It's been a year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, clearing the way for Republican lawmakers to enact long-promised restrictions on abortion. However, in that time, the Republican-controlled House has passed just a handful of minor abortion bills—none of which have any hope of becoming law. On this week's episode of our weekly podcast, On The Merits, Bloomberg Government reporter Zach Cohen explains why abortion legislation has thus far stalled in Congress. Zach says the real fight...
Jun 27, 2023•18 min
The years of breakneck expansion in the legal industry are officially over—firms have now moved into contraction mode. While we're still not seeing Great Recession-style mass layoffs—yet—the downturn is generating plenty of anxiety. On today's episode of our weekly news podcast, On The Merits, we do a Big Law roundup, featuring three Bloomberg Law reporters talking about their corner of the legal industry. First, Meghan Tribe explains why the firm Cooley is offering incoming associates $100,000 ...
Jun 20, 2023•23 min
When the PGA announced a plan to merge with its former rival, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, sources with the league told Bloomberg Government's Kate Ackley they didn't expect to encounter major regulatory roadblocks. However, a week later, that now appears far too optimistic. Lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum have criticized the deal, both for antitrust concerns and for Saudi Arabia's grim history of human rights abuses. On this week's episode of our weekly podcast, On The Merits, Ackl...
Jun 13, 2023•19 min
We learned earlier this year that President Biden doesn't like it when employers impose noncompete clauses on their employees. In January, his Federal Trade Commission rolled out a proposal that would enact a near total ban on them. Now, a second federal agency has taken action against noncompetes. Last week, the top lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board said she thinks these agreements are illegal because they impinge on workers' ability to organize. On this week's episode of our weekly ...
Jun 06, 2023•16 min
New York City may be the next city to enact a total ban on facial recognition technology. The technology, which uses surveillance cameras to identify people in public, has been garnering headlines for years, but there are few regulations on how it can be used. Some cities have taken action by enacting partial bans or moratoriums. One city, Portland, Oregon, has a total ban. A bill introduced in the the New York City Council would make it illegal for private businesses to use face scans to identi...
May 16, 2023•17 min
Generative AI models like ChatGPT aren't sophisticated enough to write a Hollywood-level screenplay, at least not yet. But if and when that changes, Hollywood writers want to make sure they're prepared. The Writers Guild of America is on strike, and a big reason is they want to insert language into a new bargaining agreement that gives the union a say in when and how algorithms can be used. Bloomberg Law labor reporter Ian Kullgren has been following the strike, and he joins our weekly news podc...
May 09, 2023•16 min
For decades now, both parties in Washington have been unhappy with the status quo at the U.S.-Mexico border. But finding a congressional solution to our border problem has never seemed more out of reach. House Republicans are moving forward on a comprehensive immigration bill that few, if any, believe can pass the Democratic Senate, much less earn President Biden's signature. Meanwhile, despite Biden's campaign promises that he would start fresh, many Trump-era border policies are still in effec...
May 02, 2023•21 min
The chief judge of one of the 13 federal appeals courts has filed a formal complaint against one of her colleagues. Her beef? That her nonagenarian fellow judge is cognitively impaired and unfit to serve. How did we get here? That's the topic of the latest episode of our weekly news podcast, On The Merits. We discuss the near-unprecedented move to remove 95-year-old Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman from the bench. Bloomberg Law reporters Kelcee Griffis and Kaustuv Basu explain who Newman is,...
Apr 25, 2023•12 min
When Geraldine Tyler didn't pay her tax bill, her county sold her home and kept the profits—more than twice what she actually owed. Tyler, a Minnesotan who's now in her 90s, sued. Next week she'll be appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Numerous states have laws allowing tax authorities to take all of the value of a property when it forecloses. But Tyler is asking the Supreme Court to declare these laws unconstitutional. Bloomberg Law reporter Perry Cooper is covering the case. She joins our...
Apr 18, 2023•12 min
It's now clear that the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs last year raised more questions than it answered. The latest example of this came late last Friday when a pair of opinions from federal judges threw the legality of a long-used abortion medication into doubt. A judge from Washington state ordered the FDA to maintain the status quo for the drug mifepristone. Another judge from Texas came to the opposite conclusion, ordering the FDA to take mifepristone off the market despite the drug having ...
Apr 11, 2023•18 min
During the Cold War, the U.S. was the undisputed leader in a field of science called geodesy—the precise measurement of the shape and magnetic field of the Earth. The development of GPS sprung from this, along with many other useful technologies. But fast forward to today. Numerous countries have surpassed America in this field, with China in particular making extraordinary leaps. Scientists are now saying the US may have fallen so far behind in geodesy that catching up is nearly impossible. On ...
Apr 05, 2023•17 min
It used to be that bank runs took weeks, or even months, to gain steam. Not anymore. Thanks to the speed of electronic financial transactions and near-instantaneous online communication, the financial panics that felled Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this month materialized in a matter of days. Is there a solution for preventing this? Bloomberg Law reporter Evan Weinberg looked into this question for a recent story. He joins our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, to explai...
Mar 28, 2023•17 min
Bankruptcy law is the ultimate countercyclical industry: business is booming when when things get bad. And things have almost never been worse in the crypto world, with even the most prominent coins down more than 40% in just the past year. Numerous crypto platforms—Voyager Digital, Celsius, BlockFi, and, most famously, FTX—have filed for Chapter 11. That means bankruptcy attorneys have a lot of work on their plates. Bloomberg Law spoke to more than half a dozen of the attorneys working on these...
Mar 21, 2023•15 min
Court supervised guardianships are meant to protect people who can no longer manage themselves and their assets. But a Bloomberg Law investigation found that people in guardianships can easily be taken advantage of, and that getting out of one is extraordinarily difficult. Reporters Ronnie Greene and Holly Barker just released a five-part series that looks at how guardianships can go wrong—from wealthy celebrities like Britney Spears to indigent senior citizens. They join our weekly podcast, On ...
Mar 14, 2023•19 min
Britney Spears’ conservatorship dispute brought the guardianship system to the public eye. It’s a system that entraps thousands more Americans without a platform to fight back. The industry is regulated loosely and ripe for exploitation of elderly and disabled people, Bloomberg Law found in a six-month investigation. Read the full 5-part series: https://www.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberglawnews/us-law-week/BNA%2000000186a58cdac2afe7e7ecdc9b0001
Mar 11, 2023•24 min
Suing your own customers usually isn't a wise business strategy. But that's what some insurance companies are doing as litigation over PFAS continues to flood the courts. Many of the companies that are, themselves, facing lawsuits over allegedly exposing people to the so-called "forever chemicals," are saying their insurers should be footing the costs of defending these suits. However, not only are the insurers rejecting these claims, but they're taking their own clients to court in the hopes of...
Mar 08, 2023•13 min
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is keeping his friends close, and his caucus closer. At least, that appears to be the intent behind what the California Republican is calling his "Five Families" strategy—a not-so-subtle reference to the classic 1972 film "The Godfather." In the hopes of avoiding the infighting that preceded his raucous Speakership vote, McCarthy is giving five different ideological factions within the House Republican caucus a much larger say in the legislation that makes it to the ...
Feb 28, 2023•16 min
A Massachusetts inmate says he deserves a new trial because his lawyer was racist, and the justices on his state's highest court aren't sure what to make of this argument. That was the takeaway from last week's oral argument in the closely-watched appeal of Anthony Dew. Dew is a Black Muslim man who says the discovery of extremely racist Facebook posts from his court-appointed lawyer should invalidate his 2016 guilty plea. Bloomberg Law's Allie Reed is covering this first-of-its-kind trial. She ...
Feb 14, 2023•13 min
Back in the 1920s, the Supreme Court granted Major League Baseball an exemption from US antitrust rules. But since then, some members of the Court—including several current justices—have said they think they may have made a mistake. Now, the Department of Justice is joining the club. Last week, it asked an appellate court to apply this exemption as narrowly as possible in an amicus brief on behalf of several defunct minor league teams that are suing MLB. On today's episode of our weekly legal ne...
Feb 07, 2023•13 min
Have you seen the ads recruiting plaintiffs in the Camp Lejeune case? If you haven't, you've surely seen ones for mesothelioma, pesticides, talcum powder, or any number of big mass tort cases in recent years. The marketing used to find clients for these cases has become much more sophisticated, and the budgets used to identify potential clients have been growing exponentially. For the Camp Lejeune case, which involves decades of contaminated drinking water at a military installation in North Car...
Jan 31, 2023•15 min
A trial is currently underway against the former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives over allegations he accepted millions in bribes. But he says the money was political speech protected by the First Amendment - and that he has Supreme Court cases to back him up. One case, 2010's Citizens United vs. FEC, reversed longstanding campaign finance restrictions as violating the First Amendment. Today, former Ohio speaker Larry Householder's trial is a test of how money works in politics in a ...
Jan 24, 2023•14 min
Investors may have a lot more opportunity to sue their boards of directors for mismanagement after a ruling last month in a Delaware opioid case. The ruling from Delaware Chancery Court, the country's premiere venue for corporate law disputes, was in a case against drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen that centered on allegations its reckless opioid selling damaged the company's stock price. The court found that investors can introduce evidence of mismanagement dating back years—a much longer time ...
Jan 17, 2023•13 min
The FDA has known for years that baby food can contain alarming amounts of toxic metals, including lead, arsenic, and cadmium. But why has it been slow to act? A team of Bloomberg Law reporters set out to answer this question, and to see how bad the baby food problem really is. For their project, Bloomberg Law independently tested more than two dozen products for contaminants. Two of those reporters, Gary Harki and Celine Castronuovo, join our weekly podcast, On The Merits, to talk about why the...
Jan 10, 2023•18 min
On Oct. 31, 2022, the Supreme Court heard arguments that Harvard's and the University of North Carolina's use of race in admissions goes too far. Given the current ideological makeup of the Supreme Court, it's almost certain the justices will overturn more than 40 years of precedent and declare affirmative action in higher education unconstitutional. But, as Bloomberg Law's Matthew Schwartz explains, there is a remote-but-not-impossible chance that the court may issue a surprise ruling upholding...
Jan 03, 2023•15 min
Forum shopping is the art of selecting a specific court in which to file a suit, and lawyers have been doing it since time immemorial. But a Bloomberg Law data analysis shows that the practice has changed in recent years. Republican Attorneys General who are suing the Biden administration have gravitated toward a handful of small, rural courthouses run by Trump-appointed judges. And those judges have been keen to issue nationwide injunctions halting administration policies. Bloomberg Law reporte...
Dec 20, 2022•16 min
News of the demise of law school rankings has been greatly exaggerated, according to the guests on our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits. You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Around a dozen of the top law schools in the country have said they'll no longer provide data to US News & World Report for its annual rankings. The schools say the rankings over-emphasize metrics that benefit already privileged and wealthy applications, and give short shrift to lawyers interested in pub...
Dec 13, 2022•15 min
After the Bernie Madoff scandal, the SEC created a whistleblower program that encouraged people to provide information by promising them a cut of the recovered funds. At first, the agency was inundated with tips. But now, the number of people reporting financial fraud is dwindling. The guests on this week's episode of our weekly podcast, On The Merits, say they know why. One problem: it's unclear how or why the SEC pays rewards to some whistleblowers but not others. And, even if you're entitled ...
Dec 06, 2022•17 min
Elections are typically decided at the ballot box. But in the past few years, the judicial system has been getting more and more involved. Spending on election-related litigation has ballooned during this time, according to George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton. This is one of many indications that political fights aren't ending when the results are announced but are instead migrating to courthouses across the country, he says. Overton joins our weekly legal news podcast, On...
Nov 29, 2022•15 min
If you're an attorney who lived through the dark days of the Great Recession, you could be forgiven for having flashbacks after reading a recent story by Bloomberg Law's Roy Strom and Meghan Tribe. They reported that several heavy hitters in Big Law, including Cooley LLP and Kirkland & Ellis, have laid off attorneys in recent months. Other firms are expected to follow suit next year. But they also spoke to several industry watchers who say this isn't Great Recession 2.0. For one, global econ...
Nov 15, 2022•18 min
It's common for attorneys to do pro bono work monitoring elections. But this year feels different to many of the lawyers who are volunteering. That's one of the takeaways from a recent story by Bloomberg Law's Sam Skolnik about the urgency lawyers feel about today's midterm elections. However, that urgency is not showing up in campaign finance data. Bloomberg Law columnist Roy Strom dug into the numbers and found that lawyers are donating to candidates at much lower rates than previous midterms....
Nov 08, 2022•16 min
