Weil Gotshal Plans to Dissolve, the US Sues Google Over a Returning Reservist & the White House Press Fight Moves to the Oval Office

This Day in Legal History: Browder v. GayleOn November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower-court decision in Browder v. Gayle, holding that segregation on the buses of Montgomery, Alabama, was unconstitutional. The case was brought by four Black women, Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald, each of whom had been mistreated or arrested for refusing to give up their seats. Their lawyer, Fred Gray, filed it in federal court in February 1956, in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott that had begun after Rosa Parks’s arrest the previous December.A three-judge federal court ruled for the plaintiffs that June, 2 to 1, holding that Brown v. Board of Education’s rejection of “separate but equal” applied beyond schools. The Supreme Court affirmed without a full opinion, in a one-line summary order. It denied rehearing in December, and on December 20, 1956, after the order was delivered to city officials, the boycott ended. Black riders returned to Montgomery’s buses after 381 days.The significance of November 13, 1956 is that a single-sentence order from the Supreme Court helped end segregation on public transportation, and with it one of the defining campaigns of the civil rights movement. The boycott showed the power of collective action; the lawsuit turned that pressure into a binding legal rule. It’s also a reminder, relevant to how much law this year has been made on the Court’s emergency docket, that short, unexplained orders can carry enormous consequences.Two weeks ago we covered the collapse of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Now its partners have approved a wind-down plan, and the biggest pieces of the firm are being picked up. Gibson Dunn is hiring Weil’s private funds practice, a team of about 120 lawyers, including 23 partners, across New York, Washington, and London. Among them is Jonathon Soler, one of Weil’s co-managing partners, along with the heads of its private funds practice in New York and London. Weil’s other co-managing partner, Ramona Nee, is moving to Kirkland & Ellis with a team of about 40 private equity and finance lawyers. These large group moves, sometimes called “lift-outs,” raise legal questions that are worth understanding. First, lawyers generally can’t be bound by non-compete agreements. Under the ethics rules, a law firm can’t restrict a lawyer’s right to practice after leaving, because clients have the right to choose their lawyers, and they can follow lawyers to their new firm. Second, departing partners still owe fiduciary duties to their current firm until they leave. That generally means they can prepare to leave, but they shouldn’t secretly solicit clients or colleagues in ways that harm the firm before they go, and clients have to be told about their options fairly. In an orderly wind-down approved by the partnership, many of those tensions ease, because the firm itself is helping its practices find new homes. But as we discussed, dissolutions often still lead to litigation over money: clawbacks of partner distributions, unpaid compensation, and fees from matters taken to new firms. Private funds work is valuable, recurring, and highly relationship-driven, so moving the whole team together makes sense for clients and for Gibson Dunn. It also shows how a firm’s value lives in its people and client relationships, which is why it can disappear so quickly.Gibson Dunn taps Weil co-managing partner Soler as part of 120-lawyer hire | Reuters · Legal Business · Global Legal PostSenate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott has asked former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify before the committee. Huang recently stepped down as Nvidia’s chief executive after reports of a romantic relationship with a businesswoman whom U.S. authorities reportedly suspect of spying for the Chinese government. To be clear, these are reports, and no charges against anyone have been reported. Lutnick has faced criticism from lawmakers over the administration’s decision not to add dozens of Chinese companies to a key trade blacklist, and over its oversight of Nvidia’s chip exports to China. Scott wrote that “recent reports raise serious concerns about our national security and the protection of sensitive US technology.” He said he’d consider a subpoena if Huang doesn’t appear voluntarily. A Lutnick spokesperson said he has agreed to appear, and the White House said the President has complete confidence in him. Reports differ on whether both hearings are set for December 3, or whether Lutnick is scheduled a week later. Here’s the legal setting. As we discussed after the election, congressional oversight is one of the powers that doesn’t require the President’s signature. Committees can hold hearings, demand documents, and issue subpoenas, and someone who defies a valid subpoena can be held in contempt. A former CEO can still invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination if there’s a risk of criminal exposure, and would almost certainly appear with counsel. The policy issue underneath is export controls: the rules, administered by the Commerce Department, limiting what advanced chips can be sold to China. It’s also notable that this investigation comes from the current Republican chairman, in the lame-duck session, before Democrats take control of the committee in January. Concern about technology transfer to China is bipartisan, and this inquiry seems likely to continue under the new majority.US Senate Banking Committee chair calls on Jensen Huang, Lutnick to testify | Reuters · CNN · The Globe and MailAnd finally, for the first time in about a year, the White House has sent the Senate nominees for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Both agencies are nearly empty. The SEC, designed to have five commissioners, currently has two, and the CFTC, also designed for five, has one. The nominees are Kristin Johnson and Steven Levine for the SEC, and Nathan Anonick and Matthew Rowland for the CFTC. SEC nominees go through the Senate Banking Committee, CFTC nominees through the Agriculture Committee, and each then needs a full Senate vote. Here’s why this matters legally. Both agencies are independent multi-member commissions, and Congress built them to be bipartisan: no more than three of the five commissioners can belong to the same political party. The nominees reportedly include members of both parties, which is consistent with that design and with the longstanding practice of pairing nominees from each party. An agency with only one or two commissioners can still operate, but it loses the deliberation and dissent that a full commission provides, and a one-member commission can effectively act on the views of a single person. That matters a great deal for agencies that are making major decisions about crypto, prediction markets, and financial regulation. Recall the stories we’ve covered on whether prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are federally regulated exchanges or state-regulated gambling, and on the CFTC reversing its position on the Gemini settlement. Timing is the other issue. These nominations arrive in the lame-duck session. Bipartisan pairs have a better chance of moving quickly, but if they aren’t confirmed by January 3, they’ll have to be resubmitted to a Senate controlled by Democrats, who will have their own views on who should fill these seats.White House sends CFTC, SEC role picks to Senate for approval | Reuters · CoinDesk · Cryptonomist This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Justice Douglas RetiresOn November 12, 1975, Justice William O. Douglas retired from the Supreme Court after serving since 1939, longer than any justice in the Court’s history: thirty-six years and seven months. He had suffered a serious stroke at the end of 1974 and tried for months to continue working before finally stepping down.Douglas was a former Yale law professor and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission when Franklin Roosevelt appointed him at 40. On the Court, he became one of its most liberal and most individualistic members, a fierce defender of free speech and civil liberties, and the author of Griswold v. Connecticut, which recognized a constitutional right to privacy. He was also famously prolific and impatient, writing quickly, dissenting often, and publishing books on everything from conservation to travel. He survived two impeachment efforts, including one led by then-Representative Gerald Ford, who as president would name his successor.The significance of November 12, 1975 is partly about a remarkable career, and partly about the hard question of when a judge should step down, a question that arises again and again with life tenure. It’s a fitting anniversary on a day when we remember another long-serving, prolific, opinionated, and deeply influential judge, one who also left the bench on his own terms, and who, like Douglas, didn’t fit neatly into anyone’s ideological box.Judge Richard Posner has died. He was 87. The University of Chicago Law School, where he taught for decades, confirmed that he died on Tuesday. Posner had largely withdrawn from public life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, a few months after he retired from the bench. It’s hard to overstate his influence. Posner was born in New York in 1939, studied English at Yale, graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Law Review, and clerked for Justice William Brennan. He worked at the Federal Trade Commission and in the Solicitor General’s office under Thurgood Marshall before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1969. His 1973 book, Economic Analysis of Law, helped found the law and economics movement: the idea that legal rules can be understood, and often improved, by asking how they affect incentives and efficiency. Along with Robert Bork, he reshaped American antitrust law around the effects on consumers and prices, an approach that still dominates the field. Studies have identified him as the most-cited legal scholar of the twentieth century. President Reagan appointed him to the Seventh Circuit in 1981, where he served for 36 years, including as chief judge, while writing nearly 40 books and an enormous number of opinions, apparently all of them himself, and in plain, direct prose. He disliked the Bluebook, calling it “a monstrous growth.” He co-wrote a blog with the Nobel economist Gary Becker. And he often illustrated points in his opinions with examples involving his cats. What made Posner unusual was his willingness to change his mind publicly. He described himself as a pragmatist: in his view, a judge should first ask what a sensible resolution of a dispute would be, then check whether the law stands in the way. That approach drew sharp criticism, including from people who thought it gave judges too much room, and some of his views, on privacy, on education, and in a 2016 column dismissing the value of studying the Constitution’s history, drew strong objections. But it also produced some of his most important rulings. In 2007, he wrote the opinion upholding Indiana’s photo voter ID law, later affirmed by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. Six years later, in his book Reflections on Judging, he wrote that he would “plead guilty to having written the majority opinion (affirmed by the Supreme Court) upholding Indiana’s requirement that prospective voters prove their identity with a photo ID—a type of law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.” He later clarified he wasn’t formally recanting his vote, but he said judges hadn’t had the information they needed. And in 2014, in Baskin v. Bogan, he wrote the unanimous Seventh Circuit opinion striking down Indiana’s and Wisconsin’s same-sex marriage bans. Responding to the states’ reliance on tradition, he wrote the line at the top of today’s episode: “Tradition per se therefore cannot be a lawful ground for discrimination—regardless of the age of the tradition.” And he added that when a tradition provides no social benefit and harms people beyond offending them, “it is not just a harmless anachronism.” He retired in 2017, earlier than he’d planned, after disagreements with colleagues over how the court treated people representing themselves, a cause he took up in his last years. Whether you agreed with him or not, and many people didn’t, Posner made the legal profession think harder, write more clearly, and take seriously the real-world consequences of legal rules.Richard Posner, eminent federal appellate judge and pioneering scholar, dies at 87 | Yahoo News · Reason / Volokh Conspiracy · WikipediaPosner’s voter ID regret is a good lead-in to our next story, because the rules for counting ballots are still being fought over in Alaska. A state judge has rejected a request from Democrat Mary Peltola’s Senate campaign for data on rejected absentee ballots. Alaska’s race between Peltola and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is the last Senate race in the country still uncalled. As of late Wednesday, Peltola led by about 1.6 percentage points with roughly 86% of the vote counted. Her campaign asked for information about which absentee ballots had been rejected and why, saying it wanted to make sure every eligible vote is counted. That kind of information can let a campaign contact voters whose ballots were rejected for fixable problems, like a missing signature or witness, where state law allows those problems to be corrected. State attorneys argued the request would violate voter privacy. Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews found the request “not reasonable,” mostly because of timing. The Division of Elections, he said, is “currently busy processing ballots from the 2026 general election” and “simply lacks the capacity to generate the report.” As he put it, “The timing of the Campaign’s request could simply not be worse.” The ruling is a reminder that election law often comes down to administrative capacity and deadlines, not just rights in the abstract. Courts generally won’t order election officials to divert resources in the middle of a count unless the law clearly requires it. There’s another layer here, too. Recall that the Justice Department sued last month to block certification of this race if Sullivan loses, citing a second candidate named Daniel Sullivan on the ballot. So this close race could produce litigation on both sides. Watch for the final count, and for whether the federal suit goes anywhere if Peltola’s lead holds.Alaska judge rules against Democratic US Senate candidate’s request for absentee ballot data | Reuters · Washington Post · The Hill This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Buckley v. Valeo Is ArguedOn November 10, 1975, the Supreme Court heard argument in Buckley v. Valeo, a challenge to the campaign finance reforms Congress had passed after Watergate. The 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act limited how much individuals could contribute to candidates, capped how much candidates and independent groups could spend, created public financing for presidential campaigns, and established the Federal Election Commission. A broad coalition, from conservative Senator James Buckley to the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that the limits violated the First Amendment.In January 1976, the Court split the difference. It upheld limits on contributions to candidates, reasoning that large contributions create a risk of corruption or its appearance. But it struck down limits on independent spending and on candidates’ spending, reasoning, in today’s opening quote, that in modern society spending money is closely tied to the ability to communicate ideas. Limiting spending, the Court said, limits speech.The significance of November 10, 1975 is that Buckley’s distinction between contributions and expenditures still frames campaign finance law fifty years later. It led to Citizens United, the rise of super PACs, and, this June, the Supreme Court’s decision striking down limits on coordinated spending by parties and their candidates, which shaped the election we just held. It’s a reminder that how the law treats money as speech, or as a source of corruption, can reshape elections.Weil, Gotshal & Manges is coming apart quickly. Two weeks ago, the firm’s leadership recommended an orderly wind-down after a wave of partner departures. Now its lawyers are scattering to rival firms. Reports say Kirkland & Ellis is taking around 40 Weil lawyers, Latham & Watkins is hiring several, and firms including Cravath, Paul Weiss, Simpson Thacher, Sullivan & Cromwell, Davis Polk, and Sidley have absorbed others. Weil’s restructuring group, roughly 100 lawyers and among the most sought-after teams in the market, may end up split among several firms. Trainees and junior lawyers face more uncertainty, though some firms have reportedly offered places to incoming trainees. Weil plans to wind down out of court, with restructuring advisers and outside counsel managing the process. Now the legal fights are starting. Law.com reports that at least 10 former Weil attorneys have hired a litigator, and notes that nine of the 12 major law firm dissolutions of the last 20 years ended up in litigation. Those disputes usually center on money: whether the firm’s estate can claw back distributions already paid to partners, whether departing partners owe the firm a share of fees from matters they take with them, and whether partners will be paid compensation they’re owed. That’s the “unfinished business” question we discussed when the wind-down was announced, and how it plays out will depend on the firm’s partnership agreement and New York law. One more detail is worth noting: reports say two AI-focused firms have bid for Weil’s data. Any sale of a law firm’s data raises serious confidentiality questions, because client files and work product belong to clients and are protected by privilege and lawyers’ ethical duties. A firm can’t simply sell what it holds on behalf of clients. The lesson from Weil, as with Dewey a decade ago, is how quickly a firm can unravel once partners start leaving.Weil lawyers scatter to rival firms amid planned wind-down | Reuters · ABA Journal · Law.comA federal judge has ruled that Anthropic must face a proposed class action alleging it misled customers about its Claude Max subscriptions. Claude Max is Anthropic’s higher-priced subscription, advertised as offering “5x” or “20x” more usage than its lower-priced Pro plan. The plaintiffs, Max subscribers, allege that’s misleading because the usage limits apply per session or per week, and that in practice the $200 plan provided about six times the weekly usage of Pro and the $100 plan about three and a half times. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse in the Northern District of California let the core claims go forward: deceptive advertising, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of contract. He found that the disclosure explaining how the limits work was buried two clicks away from the main sales pages, and that because customers pay monthly, they could reasonably read “more usage” as applying across the whole billing cycle. He dismissed an unfair competition claim, with permission to amend, and dismissed one named plaintiff whose description of his use was too vague. A few points of perspective. This is a ruling on a motion to dismiss, so the judge assumed the plaintiffs’ factual allegations were true and asked only whether they stated a legal claim. No court has found that Anthropic misled anyone, and no class has been certified. Anthropic has until December 16 to respond. The legal principle, though, is familiar to anyone who’s followed consumer-protection law: under California’s consumer laws, the question is whether a reasonable consumer is likely to be misled, and a disclaimer doesn’t necessarily cure a misleading headline if consumers are unlikely to find it. As AI companies sell more products on subscription and usage-based pricing, how clearly they explain what customers are buying is becoming a real source of legal exposure.Anthropic must face lawsuit over Claude subscription marketing | Reuters · Glitchwire · Inside AI NewsAnd finally, in my column for Bloomberg Tax this week, I look at the property tax cut Florida voters approved last week. Amendment 3, which passed with about 62% of the vote, expands the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes to $150,000 of assessed value in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, with inflation adjustments after that. But there’s a catch. People who were permanent Florida residents on December 31, 2026, can get the bigger exemption as soon as they buy a home, even decades from now. Everyone else generally has to wait until their fifth year of claiming the exemption. So imagine buying your first home in 2046, and the size of your tax break depends on proving where you lived on December 31, 2026. Maybe you were renting, with no reason to keep your lease. Maybe you were a child. Florida’s own fiscal analysts flagged this problem: appraisers will have to determine someone’s residency on a single date decades in the past. Florida’s current records rules require property appraisers to keep homestead applications for 10 years, but that system was designed to check past exemptions, not to support claims that may not arise for twenty years. And the evidence people would need, like school records, leases, utility bills, and employment records, is held by landlords, schools, and companies with their own retention practices, or none at all. That creates a fairness problem. Two people who were both Florida residents on the cutoff date could end up treated differently just because one family kept its paperwork and the other moved around and threw things out. My proposal is that the legislature, which is expected to meet in a special session before Governor DeSantis leaves office, create a voluntary process for residents to document their residency now, including parents doing it for their children, with the results preserved in a statewide system appraisers can access. The state should also set uniform evidence standards and an appeals process. And certifying now should be optional, so people who don’t do it aren’t automatically disqualified later. The right to a tax break shouldn’t depend on who kept a twenty-year-old utility bill.Florida’s New Property Tax Cut Comes With a Long Paper Trail | Bloomberg Tax This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Wickard v. FilburnOn November 9, 1942, the Supreme Court decided Wickard v. Filburn, one of the most consequential and most debated decisions about the reach of federal power. Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio farmer, grew more wheat than his federal quota under the Agricultural Adjustment Act allowed. He argued that the extra wheat never left his farm. He fed it to his own livestock and used it at home, so it had nothing to do with interstate commerce, and Congress couldn’t regulate it.The Court disagreed unanimously. Justice Robert Jackson wrote that even activity that’s local and not itself commerce can be regulated if it has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, today’s opening quote. And the effect is measured in the aggregate. Filburn’s own extra wheat was trivial, but if every farmer did the same, they’d collectively buy less wheat on the market and undermine the program’s effort to stabilize prices. Taken together with other New Deal-era decisions, Wickard marked the end of the Court’s resistance to broad federal economic regulation.The significance of November 9, 1942 is that Wickard became the foundation of the modern Commerce Clause, supporting federal laws on everything from civil rights in public accommodations to drug regulation, and it’s still at the center of debates over the limits of federal power, as in the Affordable Care Act case in 2012. It’s a reminder that the most important questions about government power are often decided not in dramatic confrontations, but in cases about wheat, and today, about judicial appointments, monuments, and jobs.The President is moving to nominate James Sullivan, a Republican justice on the Texas Supreme Court who lost his reelection race last Tuesday, to a lifetime federal judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. Sullivan lost to Democrat Chari Kelly. In fact, Democrats won all four Texas Supreme Court seats on the ballot, narrowing the Republican majority on the nine-member court to 5 to 4. Reports say Sullivan submitted his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire days before the election, and the Senate is expected to take up the nomination during the lame-duck session, before Democrats take control of the chamber in January. Here’s why the timing matters. As we discussed last week, the new Democratic Senate majority will control which nominees get hearings and votes. Federal judges serve for life, so the President and the outgoing Republican majority have a strong incentive to confirm as many as possible before January 3. Doing that in a lame-duck session is legal, and both parties have done it, though it’s often criticized when the outgoing majority has just lost an election. There’s also a point worth noting about how differently states and the federal government choose judges. Texas elects its judges in partisan elections, and voters just removed Sullivan from his state seat. The federal system uses presidential nomination and Senate confirmation, with lifetime tenure designed to insulate judges from exactly that kind of political pressure. Sullivan’s path, voted off one court and appointed for life to another within weeks, puts that contrast in sharp relief. Supporters will say his qualifications haven’t changed, and that partisan state judicial elections reflect political tides rather than judicial merit. Critics will see it as a rejected judge being rewarded. Either way, expect a busy lame-duck confirmation calendar, and an incoming Democratic majority prepared to slow the pace of judicial confirmations dramatically in January.Trump to nominate Texas Supreme Court justice who lost election to federal bench | Reuters · The Texas Lawbook · Minnesota LawyerLast week we previewed the fight over the President’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington. Here’s what happened. On Thursday, the National Capital Planning Commission gave its final approval. Minutes later, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order barring any construction or site preparation at Memorial Circle for 14 days while the lawsuits by Vietnam War veterans, the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Arlington County proceed. Judge Chutkan found the challengers were likely to succeed because the administration appeared to have skipped required legal steps in rushing the approval, likely violating the Commemorative Works Act, the federal law that governs new memorials on federal land in Washington. She held off for now on whether to suspend the Interior Department’s approval under the Administrative Procedure Act. The White House praised the commission’s approval and criticized the judge’s order. Recall the administration’s main argument: that Congress approved the arch more than a century ago when it authorized a bridge across the Potomac. The Commemorative Works Act sets out a detailed process for new memorials, including congressional authorization and review by planning and arts commissions, precisely so that monuments on the capital’s federal land reflect deliberate national decisions rather than any one official’s preference. The judge’s preliminary view is that the shortcuts likely don’t satisfy it. A temporary restraining order is short-lived; it’s meant to preserve the status quo until the court can hold a fuller hearing on a preliminary injunction. But the timing is telling: the government was ready to begin work the same day it got approval, and the court acted within minutes. As with the trees cut at East Potomac Golf Links, the concern is that construction can create facts on the ground before a court can rule. Expect a preliminary-injunction fight within the next two weeks.Trump’s Washington arch poised for approval as judge weighs bid to block construction | Reuters · CBS News · Washington PostAnd finally, some good news for the profession: legal-sector employment climbed to a record high in October, according to the latest federal jobs data. The legal industry added about 2,400 jobs last month, as the broader economy added 165,000, beating economists’ expectations, while the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%. Professional and business services, the category that includes legal services, added about 70,000 jobs. A few observations. First, this comes during a year of real turbulence in Big Law, including the collapse of Weil, Gotshal & Manges that we covered just over a week ago. One firm’s failure doesn’t mean the sector is shrinking. When a firm dissolves, its lawyers and clients mostly move to other firms. Second, the numbers cut against a common prediction about AI. Despite rapid adoption of legal AI tools, from Harvey to the products the big tech companies are selling to law firms, overall legal employment keeps growing, at least so far. That may be because AI is changing what legal work looks like more than how much of it there is, or because the effects on hiring, especially for junior lawyers and support staff, haven’t shown up in the aggregate numbers yet. These figures cover the whole legal sector, from lawyers to paralegals to support staff, and don’t show which roles are growing and which are shrinking. Third, demand for legal services tends to rise with regulatory and political uncertainty, and there’s been no shortage of that this year, from tariffs and their refunds to the election litigation we’ve followed and the shift to divided government. Every major legal fight we cover generates work for lawyers on both sides. For anyone graduating from law school or thinking about it, the headline is encouraging, but it’s worth watching how the composition of legal jobs changes as AI tools mature.US legal sector job growth climbs as broader economy sees gains | Reuters · Law360 · The Hill This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Susan B. Anthony VotesOn November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony walked into a polling place in Rochester, New York, and cast a ballot in the presidential election, along with fourteen other women from her ward. This was a deliberate legal test. Anthony and other suffragists argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified four years earlier, made women citizens, and that voting was one of the privileges of citizenship that no state could deny.Two weeks later, a deputy federal marshal arrested her at her home for voting illegally. She refused to post bail. At her trial in June 1873, before Justice Ward Hunt of the Supreme Court, sitting as a trial judge, she wasn’t allowed to testify, and at the close of evidence the judge directed the all-male jury to return a guilty verdict, without letting them deliberate. When asked if she had anything to say before sentencing, Anthony delivered a famous speech condemning the proceedings. She was fined $100 and never paid it. Two years later, in Minor v. Happersett, the Supreme Court rejected the argument outright, holding that citizenship didn’t automatically include the right to vote.The significance of November 5, 1872 is that Anthony used the law itself, a vote, an arrest, and a trial, to expose the gap between constitutional promises and how they were applied. It took until 1920 and the Nineteenth Amendment to close it. Her case is a reminder that legal change often begins with someone willing to test the boundaries of what they’re allowed to say and do, and that’s exactly the question in our first story.A federal judge in Kentucky will hold a hearing later this month on whether the University of Kentucky violated the First Amendment by suspending a tenured law professor over his comments about Israel. The professor, Ramsi Woodcock, has made statements describing Israel as a “colonization project” and calling for the world to wage war against it. The university barred him from teaching and opened an investigation, which Woodcock says was driven by political pressure from state lawmakers seeking tougher action against antisemitism. Reports indicate the judge declined to give Woodcock an immediate order returning him to the classroom but set a hearing on his broader request for a preliminary injunction. Reports differ on some details of the procedural history, so I’ll keep this at the level of the legal framework. Here’s how courts analyze this. Woodcock works for a public university, so the First Amendment applies. When a public employer disciplines an employee for speech, courts use a balancing test from Pickering v. Board of Education and later cases. If the employee spoke as a private citizen on a matter of public concern, which commentary on Israel and the war in Gaza plainly is, the court weighs the employee’s free-speech interest against the employer’s interest in running its operations effectively, including avoiding disruption. Speech that’s offensive, even deeply offensive to many people, generally remains protected; the question is whether it caused or was reasonably likely to cause the kind of disruption that justifies discipline. Professors have an additional layer of protection, because courts have long recognized academic freedom as a special concern of the First Amendment. On the other side, universities have obligations under federal civil rights law to address harassment of students, including antisemitic harassment, and statements calling for war can raise questions about whether they cross from advocacy into something else. The judge will have to sort out where Woodcock’s statements fall. This case joins several others around the country, and the answers matter for public universities everywhere.Judge to review US law professor’s suspension in free speech case over Israel remarks | Reuters · Court Cast · AOLGoogle, Meta, and TikTok have each sued to block California’s new law restricting social media features for children under 16. We covered the law when Governor Newsom signed it in September as part of a package of what he called the strongest child-safety tech laws in the nation. The law, Assembly Bill 1709, bars platforms from giving users under 16 “psychologically exploitative” features that can lead to compulsive use, like personalized recommendations and autoplay, and requires deleting children’s accounts that use those features. The three companies filed separately in three federal courts: Google in San Jose, Meta in San Francisco, and TikTok in Los Angeles. They argue the law violates the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that it forces them to present content the way the state prefers, and that it substitutes the state’s judgment for parents’ choices. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also criticized the law as a privacy and free-speech problem, partly because enforcing age limits generally requires verifying users’ ages. This was predictable, and the companies have strong arguments. In 2024, in Moody v. NetChoice, the Supreme Court said that when platforms curate and arrange third-party content, they’re engaged in editorial activity protected by the First Amendment, much like a newspaper choosing what to print. A personalized feed is a curation decision. California will argue the law regulates design features and conduct, not speech, and that protecting children’s mental health is a compelling interest. Courts have split on similar laws, blocking several state restrictions on minors’ social media access while allowing some narrower ones. The outcome will likely turn on whether the court sees recommendation algorithms as speech or as product design. Notably, TikTok just agreed in its Alabama settlement to give teens a default non-personalized feed. That was a voluntary deal, but it shows the kind of change states are pushing for, now by statute.Google, Meta, TikTok sue to block California youth social media law | Reuters · Bloomberg Law · Yahoo NewsAnd finally, the President’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch in Washington is close to receiving federal approval, possibly as soon as today, and the government has said construction could begin right after. But a federal judge is weighing whether to block it. Several lawsuits are pending: one by Vietnam War veterans before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who reportedly seemed skeptical of the rush, and others by the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Arlington County. The legal issue is authorization. Building a monument on federal land in the capital isn’t simply up to the executive branch. Congress has long controlled what gets built on the National Mall and surrounding federal parkland, and federal law generally requires congressional authorization for new memorials in the area, along with review by planning and arts commissions. Major federal projects also have to comply with environmental and historic-preservation review laws. The administration’s answer is creative: it says Congress already approved the arch more than a century ago, when it authorized a bridge across the Potomac. The challengers say a century-old bridge authorization can’t plausibly cover a new 250-foot arch. There’s a recent precedent: another federal judge, Richard Leon, blocked construction of the White House ballroom project, reasoning that Congress must authorize it first. Why does the rush matter? Like the felled trees at East Potomac Golf Links we covered last month, construction can create facts on the ground that are hard to undo. That’s exactly why judges consider emergency relief before work begins. There’s one more twist. As we discussed yesterday, Democrats will control Congress in January. If the administration is relying on old congressional authorization, it may be because getting new authorization from this Congress, or the next one, looks unlikely.Trump’s Washington arch poised for approval as judge weighs bid to block construction | Reuters · NPR · Time This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: The Tehran Embassy SeizureOn November 4, 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took dozens of Americans hostage. Fifty-two of them would be held for 444 days. In response, President Jimmy Carter invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a statute Congress had passed just two years earlier, and froze billions of dollars in Iranian assets in the United States.The crisis ended in January 1981 with the Algiers Accords, in which the United States agreed to unfreeze Iranian assets, end pending lawsuits against Iran in American courts, and send those claims to a new international tribunal. A company called Dames & Moore, which had been trying to collect money it said Iran owed it, challenged that agreement. In Dames & Moore v. Regan, decided that July, the Supreme Court upheld the President’s actions. It found that the asset transfers were authorized by the emergency powers statute, and that while no statute expressly authorized suspending the lawsuits, Congress had long accepted presidential settlement of such claims, which the Court treated as implied approval.The significance of November 4, 1979 is the legal principle the crisis produced: presidential power is at its strongest when it rests on authority Congress has already given, even a Congress elected years earlier. That’s directly relevant to our lead story, because when control of Congress changes, the powers earlier Congresses delegated to the executive branch don’t disappear.Democrats have won control of both the House and the Senate, according to unofficial results from yesterday’s midterms. As of early this morning, the Associated Press had called 228 House seats for Democrats, well past the 218 needed for a majority, with dozens of races still uncalled. In the Senate, Democrats held 54 seats to Republicans’ 44, with the races in Alaska and Mississippi still too close to call. Recall that Alaska is where the Justice Department sued to block certification if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan lost, so watch that one. Final numbers will change, but the bottom line won’t: the President’s party will no longer control either chamber. The new Congress takes office on January 3, 2027. Until then, the current Congress, with its Republican majorities, can still pass legislation and confirm nominees in a lame-duck session. Winning an election and exercising the powers that come with it are two different things, and existing statutes and regulations keep operating until someone changes them through a lawful process. So what can a Democratic Congress actually do? The key distinction is between blocking new policy and changing existing law. Blocking is easy: either chamber can stop any bill simply by refusing to pass it, so Republican legislative priorities are effectively stalled. But enacting new law is much harder. Both chambers have to pass identical text and present it to the President, who can veto it. Overriding a veto takes two-thirds of each chamber. And in the Senate, most legislation still needs 60 votes to end a filibuster. A 54- or 55-seat majority clears neither bar. There are special procedures, like budget reconciliation, that avoid the filibuster for certain budget measures, but those bills still go to the President and can still be vetoed. Meanwhile, the President keeps substantial power. Agencies can keep using the authority earlier Congresses delegated to them, issuing, revising, or repealing regulations, though they still have to follow the required procedures and survive judicial review. A new majority’s disagreement doesn’t withdraw that authority.That doesn’t leave Congress powerless. It has three main tools to constrain the executive branch. First, it can amend an agency’s governing statute to narrow its authority or impose new duties. Second, it controls appropriations: it can attach riders like “none of the funds in this Act may be used to implement Policy X,” and, more importantly, it can refuse to fund the government on terms it doesn’t accept, which gives it real leverage in every budget negotiation. Third, it can use the Congressional Review Act to overturn eligible agency rules with a simple majority and no filibuster. But all three share the same limit: they have to become law, which means the President can veto them. The CRA in particular is mostly useful when Congress and the President agree; it’s not a tool for overturning a President’s own rules over his objection. The tools that don’t require the President’s signature are oversight and appointments. With control of committees, Democrats can hold hearings, demand documents, and issue subpoenas, choosing which agency actions get sustained public scrutiny. That can produce facts, political pressure, and the record for future legislation, though subpoena fights often end in negotiations or litigation over executive privilege. The Senate, and only the Senate, votes on nominations, so the new majority can reject or simply decline to act on nominees for agency leadership and federal judgeships. That doesn’t remove officials already serving, and federal law lets some vacancies be filled temporarily by acting officials. And for those wondering about impeachment: the House can impeach by a simple majority, but conviction and removal require two-thirds of senators present, 67 if all are voting, which no plausible Democratic majority reaches alone.Democrats win House, Senate | ABA Banking Journal · CBS NewsKraft Heinz has agreed to sell its North American coffee business, including Maxwell House, Gevalia, Yuban, Sanka, and Tassimo, to the private equity firm One Rock Capital Partners at an enterprise value of about $650 million. Kraft Heinz will keep a 30% non-controlling stake, and the deal is expected to close in mid-2027, subject to regulatory approval. The sale is part of a turnaround effort by CEO Steve Cahillane, who took over in January and put on hold a planned split of the company into two businesses, while keeping that option open. A few legal points. Structurally, this is a carve-out: separating one business from a larger company. Carve-outs are legally complex because the business being sold usually shares factories, supply contracts, IT systems, employees, and brands with the rest of the company. Deals like this typically come with transition services agreements, in which the seller keeps providing certain services for a period while the buyer builds its own. Kraft Heinz’s retained 30% stake keeps it invested in the business’s success without control, and comes with its own questions about governance rights and future exit options. And “subject to regulatory approval” generally means antitrust review under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, which requires notifying federal antitrust agencies before deals above a certain size can close. A private equity buyer without other coffee brands is unlikely to raise competition concerns, but the waiting period still has to run. More broadly, this reflects a trend among packaged-food giants of shrinking their portfolios to focus on faster-growing products. Some of the most familiar names in American grocery stores, Maxwell House among them, are moving out of public companies and into private ownership.Kraft Heinz to divest North America coffee unit amid Cahillane’s turnaround effort | Reuters · The Globe and Mail · RTTNewsAnd finally, The New York Times has sued Brave Software, the company behind the Brave web browser and the Brave Search engine, in federal court in Manhattan. The Times alleges Brave copied its paywalled journalism and made it available to AI companies through Brave’s search index and its search API, a product that lets other companies, including AI developers, pull search results and content into their own systems. The Times also alleges that a feature in the Brave browser lets users get past its paywall. The New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel filed their own suits, which repor… This is a public episode. 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This Day in Legal History: Elk v. WilkinsOn November 3, 1884, the Supreme Court decided Elk v. Wilkins. John Elk was a Native American man, born on tribal land, who had left his tribe, moved to Omaha, and lived among the city’s residents. In 1880, he tried to register to vote. The registrar, Charles Wilkins, refused, on the ground that Elk wasn’t a citizen. Elk sued, relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that all persons born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens.The Court ruled against him, 7 to 2. It held that Native Americans born into tribal nations weren’t “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the sense the amendment required, and that leaving his tribe and living as a citizen didn’t make Elk one without some act of Congress naturalizing him. Justice John Marshall Harlan, whom we profiled last month, dissented, arguing that a man who had given up his tribal allegiance and lived under American law was exactly the kind of person the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to include.The significance of November 3, 1884 is that it took another forty years, until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, for Congress to declare all Native Americans born in the United States to be citizens, and longer still before some states stopped finding ways to keep them from voting. On Election Day, it’s a reminder that the questions of who is a citizen and who gets to vote have been contested throughout American history, and that a registrar’s decision about one voter’s eligibility can end up in the Supreme Court. Today’s stories are the latest chapter in that history.The Supreme Court has refused the administration’s emergency request to make California set aside about 20,000 mail ballots from people the Justice Department says are likely noncitizens. The administration filed its application Monday morning, and the Court denied it the same day, without explanation and with no noted dissents, hours before the polls opened. That makes four courts in a row, by California’s count, to reject the effort: the Ninth Circuit’s first dismissal last week, Judge David Carter’s denial of a restraining order, the Ninth Circuit’s rejection of the emergency appeal on Friday, and now the Supreme Court. California says the government’s list is riddled with errors, and recall that Los Angeles County found most names in one sample were tied to canceled or inactive registrations. The Court’s decision not to step in is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it’s consistent with the Court’s general reluctance to change election procedures at the last minute, a principle that has cut both ways this year; the Court has used it to keep both new restrictions and challenged rules in place right before voting. Second, the absence of any noted dissent suggests that even justices who’ve been receptive to the administration’s election arguments weren’t willing to order a state to freeze tens of thousands of ballots on the eve of the election based on this record. The practical result is simple: California counts these ballots under its normal procedures, including its own safeguards for checking eligibility. If the administration believes specific people voted illegally, it can investigate and prosecute them afterward, subject to the constitutional questions about the federal statute we’ve discussed. But the votes won’t be frozen first.Trump administration takes California ballot fight to Supreme Court | Reuters · NBC News · CalMattersA federal judge in Washington has temporarily barred the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security from sending states lists of registered voters the administration says may not be citizens, and from asking states to set aside those voters’ ballots until citizenship is proven. The ruling is from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. The administration had sent letters to election officials in California and Washington State demanding they not count ballots from people on those lists. The plaintiffs argued the lists violated the Privacy Act of 1974, which limits how federal agencies use and share records about individuals, including the immigration and Social Security data used to build lists like these. The Justice Department argued the letters were just part of enforcing the federal ban on noncitizen voting, not a separate policy a court could review. The legal landscape is now genuinely tangled. A Ninth Circuit panel recently cleared the government to warn election officials they could face prosecution if they don’t comply with its demands. A federal judge in San Francisco ordered the department to stop threatening officials with prosecution. And another federal judge ruled that the administration’s threat to cut off Election Assistance Commission funds to states was unconstitutional pressure. Judge Chutkan isn’t bound by the Ninth Circuit, since her court is in a different circuit. When different courts reach different conclusions on overlapping issues, the conflicts often end up at the Supreme Court. For today, the effect is that federal agencies can’t keep sending these lists or pressing states to hold ballots. Two themes run through all of these cases. The first is federalism: states run elections, and the federal government’s tools for directing how they count ballots are limited. The second is data: lists built from government databases have repeatedly flagged real citizens, and privacy law sets limits on how that data can be shared and used.Judge blocks Trump administration from pressuring states over noncitizen voting | Reuters · Jerusalem Post · Yahoo NewsAnd finally, in my column for Bloomberg Tax this week, I look at a new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. It found that more than 38,000 tax preparers using noncompliant preparer identification numbers prepared over 2 million returns in the 2025 filing season. Within that group, nearly 12,000 preparers filed about 95,000 returns that all claimed refunds, totaling almost $600 million. The report treats a 100% refund rate as a sign of heightened risk of fraud or misconduct, and the IRS is building a data-driven program to target preparers. My question is simple: why should a preparer whose clients all get refunds be more suspicious than one whose clients owe? Refunds are normal. Wage earners often have more withheld than they owe, and refundable credits like the earned income tax credit can produce refunds for people with little or no tax liability. A preparer who serves lower-income working families could legitimately file nothing but refund returns. And fraud isn’t just about refunds. Someone who reports $500,000 in tax owed when they really owe $750,000 has shorted the government $250,000 without ever asking for a refund. If the IRS chases a $2,000 improper refund instead, it leaves far more revenue on the table and puts the burden on a taxpayer much less able to fight back. That matters, because enforcement choices aren’t neutral. The Stanford research finding that Black taxpayers were audited at 2.9 to 4.7 times the rate of others showed how a focus on refundable credits can produce deeply unequal results. Scale matters too: TIGTA’s numbers work out to an average of about eight refund returns per preparer, which makes a 100% refund rate a pretty weak signal. My proposals: compare preparers with others serving similar clients, account for volume, test whether a risk indicator actually predicts misconduct against independently verified cases, and check whether it puts disproportionate burdens on certain groups. The IRS owes taxpayers more than an assurance that a pattern looks unusual. It should be able to show that the pattern actually predicts misconduct.Tax Preparers Who Focus on Refunds Shouldn’t Raise Red Flags | Bloomberg Tax This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Black TuesdayOn October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange suffered the worst day of the crash that had begun the previous Thursday. About 16 million shares changed hands, a record that stood for decades, and the Dow fell about 12 percent. Investors who had bought stock on margin, with borrowed money, were wiped out as their loans were called. The crash didn’t cause the Great Depression by itself, but it became its symbol.The legal response defined American financial regulation for the rest of the century. The Securities Act of 1933 required companies selling securities to the public to register and disclose financial information. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 created the Securities and Exchange Commission and regulated trading and margin lending. The Banking Act of 1933, known as Glass-Steagall, separated commercial banking from investment banking and created the FDIC to insure deposits. The central idea, borrowed from Louis Brandeis in today’s opening quote, was disclosure: rather than having the government judge which investments were sound, the law would require companies to tell the truth and let investors decide.The significance of October 29, 1929 is that much of modern corporate and financial law, and much of the work of the big law firms that grew up to practice it, traces back to the response to the crash. Earlier this month we marked the 1987 crash. Today’s anniversary goes back to the original. And our first story is about one of the firms that built its reputation in the aftermath of a later financial collapse.Weil, Gotshal & Manges, one of the best-known names in corporate law, has told its partners it plans to wind down. Weil’s restructuring practice made it the go-to firm for some of the largest bankruptcies in history, including Lehman Brothers and Enron. Now the firm itself is dissolving after failing to stop a wave of partner departures and, according to Law.com, failing to find a merger partner in recent weeks. The firm says it will carry out an orderly wind-down and keep serving clients in the meantime. Reports say it brought in an outside bankruptcy lawyer to advise on the process. It isn’t yet clear what dissolution means for the firm’s lawyers and staff, numbering more than a thousand, or for its creditors. Law firm collapses are rare at this scale, but they follow a pattern. The most famous recent example is Dewey & LeBoeuf, which filed for bankruptcy in 2012. When partners start leaving, they take clients and revenue with them, which puts pressure on the remaining partners’ compensation and on the firm’s ability to cover its fixed costs, like leases and debt, which leads more partners to leave. Dissolution raises legal questions too. Under partnership law, a dissolving firm doesn’t end overnight; it winds up its affairs, collecting fees, paying creditors, and distributing what’s left. Courts have fought over the “unfinished business” doctrine, which asks whether profits from client matters that departing partners take to new firms belong to the old firm’s estate. And lawyers have professional duties that don’t pause for a wind-down. Clients have the right to choose their counsel, so they must be told promptly what’s happening and be able to decide where their matters go, with files transferred and deadlines protected. The lesson for the profession is how quickly a firm’s most valuable asset, its people, can walk out the door.Weil Gotshal law firm plans to dissolve, capping dizzying fall | Reuters · Law.com · The LawyerThe federal government has sued Google in Manhattan federal court on behalf of a former employee who is an Army reservist. Mark Davisson worked at Google as a key account executive, managing relationships with customer accounts. He took a year of military leave and returned in May 2023. The government alleges that Google kept his pay and title but no longer let him manage customer accounts, a change that could have limited his advancement. Google later moved him to a cloud solutions role that also didn’t involve managing accounts, and laid him off in August 2024 as part of a broader workforce reduction. Google hasn’t publicly responded in the reports so far. The suit is brought under USERRA, the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act. It requires employers to reemploy service members returning from military duty, generally in the job they would have held if they hadn’t left, or one of equivalent seniority, status, and pay. This is known as the “escalator” principle: a service member returns to the step of the escalator they would have reached if they’d never left, not just to the same salary. That’s why the case turns on more than pay and title. If the core function of Davisson’s job, managing client accounts, was taken away, the government argues he wasn’t restored to an equivalent position, even though his paycheck didn’t change. USERRA also protects returning employees from being fired without cause for a period after they return, depending on the length of service, and prohibits discrimination and retaliation based on military service. Google will likely argue that the later layoff was part of a company-wide reduction unrelated to his service. When the Justice Department brings a USERRA case itself, it’s typically because the Labor Department investigated and referred it, and the government represents the service member at no cost. Given how many reservists and National Guard members work for large employers, the case is a reminder that the law asks employers to protect not just the paycheck but the career path.US sues Google for failing to restore a former employee to a similar job following military deployment | ReutersAnd finally, the White House press fight has entered a new phase. Since late September, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly has issued orders requiring the administration to restore White House access to journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, after the President banned the three outlets over what he called negative coverage. Earlier this month, the judge also ruled the White House can’t revoke the hard passes of dozens of the outlets’ reporters. Now the outlets have expanded their lawsuit, saying the White House is still keeping them out of the press pool, the small rotating group of reporters brought into the Oval Office for events or assigned to fly on Air Force One. The White House responded that “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office.” Separately, press freedom groups filed their own suit this week, arguing the ban violates the public’s First Amendment right to receive information about the government. Here’s why the pool is a harder question than the hard passes. Courts have long held that once the government opens a space to the press generally, it can’t exclude particular journalists based on viewpoint without due process. The White House briefing room and grounds fit that description. But the Oval Office and Air Force One are much more limited spaces, where the President has traditionally had more control over who’s present. Last year, in the Associated Press’s case over its exclusion from the pool, an appeals court allowed the White House to keep limiting the AP’s access to those spaces while the case continued, reasoning that they aren’t open to the press at large. The outlets here will argue that the reason for their exclusion, their coverage, is what makes it unconstitutional, wherever it happens. Viewpoint discrimination, they’ll say, is forbidden even where the government has wide discretion over access. How Judge Kelly draws that line will shape how much control any President has over which reporters see him up close.CNN, MS NOW, Politico expand lawsuit over White House access limits | Reuters · Washington Post · Deadline This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: Federalist No. 1On October 27, 1787, New York’s Independent Journal published an essay signed “Publius,” titled “General Introduction.” It was the first of what became 85 essays, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, urging New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution, which had been signed in Philadelphia just six weeks earlier. Hamilton wrote this first one.Hamilton framed ratification as a test, set out in today’s opening quote, of whether people could establish good government “from reflection and choice,” rather than by “accident and force.” He also warned readers about something he saw as a recurring danger in republics: those who use zeal for liberty as a cover for ambition. “Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics,” he wrote, “the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”The significance of October 27, 1787 is that The Federalist became the most influential explanation of how the Constitution was meant to work, and courts, including the Supreme Court, cite it to this day to interpret the separation of powers, the role of the courts, and the limits on federal power. Its central idea, that a well-designed government channels ambition through institutions so no one person can bend them to their will, runs through all three stories today, each of which tests whether the government’s power to prosecute, to remove officials, and to run elections is being used within those limits.The Ninth Circuit has denied the Justice Department’s emergency request to stop California from counting mail ballots associated with more than 20,000 registered voters the government says are likely noncitizens. We covered this fight last Tuesday, when the President threatened California election officials with prison over these same ballots. After a weekend emergency argument, the appeals court ruled Monday that the Justice Department hadn’t given the district court a fair chance to consider the case first, so it was premature for the appeals court to step in. A district court hearing is set for today. At Sunday’s argument, Judge Mark Bennett told the government’s lawyer that California appears to have the legal authority to run its own elections. Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, was more sympathetic to the administration. California says its safeguards against noncitizen voting are strong and that the government’s claims rest on suspect data. Here’s the legal picture. Appellate courts generally don’t decide issues the trial court hasn’t addressed first, and emergency relief is supposed to be exceptional. The Justice Department tried to skip a step, and the court said no. On the merits, states run their elections and determine eligibility, and federal law gives the federal government limited tools to intervene in how a state counts ballots, especially without a reliable showing that specific voters are ineligible. Recall that the federal SAVE system has wrongly flagged real citizens in the past. There’s also a striking statistic in the reporting: the Justice Department has sued 30 states and D.C. for refusing to hand over complete voter rolls, and so far it has lost 26 of those cases without winning one. With the election a week away, the clock is now the government’s biggest problem.Trump administration loses push to block California votes from alleged noncitizens | Reuters · NBC News · CBS NewsA federal judge in Manhattan has ruled that the Justice Department unlawfully fired Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor and the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey. Maurene Comey had worked in the Southern District of New York for years, including on the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell prosecutions. She was fired abruptly in July 2025 without explanation. She sued, arguing she was fired because of who her father is and her perceived political beliefs. In a 55-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman agreed that the firing was unlawful, finding it violated the separation of powers, her Fifth Amendment due process rights, and federal law. He ordered her retroactively reinstated, with back pay through December 20, 2025, when he inferred she had taken another job, and ordered her personnel file changed to show she resigned rather than was fired. The Justice Department says it will appeal, calling the decision an obstruction of the President’s constitutional authority to fire people who exercise executive power on his behalf. Here’s the legal tension. Career federal prosecutors aren’t political appointees. Like most federal civil servants, they’re covered by the civil service laws, which protect them against removal for political reasons or for reasons unrelated to job performance, and which set out procedures before firing. The administration’s argument draws on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions expanding the President’s power to remove officials. But those cases have mostly involved heads of agencies and other high-level officers, not line employees. If the President’s removal power reaches every prosecutor in the Justice Department, the civil service protections that have existed since the 1880s would mean much less. That’s why the appeal will be closely watched.Trump administration’s firing of prosecutor Maurene Comey was unlawful, judge rules | Reuters · CBS News · Washington PostAnd finally, on the same day his daughter won her case, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey for a third time. The new charges, in Washington, accuse him of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorized transmission of national defense information. Prosecutors allege that in October 2016, while he was FBI director, Comey directed one or more people to disclose national defense information to a reporter. Comey’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, says Comey “steadfastly maintains his innocence.” Recall the history. A 2025 indictment in Virginia over his Senate testimony was dismissed after a judge found the interim U.S. attorney who obtained it had been invalidly appointed. He also faces a separate case in North Carolina over a social media post the government calls a threat. Two features of this new case stand out. First, it was brought by a criminal information, not an indictment. The Fifth Amendment generally requires a grand jury indictment for serious federal crimes unless the defendant waives it. Prosecutors can file an information, but a defendant who hasn’t waived indictment can’t be tried on it. Comey’s lawyers have already moved to dismiss on that ground. Second, timing. The information was reportedly filed under seal on October 5, and these charges carry a ten-year statute of limitations. The alleged disclosure happened in October 2016. So the filing came right at the edge of the deadline. That raises a contested legal question: whether filing an information, without a grand jury indictment or a waiver, is enough to stop the clock. Courts have disagreed. If it isn’t, the charges may be time-barred. Taken together, three separate prosecutions of the same former official, each launched with unusual procedures, will inevitably raise questions about whether the government is using its prosecutorial power for political ends, the very concern our legal-history segment raised.Ex-FBI Director Comey charged again by US Justice Department, NBC News reports | Reuters · Washington Post · Axios This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe