Cultivated Compendium is my personal website with the occasional link to my reporting and to important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news.
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News and Reporting
April 3rd, 2015
The tension between the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to be protected against discrimination and the right to religious freedom to express condemnation of LGBT people has come to the forefront this week. Indiana Governor Mike Pence and Arkanas Governor Asa Hutchinson have both signed compromise bills that backed off some of the most overt discriminatory impacts of new religious freedom laws in those... Continue Reading
April 2nd, 2015
The Electronic Privacy Information Center and other groups have appealed the Federal Aviation Administration's refusal to create privacy regulations for drones, IDG News Service's Martyn Williams reports. The groups are appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
When the FAA proposed rules governing the commercial use of drones, those rules did not mention privacy concerns, only safety rules. Instead, the... Continue Reading
March 28th, 2015
The Otoe-Missouria Tribal Nation is suing the Connecticut Department of Banking over the agency's efforts to curb the payday loans the tribe offers over the Internet, The Connecticut Law Tribune's Jay Stapleton reports. The tribe argues Connecticut's administrative enforcement action to stop its payday-loan businesses violates its tribal sovereignty. The tribe's lending companies charge up to 700 percent.
The U.S. Court... Continue Reading
March 27th, 2015
Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a law yesterday allowing businesses to deny services to gays on the grounds of religious freedom, Reuters' Mary Wisniewski reports. LGBT-rights groups are concerned that the law will be used by businesses that do not want to provide services for same-sex weddings. Proponents of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act said it will allow business owners of all faiths to protect against being forced to... Continue Reading
March 27th, 2015
A bill is being proposed in Nevada that would place privacy restrictions on the use of drones, the Associated Press' Riley Snyder reports: the bill "would limit how police can use drones in investigations and require the state's public safety department to keep a public listing of all drones used by state agencies. The bill also criminalizes using a drone to take a clandestine photo of a person in a private setting and sets... Continue Reading
March 26th, 2015
There are two key events slated for April 20 in the legal controversy between plaintiffs lawyer Steven Donziger and Chevron, which argues that Donziger used fraud to win a $9.5 billion environmental-pollution judgment in Ecuador, The Litigation Daily's Michael D. Goldhaber reports. An arbitration panel is going to hear a three-week trial on the merits of Chevron's claims under international law that Ecuador violated its... Continue Reading
March 26th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a police shooting case--and this time the victim wasn't a man of color, but a woman with mental illness who was shot to death in her own residence, Slate's Cristian Farias reports. Farias notes that one advocacy group estimates that at least half of all people shot to death by police have mental health issues. One issue in the case is "the extent to which the Americans With Disabilities Act... Continue Reading
March 26th, 2015
The Massachusetts Supreme Court, 5-2, has ruled that inmates serving life sentences for murders committed while they were juveniles are constitutionally entitled to be represented by lawyers and to have access to expert witnesses at their parole hearings, NECN reports. The 5-member majority said providing defendants access to lawyers and to experts would ensure they have meaningful access to argue for parole.
The court also ruled... Continue Reading
March 25th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court, 6-3, has ruled in favor of a former UPS employee who sued for pregnancy discrimination, Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson reports. Justice Stephen Breyer, author of the majority opinion, said the issue is why UPS did not accomodate Peggy Young with lighter duty during her pregnancy when it offered such accommodations to employees with on-the-job injuries or to satisfy the American with Disabilities Act. Under the... Continue Reading
March 25th, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in a couple of cases yesterday over whether homeowners can void mortgages that are completely underwater, Supreme Court Brief's Marcia Coyle reports. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit allowed homeowners whose homes were worth less than their primary mortgage to void a second mortgage. Bank of America appealed.
At issue is whether a bankruptcy court can "strip off" those... Continue Reading
March 24th, 2015
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled last week that a prosecutor must pay attorney fees to The Cincinnati Enquirer for withholding 911 recordings, that newspaper's Kevin Grasha reports. The prosecutor did not have legal authority to withhold the recordings from a murder case, the court ruled, and must pay attorney fees to the newspaper. Continue Reading
March 24th, 2015
The first lawsuits have been filed to challenge the Federal Communications Commission's new rules prohibiting internet service providers from treating Internet traffic unequally, The New York Times' Rebecca R. Ruiz reports. The United States Telecom Association, as well as a small broadband provider in Texas, have filed the lawsuits against the rules that reclassify broadband Internet providers as common carriers and would... Continue Reading
March 24th, 2015
The New York Times' Adam Liptak writes that corporations, rather than protesters and civil rights activists, are becoming the main beneficiaries of the First Amendment. Harvard law professor John C. Coates IV has conducted a study finding that "'corporations have begun to displace individuals as the direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment.'" Coates found that First Amendment cases involving businesses have risen... Continue Reading
March 21st, 2015
Legislation has been introduced in Delaware to open up that state's two public universities to public-records requests, The News Journal's Jon Offredo reports. A similar effort was made last year, but the bill was narrowed to only require the universities to supply documents related to contracts funded with taxpayer dollars. Delaware and Pennsylvania are the only states that exempt public universities from open records laws.
The... Continue Reading
March 21st, 2015
Utah has enacted a law that allows county clerks to opt out of performing same-sex marriage on religious grounds as long as somene else in their office is willing to perform them, reports Fox 13, the affiliate in Salt Lake City: "The bill was an attempt to address religious objections over same-sex marriage, while also guaranteeing what the courts had ordered when it legalized such unions last year." Continue Reading
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