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Supreme Court won’t upset Arkansas anti-Israel boycott law
Law Firm Press Release |
2023/02/21 13:51
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to step into a legal fight over state laws that require contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel.
The justices rejected an appeal on behalf of an alternative weekly newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, that objected to a state law that reduces fees paid to contractors that refuse to sign the pledge.
The full federal appeals court in St. Louis upheld the law, overturning a three-judge panel’s finding that it violated constitutional free speech rights.
Similar measures in Arizona, Kansas and Texas were initially blocked by courts, prompting lawmakers to focus only on larger contracts. Arkansas’ law applies to contracts worth $1,000 or more.
Republican legislators in Arkansas who drafted the 2017 law have said it wasn’t prompted by a specific incident in the state. It followed similar restrictions enacted by other states in response to a movement promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions of Israeli institutions and businesses over the country’s treatment of Palestinians. Israeli officials said the campaign masked a deeper goal of delegitimizing and even destroying their country.
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Protasiewicz leads in money race for Wisconsin Supreme Court
Law Firm Press Release |
2023/01/18 15:01
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Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz raised more money over the last six months of 2022 than her three rivals combined in the pivotal race that will determine majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Protasiewicz along with Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell are running as liberal candidates in the race. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly are the conservative candidates.
The top two vote-getters in the Feb. 21 primary will advance to the April 4 election. The winner replaces conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, who is retiring.
Races for the Wisconsin Supreme Court are officially nonpartisan, but candidates for years have aligned with either conservatives or liberals as the contests have become expensive partisan battles. The conservative-controlled court for more than a decade has issued consequential rulings in favor of Republicans, with major cases looming that could determine the future of abortion laws, redistricting and rules of elections.
The candidates and outside interests that have promised to spend millions on the race have been relatively quiet up to this point, more than a month before the primary. But those on both sides have made clear they see the race as crucial in the battleground state, with whoever winning determining ideological control of the court heading into the 2024 presidential race and at least a year after.
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Former Nazi camp secretary voices regret, seeks acquittal
Law Firm Press Release |
2022/12/06 14:07
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Lawyers for a 97-year-old former secretary to the SS commander of Nazi Germany’s Stutthof concentration camp asked Tuesday for their client to be acquitted, arguing that she didn’t know about the atrocities committed at the camp located in what is now northern Poland.
Irmgard Furchner has been on trial for over a year at the Itzehoe state court in northern Germany. In her closing statement, Furchner said she was sorry for what had happened and regretted that she had been there at the time, according to a court spokesman.
Her lawyers requested her acquittal, arguing that the evidence hadn’t shown beyond doubt that Furchner knew about the systematic killings at the camp, meaning there was no proof of intent as required for criminal liability.
Prosecutors accused Furchner of being part of the apparatus that helped the Nazis’ Stutthof camp function during World War II. In their closing arguments last month, they called for her to be convicted as an accessory to murder and given a two-year suspended sentence.
Tens of thousands of people died at Stutthof and its satellite camps, or on death marches at the end of World War II.
Furchner, who made headlines last year when she absconded from trial, is being tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
The court said a verdict is expected on Dec. 20.
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Justices asked to hear dog toy dispute. Will they bite?
Law Firm Press Release |
2022/11/21 11:03
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The company that makes Jack Daniel’s is howling mad over a squeaking dog toy that parodies the whiskey’s signature bottle. Now, the liquor company is barking at the door of the Supreme Court.
Jack Daniel’s has asked the justices to hear its case against the manufacturer of the plastic Bad Spaniels toy. The high court could say as soon as Monday whether the justices will agree. A number of major companies from the makers of Campbell Soup to outdoor brand Patagonia and jeans maker Levi Strauss have urged the justices to take what they say is an important case for trademark law.
The toy that has Jack Daniel’s so doggone mad mimics the square shape of its whisky bottle as well as its black-and-white label and amber-colored liquor while adding what it calls “poop humor.” While the original bottle has the words “Old No. 7 brand” and “Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey,” the parody proclaims: “The Old No. 2 on Your Tennessee Carpet.” Instead of the original’s note that it is 40% alcohol by volume, the parody says it’s “43% Poo by Vol.” and “100% Smelly.”
The toy retails for about $13 to $20 and the packaging notes in small font: “This product is not affiliated with Jack Daniel Distillery.”
The toy’s maker says Jack Daniel’s can’t take a joke. “It is ironic that America’s leading distiller of whiskey both lacks a sense of humor and does not recognize when it — and everyone else — has had enough,” lawyers for Arizona-based VIP Products wrote the high court. They told the justices that Jack Daniel’s has “waged war” against the company for “having the temerity to produce a pun-filled parody” of its bottle.
But Jack Daniel’s lead attorney, Lisa Blatt, made no bones about the company’s position in her filing.
“To be sure, everyone likes a good joke. But VIP’s profit-motivated ‘joke’ confuses consumers by taking advantage of Jack Daniel’s hard-earned goodwill,” she wrote for the Louisville, Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corp., Jack Daniel’s parent company.
Blatt wrote that a lower court decision provides “near-blanket protection” to humorous trademark infringement. And she said it has “broad and dangerous consequences,” pointing to children who were hospitalized after eating marijuana-infused products that mimicked candy packaging.
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Ohio governor’s race split by pandemic, abortion, gun rights
Law Firm Press Release |
2022/10/20 12:04
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Just three years ago, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, a Democrat, stood side by side, promising to push together for gun control proposals after a gunman killed nine people and wounded more than two dozen in the city’s nightclub district. It was a short-lived pledge.
Allies then, DeWine and Whaley are now facing each other in a partisan governor’s race defined by events that neither could have predicted at the time: the coronavirus pandemic and a U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
They no longer see eye-to-eye on guns either. Their gun control proposals never came about, and since the Dayton mass shooting DeWine signed legislation loosening gun restrictions — including a so-called stand your ground bill eliminating the duty to retreat before using force and another making concealed weapons permits optional for those legally allowed to carry a weapon.
“The politics got hard and Mike DeWine folded,” Whaley said this year.
Both candidates survived contested primaries to face each other in November. DeWine overcame two far-right opponents who criticized him for his aggressive decisions early in the pandemic, including a business shut-down order and a statewide mask mandate. Despite more than four decades in Ohio politics, DeWine failed to secure 50% of the primary vote.
Whaley easily defeated former Cincinnati mayor John Cranley and is now trying to regain a seat last won by Democrats 16 years ago.
Since the primary, Whaley has hammered DeWine for signing those gun bills and for his anti-abortion positions, including his 2019 signing into law of Ohio’s anti-abortion “ fetal heartbeat bills.”
But despite criticism that DeWine took from members of his own party over his approach to the coronavirus and Democratic furor over the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, most polls show DeWine comfortably ahead. Ultimately, that still comes down to DeWine’s long years in Ohio politics, said Tom Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin-Wallace University.
Sutton noted that a September Marist poll found that 42% of adults statewide had either never heard of Whaley — who also ran briefly for governor in 2018 — or didn’t know how to rate her. Meanwhile, DeWine has previously won statewide races for lieutenant governor, U.S. senator, attorney general and governor.
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