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
July 17th, 2014
According to the Associated Press, the Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation is being accused of violating a law meant to protect the cultural property of American Indian tribes. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has told the Interior Department to investigate if the bureau has violated the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which provides a way for American Indian remains and other cultural property to be... Continue Reading
July 17th, 2014
Florida's ban on same-sex marriage was struck down today by Florida Circuit Judge Luis M. Garcia, the Associated Press reports. Garcia characterized the issue as one of equal protection for a powerless minority: "'Whether it is ... when Nazi supremacists won the right to march in Skokie, Illinois, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood; or when a black woman wanted to marry a white man in Virginia; or when black children wanted to go... Continue Reading
July 17th, 2014
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney has ruled that decades-long delays in carrying out the death penalty sentence of an inmate violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel or unusual punishment, the Los Angeles Times reports. Whether the ruling will be upheld on appeal is uncertain. "'I think it has a shot in the 9th Circuit, but I don't know about the U.S. Supreme Court,'" Gerald Uelmen, a Santa... Continue Reading
July 14th, 2014
After a Colorado state judge ruled that the state's same-sex marriage ban is "hanging on by a thread," at least three counties have been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the Associated Press reports.
In one decision, Adams District Judge C. Scott Crabtree ruled Wednesday that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause and the arguments in support of the ban about... Continue Reading
July 8th, 2014
USA Today reports that the incentives being provided by the federal government to get doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic health records are being offered even though those EHRs "currently make it easier for health care providers to defraud government-paid health programs." The issue, according to USA Today, is that the EHRs don't have auditing safeguards in place to prevent fraud or the safeguards are "vulnerable... Continue Reading
July 8th, 2014
Investigative journalist Will Potter is hoping to get around ag gag laws making it illegal to sneak onto agricultural operations by using drones to photograph factory farms from the air, Fast Company reports. He has started a Kickstarter campaign to pay for drones, legal expenses and video production. One thing he hopes to expose are farms that generate meat labeled as "humane" or "free range" "for what they are:... Continue Reading
July 6th, 2014
The Washington Post has a compelling feature of Nora Sandigo, who is a guardian to hundreds of U.S. children born to undocumented immigrants who are subject to deportation. Sandigo began caring for the U.S.-citizen children of deported parents five years ago and she has become "Miami's most popular solution to a growing problem in immigration enforcement affecting what the government refers to as 'mixed-status families.'... Continue Reading
July 6th, 2014
The Canada Supreme Court ruled for the first time in favor of issuing a declaration of aboriginal title, or that an aboriginal group owns their land, David C. Nahwegahbow writes for CBC. The decision was in favor of the Tsilhqot'in Nation, who reside in the British Columbia province and who say they were not consulted about forestry operations within thier lands. According to Nahwegahbow, the Supreme Court... Continue Reading
July 6th, 2014
The Washington Post has another Edward Snowden-related piece: those who are not targeted in surveillance by the National Security Agency far outnumber the foreigners who are legally targeted. Nine of 10 accountholders found in a cache of intercepted conversations were not the intended surveillance targets "but were caught in a net the agency has cast for someone else," the Post reports. The newspaper reviewed 160,000 email and... Continue Reading
July 5th, 2014
Last month, the Iowa Supreme Court threw out the 25-year prison sentence of a man who pled guilty to criminal transmission of HIV for failing to inform a sexual partner of his HIV-positive status, ProPublica reports. The Supreme Court, 6-1, determined that the defendant's defense lawyer provided ineffective counsel when he allowed his client to plead guilty to a charge for which there was no factual basis. Many states criminalize HIV-... Continue Reading
July 5th, 2014
A series of data breaches have put higher pressure on Corporate America, including retailers like Target, to tighten its cybersecurity. But the health care sector is not engaged on the security of electronic health records and faces the risk of hackers exposing sensitive patient information, Politico reports: "As health data become increasingly digital and the use of electronic health records booms, thieves see patient... Continue Reading
July 5th, 2014
A lawsuit over a historical post office in my local community of Stamford, Connecticut, exemplifies the clash between the United States Postal Service's efforts to modernize and downsize its facilities and laws meant to protect America's historical heritage and the local environment. I wrote about the dispute for the Connecticut Law Tribune:
In the early 1900s, federal buildings tended to be monumental—... Continue Reading
July 4th, 2014
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking $84,000 in attorney fees as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Courthouse News reports. EFF sued the Department of Homeland Security and obtained 700 pages on the use of drones by U.S. Customs and border Patrol.
EFF says it is entitled to the attorney fees because it alleges its FOIA lawsuit was the catalyst for the records to be released, Courthouse News also reports.
July 4th, 2014
Four people, including an attorney working as a legal observer, were awarded $185,000 this week for being arrested wrongfully during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City, Reuters reports. U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan already ruled the arrests were illegal; the trial was held to determine the amount of damages. Continue Reading
July 4th, 2014
An audit by the Transportation Department's inspector general has found that the Federal Aviation Administration is going to miss the September 2015 deadline for integrating drones into the national airspace, The Washington Post reported earlier this week. While Congress legalized drones in 2012, the FAA was supposed to come up with rules by September 30, 2015. Continue Reading
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