, a state court judge has ruled.
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October 23, 2024
Split 9th Circ. Says Asylum 'Metering' Policy Flouts US Law
A split Ninth Circuit panel on Wednesday said federal immigration law requires U.S. officials to inspect asylum-seekers at the border, rejecting the Biden administration's argument that noncitizens must be physically standing on U.S soil to claim asylum.
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October 23, 2024
Pa. County Defends Climate Change Suit Against BP, Chevron
BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and other major oil companies can't argue that a federal environmental statute sinks a climate change lawsuit because the claims fall outside of the law's purview, a Pennsylvania county told a state court.
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October 23, 2024
Jury Awards Fired SF Rail Workers Over $7.8M In Vax Trial
A California federal jury on Wednesday awarded combined damages of more than $7.8 million to six former Bay Area Rapid Transit District employees after finding the rail agency committed religious discrimination by refusing to exempt them from a COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
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October 23, 2024
Common Ownership Dooms Bids For 9 Low-Power Stations
The Federal Communications Commission said it is not approving nine applications for new low-power FM stations because the entities that applied for them appear to actually all be part of the same organization, which violates the agency's rules on owning multiple stations.
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October 23, 2024
EPA's GHG Power Plant Rule Is Achievable, Scientists Say
A half-dozen prominent scientists and engineers have told the D.C. Circuit that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's plan to tap carbon capture and sequestration technology to reduce power plants' greenhouse gas pollution is on point and readily achievable.
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October 23, 2024
CFPB's Chopra Touts Open Banking Rule After Industry Rips It
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra on Wednesday promoted his agency's new open banking rule to a fintech audience amid stiff opposition from banks, saying "incumbents" can't be allowed to box out the competition that expanded financial data-sharing will enable.
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October 23, 2024
Biden Names Judicial Nominees For Calif. Courts
President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced two new judicial nominees for the Central District of California and Southern District of California, picks that include a Los Angeles County judge and federal magistrate judge.
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October 23, 2024
Advocacy Group Denies Political Bent In Fox Philly Fight
An advocacy group is coming out swinging against claims its attempts to strip a Philadelphia Fox television station of its license for peddling conspiracy theories about the 2020 election is partisan, telling the FCC that its petition is about the station's deliberate choice "to lie to the American people."
Expert Analysis
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Opinion
To Lower Drug Prices, Harris Must Address Patent Thickets
If Vice President Kamala Harris is serious about her pledge to address high drug prices, she must begin by closing loopholes that allow pharmaceutical companies to develop patent thickets that can deter generic or biosimilar companies from entering the market, says Tahir Amin at the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge.
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How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations
Textualists at the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly considering new methods such as corpus linguistics and surveys to evaluate what a statute's text communicates to an ordinary reader, while lower courts even mull large language models like ChatGPT as supplements, says Kevin Tobia at Georgetown Law.
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ESA Ruling May Jeopardize Gulf Of Mexico Drilling Operations
A Maryland federal court's recent decision in Sierra Club v. National Marine Fisheries Service, vacating key Endangered Species Act analyses of oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, may create a gap in guidance that could expose operators to enforcement risk and even criminal liability, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.
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The State Law Landscape After Justices' Social Media Ruling
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent NetChoice ruling on social media platforms’ First Amendment rights, it’s still unclear if state content moderation laws are constitutional, leaving online operators to face a patchwork of regulation, and the potential for the issue to return to the high court, say attorneys at Crowell & Moring.
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What's Next For Federal Preemption In Financial Services
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's review of its preemption interpretations and growing pressure from state regulators signal potential changes ahead for preemption in U.S. financial services, and the path forward will likely involve a reevaluation of the entire framework, say attorneys at Clark Hill.
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Avoiding Corporate Political Activity Pitfalls This Election Year
As Election Day approaches, corporate counsel should be mindful of the complicated rules around companies engaging in political activities, including super PAC contributions, pay-to-play prohibitions and foreign agent restrictions, say attorneys at Covington.
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Opinion
Congress Must Do More To Bolster ERISA Protections
As the Employee Retirement Income Security Act turns 50 this month, we applaud Congress for championing a statute that protects worker and retiree rights, but further action is needed to ban arbitration clauses in plan provisions and codify regulations imperiled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Chevron ruling, say Michelle Yau and Eleanor Frisch at Cohen Milstein.
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Increased Scrutiny Raises Int'l Real Estate Transaction Risks
Recently proposed regulations expanding the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States' oversight, a White House divestment order and state-level legislative efforts signal increasing scrutiny of real estate transactions that may trigger national security concerns, say Luciano Racco and Aleksis Fernández Caballero at Foley Hoag.
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Navigating Cybersecurity Rule Changes For Gov't Contractors
Excerpt from Practical Guidance
As federal contractors evaluate the security of their IT systems, they should keep in mind numerous changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulations and the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement recently promulgated to meet new cyber threats, says William Stowe at KBR.
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Financial Incentives May Alleviate Affordable Housing Crisis
There is a wide array of financial incentives and assistance that the government can provide to both real estate developers and individuals to chip away at the housing affordability problem from multiple angles, say Eric DeBear and Madeline Williams at Cozen.
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How Fund Advisers Can Limit Election Year Pay-To-Play Risks
With Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz now the Democratic candidate for vice president, politically active investment advisers should take practical steps to avoid triggering strict pay-to-play rules that can lead to fund managers facing mutli-year timeouts from working with public funds after contributing to sitting officials, say attorneys at Dechert.
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FTC Focus: What Access To Patent Settlements Would Mean
Settling parties should adopt a series of practice tips, including specifying rationales to support specific terms, as the Federal Trade Commission seeks to expand its access to settlements before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, say Shannon McGowan and David Munkittrick at Proskauer.
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Why Attorneys Should Consider Community Leadership Roles
Volunteering and nonprofit board service are complementary to, but distinct from, traditional pro bono work, and taking on these community leadership roles can produce dividends for lawyers, their firms and the nonprofit causes they support, says Katie Beacham at Kilpatrick.
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How NJ Temp Equal Pay Survived A Constitutional Challenge
The Third Circuit recently gave the New Jersey Temporary Workers' Bill of Rights a new lease on life by systematically dismantling multiple theories of the act's unconstitutionality brought by staffing agencies hoping to delay their new equal pay and benefits obligations, say attorneys at Duane Morris.
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Firms Must Offer A Trifecta Of Services In Post-Chevron World
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturning Chevron deference, law firms will need to integrate litigation, lobbying and communications functions to keep up with the ramifications of the ruling and provide adequate counsel quickly, says Neil Hare at Dentons.