FedSoc Forums

In June 2023, the Coutts bank closed the account of British politician Nigel Farage. While NatWest, the owner of Coutts, initially claimed that Farage failed to meet the Coutts eligibility criteria of holding £1,000,000 or more in his account, it was later revealed that Farage's account was closed in part as Coutts felt that his beliefs and values did not align with theirs. Debanking, the pr...

United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira marked the first federal indictment of a former U.S. president. The prosecution, led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, argued that Trump illegally retained hundreds of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving office and obstructed efforts to retrieve them. He said this posed a national...

Some Intellectual Property experts contend that American patent reliability has been in decline for 20 years. They point to the threat of inter partes review, the misuse of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act, the imposition of reasonable or reference price clauses, direct government price-setting, and, most importantly, an inability to obtain an injunction after a finding of infringement. In...

On August 20, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas struck down the Federal Trade Commission’s Non-Complete Rule in its entirety, finding it exceed FTC’s statutory authority and was arbitrary and capricious. The Rule, adopted in April, banned virtually all new noncompete clauses in employment contracts and invalidated existing noncompete agreements ex...

High school French teacher Peter Vlaming was fired from his job in West Point, Virginia, for declining to refer to a female student using male pronouns. Vlaming filed suit in state court, alleging that the school board had violated his rights to the free exercise of religion and free speech under the Virginia Constitution. Late last year, the Virginia Supreme Court held that the Virginia Constitut...

Since its earliest days, the Biden Administration has been clear as to its goal of addressing what it sees as a crisis of student debt by forgiving notable segments of existing student loans. To that end, it has pursued several plans -- the attempted forgiveness of loans under the HEROES Act struck down in Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the SAVE Plan which is currently being litigated, and further yet-...

The development of standing jurisprudence has been inextricably intertwined with the growth of the administrative state over the past 60 years and the bevy of new statutory rights, privileges, obligations, constraints, and interbranch dynamics that came with it. Over the past three terms, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued numerous opinions that are rich with standing doctrine. Three new voices in...

Some Intellectual Property experts contend that American patent reliability has been in decline for 20 years. They point to the threat of inter partes review, the misuse of march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act, the imposition of reasonable or reference price clauses, direct government price-setting, and, most importantly, an inability to obtain an injunction after a finding of infringement. In...

In Vidal v. Elster (the “Trump Too Small” case), the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal limitation on registering trademarks that include other people’s names. All the Justices agreed that, though the limitation was content-based, it didn’t need to be judged under strict scrutiny. But behind this unanimity was a major rift about whether the Court sho...

In Lindenberg v. Jackson National Life Ins. Co., 912 F.3d 348 (2018), the Sixth Circuit declared unconstitutional Tennessee’s law capping punitive damages based on the Tennessee constitution. But in the wake of Lindenberg, Tennessee state courts continue to reduce punitive damage awards in reliance on the statutory cap because the Tennessee Supreme Court has not directly addressed the la...

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), pro-choice advocates have argued that restrictions on abortion violate freedom of religion in some circumstances. A recent decision by the Indiana Court of Appeals, academic articles, and media stories have taken up these religious free-exercise challenges to abortion laws. This...

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), long a favored forum for patent infringement disputes, has recently come under fire for duplicating the functions of the federal courts where patents disputes – often the same ones that are before the ITC – are litigated. In this panel, Professors Jorge L. Contreras, Michael Doane, and F. Scott Kieff will discuss the pros and cons...

The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, doggedly opposed by organized labor, included compliance with practicable portions of the federal rules of evidence and civil procedure, barring the Board from treating supervisors and independent contractors as protected employees, expressly incorporating employer free-speech rights, and more. Where are the Taft-Hartley amendme...

Should private attorneys general enforce laws? Proponents argue that this approach allows individuals and private entities to act in the public interest, supplementing often overburdened or under-resourced government agencies. This can lead to more comprehensive enforcement of laws, particularly in areas such as environmental protection, consumer rights, and civil liberties, where violations might...

In January 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) initiated an “emergency collection” of information about the electricity consumption of leading cryptocurrency mining companies operating in the United States. EIA’s Administrator declared the agency’s intent to analyze and report on the energy implications of cryptocurrency mining activities...

On Thursday, July 25, the Washington, D.C. Lawyers Chapter gathered for the annual Supreme Court Round Up discussing the 2023-2024 term. Featuring: Hon. Paul D. ClementPartner,Clement & Murphy PLLC Mayflower Hotel (Grand Ballroom)1127 Connecticut Ave NWWashington, D.C. 20036

In 2017, New York passed a law requiring employers to cover abortions in their health insurance plans. New York initially planned to exempt religious employers with sincere religious objections but later changed the exemption to protect only religious entities whose purpose is to inculcate religious values and who primarily employ and serve coreligionists. This exempted non-objecting ministries wh...

The legal status of cannabis has been a controversial issue ever since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA) prohibited its distribution under federal law. That act classified cannabis as a Schedule I drug, a category for drugs that have no legitimate medical use and cannot be used safely even under medical supervision. Schedules II-V are for drugs that have a legitimate medical use and pose...

In October of 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new standards for air quality, some of which had to do with air pollution which is carried across state borders, from “upwind” states to “downwind” states. The EPA required these states to submit plans of implementation but then rejected 21 of those plans as insufficient, instead publishing a federal pl...

Garland v. Cargill concerned whether bump stocks are considered "machineguns" as defined by Title 26 of the United States Code. Impacting the realms of both Second Amendment and administrative law, the case raised questions concerning the role of lenity, the applicability of the (then standing) Chevron Doctrine, and the nature of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)&rs...

In March of this year, the U.S. Justice Department and 16 states filed a sweeping complaint against Apple alleging that it has monopolized and attempted to monopolize US markets for smartphones and “performance” smartphones. At issue is an array of current and past Apple policies and restrictions governing the way that third party applications access and engage on the iPhone pl...

Join us for a webinar featuring Manhattan Institute fellow Tim Rosenberger, who will delve into the landmark case of Hile v. Michigan. On November 6th, 2023, the Sixth Circuit upheld Michigan's Blaine Amendment, which bars public financial support for parochial and other nonpublic schools, raising significant questions about religious discrimination and equal protection under the law. The plaintif...

On July 9th, the Federal Trade Commission released a Staff Interim Report on the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Industry. This panel will discuss the state of the PBM marketplace, the staff’s key findings, Commission statements surrounding the Report, and how this Report compares to earlier FTC market studies. Featuring: Rani Habash, Partner, Dechert Dan Gilman, Senior Scholar, Competition Pol...

In October of 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new standards for air quality, some of which had to do with air pollution which is carried across state borders, from “upwind” states to “downwind” states. The EPA required these states to submit plans of implementation but then rejected 21 of those plans as insufficient, instead publish...

Apprenticeship has been a significant focus of the Biden administration, and previously the Trump administration, with each taking markedly different approaches. The Trump Administration expanded apprenticeship through regulations making programs easier to establish through industry-recognized apprenticeship programs. The Biden administration rescinded these regulations and is now proceeding with...