Courthouse News Article Reports on Our Brief for AG Meese for Gen. Flynn

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The Courthouse News Article began its coverage of our brief with this:  ” Edwin Meese, former attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, filed his own brief along with the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund in support of Flynn. The conservatives’ brief highlights an indelible moment between Flynn and Sullivan in 2018, when the judge said to the defendant in open court, “Arguably, you sold your country out.”  Meese argued that the motion to dismiss was unusual, but not extraordinary, and that it is Attorney General William Barr’s responsibility to “terminate a baseless prosecution in the interest of justice.”

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Article: “Sixth Circuit Hears Debate Over Legality of Bump Stocks”

admin Appearances, Firearms Law, Press Coverage

L-R: Rob Olson and Erich Pratt.

L-R: Rob Olson and Erich Pratt.

Today, Rob Olson presented oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in our continuing litigation against ATF’s bump stock regulation issued in December 2018. The issue today before the court was the correctness of District Judge Paul Maloney’s ruling denying our motion for a preliminary injunction against the regulation. This article in CourthouseNews discusses the oral argument.

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FOIA Bombshell Disclosure — CU v. U.S. Department of State

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Today we obtained for Citizens United, from FOIA litigation against the State Department, key documents concerning the FISA Warrants against Trump Campaign workers. For the first time, these documents demonstrate that even before the first FISA Application was filed, the FBI and Justice Department were on notice that the Steele dossier was unverifiable, contained errors, was politically generated, Read More

Article: Washington Examiner — “Brett Kavanaugh will be very good for property rights”

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This article by Dick Patten of the American Business Defense Council  in the Washington Examiner about the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh references our article in Case Western School of Law Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet.  There, we discussed Judge Kavanaugh’s important dissent to the denial of a petition for rehearing en banc in a case that became United States v. Jones in the U.S. Supreme Court.  We analyzed Judge Kavanaugh’s dissent in our amicus brief in Jones, and Justice Scalia’s decision embraced the originalist property-based foundation for the Fourth Amendment.

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Law 360 Article Discusses our Harris Funeral Home Brief

admin Press Coverage, Statutory Construction

Bill Olson was quoted in an article by Braden Campbell called “States, Faith Groups Tell Justices To Hear Trans Bias Case,” in Law 360:  “’We have a lower federal judiciary that’s spinning out of control as circuits race toward political correctness, and if the Supreme Court doesn’t restore order, it’s hard to know where this is going to end,’ Olson said, referencing other rulings interpreting Title VII to cover gay workers.”

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Article: Trump Administration Rift on LGBT Worker Rights Nears Showdown

admin Press Coverage, Statutory Construction

Chris Opfer of BNA News wrote an article about the Zarda case where we filed a brief and other similar cases.where LGBTQ? advocates are asking judges to re-write the 1964 Civil Rights Act to grant them special rights.

The Article quotes Bill Olson, saying “Not only is it an effort to have a societal sanction for an immoral lifestyle, but it’s being accomplished by unelected judges who are admitting they are changing the law,”

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Our Firm’s Amicus Briefs for GOA Ranked Among Highest in Policy Shifting Cases

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Empirical SCOTUS ranked the amicus briefs we filed for Gun Owners of America (“GOA”) tied for 13th in the country in “Policy Shifting Cases” during the period 2000-16.  This analysis focused on cases where the High Court struck down statutes as unconstitutional or overturned its own precedents.  In this listing, GOA was rated above long-time powerhouse interest groups like the AFL-CIO and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  The analysis is entitled “Amicus Policy Success in Impactful Supreme Court Decisions.”

The study reported:  “Perhaps the biggest development in the modern Supreme Court alongside the great discretion the justices now have in dictating the cases they hear is the role of interest groups.  Over the past several decades the Supreme Court has increasingly become the forum for such groups and their attempts at persuasion; the object of persuasion being the amicus brief….    Cases that lead the Court to rule statutes unconstitutional or to overturn its own precedent tend to have significant policy effects and the Court is often directed to such aspects of cases in early phases of litigation….  According to the United States Supreme Court Database, the Court has ruled a statute unconstitutional and/or has overturned its own precedent in 87 cases since the 2000 term.  Approximately 836 merits stage amicus briefs were filed in this set of cases or just under 10 briefs per case on average.  Several groups were clearly dominant in filing briefs on behalf of winning sides in these cases and consequently in moving policy in their preferred directions.”

Article: “Court gets refresher course in who actually writes laws”

Michael Harless Press Coverage

World Net Daily ran an article about our firm’s brief filed in Zarda v. Altitude Express.  The article addressed the factual problem with the case that we raised, in that the Appellant’s brief admitted that Zarda, a homosexual, was not fired because he was homosexual, but because he “over-shared” his sexual orientation with customers.  The article also focuses on our argument that the Courts have no business legislating from the bench.

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