A federal judge in Alabama has denied the United States' request for a
preliminary injunction blocking the most controversial
portions of a recently-enacted Alabama law dealing with immigration
enforcement. The judge found that the U.S. government failed to meet
the requirements for such an injunction.
The Department of Justice and a group of 26 states have filed
simultaneous petitions for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court
as part of the states' constitutional challenge to the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act. The petitions seek review of a
recent decision by the Eleventh Circuit. That decision held that the
individual mandate portion of the Act was unconstitutional, but also
upheld the constitutionality of the majority of the Act.
Groupon, a daily deal website, has been hit with a second lawsuit in as
many months alleging failure to pay overtime to its employees. In the
current lawsuit, a "deal-vetter", an employee who reviews Groupon sales
paperwork to ensure completeness, has filed suit for herself and on
behalf of others similarly situated claiming that Groupon violated state
and federal law by failing to pay overtime for work in excess of 40
hours. The suit follows a similar suit filed in August on behalf of
Groupon account executives.
Jaycee Dugard, the woman kidnapped as a child by convicted sex offender
Phillip Garrido and imprisoned for 18 years, has filed a lawsuit under
the Federal Tort Claims Act seeking damages for the federal government's
allegedly negligent handling of Garrido's parole.
The repeal of the law known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has gone into
effect, as outlined in this memo from the Department of Defense. The
memo gives effect to the implementation of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Repeal Act of 2010 and announces that "effective, today statements about
sexual orientation or lawful acts of homosexual conduct will not be
considered as a bar to military service... ."
A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered the unsealing of digital
recordings made of court proceedings in the challenge to
Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that created a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. The judge issued the order
after finding no compelling reason to keep the recordings under seal.
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted an application for a stay of
execution by a Texas man just hours before the execution was scheduled
to take place. The stay of execution is temporary pending the
disposition of the condemned man's application for a writ of certiorari
to argue his claims before the Court that his death sentence was tainted
by the racially prejudicial testimony of a psychiatrist.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard have released a report on their investigation of the causes of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil right and the subsequent oil spill. The report contains the conclusion that BP, Transocean and Halliburton violated numerous federal offshore safety regulations.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency has filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions alleging violations of federal securities law and common law in the sale of mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FHFA claims that the marketing and sales descriptions provided by the financial institutions misrepresented the nature and risk of the securities in question.
