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Immigration Law

ABA calls on senators to oppose ‘deeply concerning’ immigration bill

By Amanda Robert

January 17, 2025, 9:35 am CST

The ABA is urging the U.S. Senate to vote against an immigration reform bill that would require the detention of noncitizens who committed “certain low-level offenses.”

In a Jan. 16 letter, ABA President Bill Bay said S. 5, also known as the Laken Riley Act, contains “deeply concerning” provisions. They include mandating the indefinite detention of undocumented individuals who are arrested, charged or convicted of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting offenses, without providing an opportunity for bond.

“This would reverse the presumption of innocence and eliminate procedural safeguards, undermining due process rights that are the cornerstone of our justice system,” Bay wrote in the letter.

The Laken Riley Act also would grant states unlimited access to challenge federal immigration policies or release decisions in individual immigration cases, Bay said. This could result in “endless litigation” and curb the federal government’s ability to enact effective immigration policies now and in the future.

“The ABA urges you to protect due process rights, constitutional safeguards and the integrity of our legal system while upholding the safety and security of our nation by voting no on the Laken Riley Act,” Bay wrote.

The Senate is expected to vote on the bill Friday.

It is named after a Georgia nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan man who was in the U.S. without legal status, NBC News reports. If passed, the GOP-supported bill could become the incoming Trump administration’s first legislative victory.

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Trials & Litigation

Federal judge will no longer tolerate lawyers’ barbed briefs and ‘expletive-laden phone calls’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 12, 2024, 9:00 am CST

A federal judge in Seattle is fed up with “hyperbole and bluster” in a lawsuit alleging that State Farm failed to pay full policy benefits to homeowners after a house fire.

Lawyers “traded barbs in their briefs and during oral argument” about lack of professionalism and motives, offering competing accounts about who is to blame for a breakdown in communications, said U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead of the Western District of Washington in a Dec. 4. order. Whitehead was appointed by President Joe Biden.

Law360 has the story.

No matter which story is to be believed, the lawyers’ actions fell short of the required collegiality standard, Whitehead said.

“Expletive-laden phone calls, hang-ups, backing out of prior agreements without explanation, and misleading emails purporting to ‘memorialize’ phone calls demean the integrity of the legal process and show disrespect to all concerned, including the court in having to resolve petty disputes,” Whitehead said in his order.

“Let it be clear: The court will not tolerate such conduct moving forward.”

Whitehead scolded the lawyers before ruling on the plaintiffs’ requests for financial information from State Farm. The plaintiffs hope to learn whether the insurer incentivized claim handlers to place their personal financial gain over the interests of policyholders.

“Setting aside the parties’ hyperbole and bluster,” the communications submitted into evidence show that the parties are at an impasse, Whitehead said. The judge allowed discovery on the incentives program but narrowed the documents that should be produced.

Law360 listed the lawyers for the plaintiffs as Heather N. Derenski of Cedar View Law and Karl E. Malling. The lawyer for State Farm is James D. Hicks of Sinars Slowikowski Tomaska.

None of the lawyers immediately responded to ABA Journal emails seeking comment. Nor did they respond to messages left in voicemails or with law firm personnel.

“I was running from a bear,” a 911 caller said, muffled, after an apparent fall at a waterfall. But authorities say he was actually a murderer staging a fatal fall. Yes, authorities found a body. It wasn’t him.

You can hear the audio below. In it, a 911 dispatcher from Polk County, Tennessee, transferred a call to her Monroe County counterpart on Oct. 18. Authorities have said that a hiker going by the name Brandon Andre claimed to have fallen off a cliff. In truth, investigators, say the caller was actually Nicholas Wayne Hamlett, 45.

The audio below shows pictures of Hamlett that deputies released during the search for him.

 

In this audio, the Polk County dispatcher told her counterpart, “He’s got two percent left on his cellphone. He fell off the cliff at some waterfalls. He fell on his head. He’s hurt pretty bad, said he can’t lift his legs.”

The Monroe County dispatcher ended up asking the caller (allegedly Hamlett) for more detail about his location.

“I’m at the waterfall,” he said in the audio.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has told people close to her that she has no plans of stepping down before Donald Trump takes office, according to multiple reports, as calls have emerged on the left for her to do so in a bid to clamp Trump’s power.

“This is no time to lose her important voice on the court,” a source close to Sotomayor told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “She just turned 70 and takes better care of herself than anyone I know,” the source said.

Another person close to the justice, who spoke to CNN, said: “She’s in great health, and the court needs her now more than ever.” Sources also told ABC News that Sotomayor wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

Sotomayor, the most senior liberal member of the Supreme Court, has been receiving calls to step down immediately by Democrats in the days since Trump’s election win, with many believing it would be foolish to give Trump another opportunity to nominate a justice, should Sotomayor not make it through his second term for some reason.

“This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire,” David Dayen, executive editor of American Prospect magazine, wrote on X after the election.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Should Justice Sotomayor retire? Chemerinsky, White House haven’t joined calls for her to step down

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 4, 2024, 1:23 pm CDT

Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, is among the commentators who are calling for 69-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sotomayor, the oldest Democratic appointee on the high court, has Type 1 diabetes. Campos would like to give President Joe Biden a chance to name her replacement while Democrats control the U.S. Senate.

“You have the votes right now, and you’re not going to have the votes a year from now,” Campos told HuffPost. “It’s really that simple.”

The fear is that history could repeat itself. Then-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg resisted calls to step down, and she died at age 87 while then-President Donald Trump was in the White House. She was replaced by now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett, giving the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative majority.

If a Sotomayor replacement gives conservatives a 7-2 Supreme Court majority, “you go from a captured court to a full MAGA court,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told NBC News.

“Certainly, I think if Justice Ginsburg had it to do over again, she might have rethought her confidence in her own health,” said Whitehouse, who nonetheless is not joining calls for Sotomayor to step down.

Another legal academic, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and an ABA Journal contributor, had called on Ginsburg to retire. But he does not think that Sotomayor has to do so, according to HuffPost and NBC News. He noted that Sotomayor is only 69, while Ginsburg was in her 80s.

He is also concerned that a progressive nominee to replace Sotomayor might not get confirmed because of the “slim Democratic majority” in the Senate.

The White House is also taking a hands-off approach, Law360 reports.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press conference Wednesday a decision on retirement is “a personal decision,” and justices should be given the “space and freedom” to decide.

Campos said some Democrats wonder why it’s necessary to replace Sotomayor with a liberal nominee when conservatives have a six-person majority on the court.

“That’s like asking, ‘What does it matter to give up another touchdown in the second quarter when we’re already down 14 points?’” Campos said. “At some point, you have to make your comeback.”

Rebecca “Becky” H. Hill, an unlikely but pivotal figure in the ongoing Alex Murdaugh post-murder conviction appeal, is no longer the clerk of court for Colleton County, South Carolina.

During a Monday morning press conference in front of the antebellum courthouse in Walterboro, the long-embattled elected official resigned her position effective immediately, adding that she would forego reelection just before the filing deadline, citing family reasons.

In September 2023, defense attorneys accused Hill of engaging in several instances of jury tampering during Murdaugh’s murder trial. Other, related scandals quickly rose to the surface over Hill’s behavior during and after the longest criminal trial in Palmetto State history.

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Immigration Law

ABA calls on Biden administration to protect asylum-seekers

By Amanda Robert

March 7, 2024, 9:07 am CST

ABA President Mary Smith is urging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Domestic Policy Council to honor due process when responding to conflicts at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a March 6 letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the DHS, and Neera Tanden, the director of the Domestic Policy Council, Smith said the ABA recognizes that efforts to provide additional tools and resources to address challenges at the border have stalled in Congress.

But, she added, the association opposes “any actions or policies, including the widespread and indiscriminate use of a national border expulsion authority and the heightening of the credible fear standard, that abrogate our nation’s moral and legal responsibility to protect asylum-seekers.”

Smith contended that raising the credible fear standard and limiting the review of fear-based claims would exacerbate existing concerns over due process. She also said a national border expulsion authority could jeopardize protection measures that are now available to vulnerable people and families.

“While we applaud the efforts of those working to find solutions to the current challenges at the border, the administration should refrain from abandoning our domestic and international legal responsibility to provide protections for individuals facing threats of harm in their own countries by upholding our asylum and humanitarian parole systems,” Smith said.

She encouraged Mayorkas and Tanden to consider other solutions, such as expanding resources at ports of entry and for communities and organizations that provide shelter, case management, legal services and language interpretation to people seeking asylum.

See also:

“Supreme Court keeps Texas migrant law on hold until at least March 13”