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3. Lawyers will seek stipulated dismissal of…

Law Firms

Lawyers will seek stipulated dismissal of fired associate’s bias suit against Kirkland & Ellis

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 14, 2025, 2:35 pm CDT

A fired associate and Kirkland & Ellis plan to ask a court to toss the lawyer’s federal lawsuit against the law firm alleging gender bias and retaliation, according to an April 8 docket entry.

The former associate, Zoya Kovalenko, had alleged in an October 2022 suit that male associates in the intellectual property litigation group at Kirkland & Ellis were treated better and paid more money than women. Kovalenko claimed that she was fired in September 2021 after complaining about disparate treatment and was then falsely told that poor performance was the reason that she was let go.

U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California ruled in September 2024 that Kovalenko could sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, violation of California anti-discrimination law and violation of the Equal Pay Act. But Gilliam tossed a defamation claim based on a performance review.

Law360 reported earlier this month on Kovalenko’s plan to seek a stipulated dismissal, revealed in a case management statement.

Kovalenko did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal email seeking comment.

Kirkland & Ellis is represented by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe lawyers, who did not immediately reply to the Journal’s email request for comment.

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3. After DC Circuit reinstates fired agency…

Executive Branch

After DC Circuit reinstates fired agency board members, chief justice pauses action

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 9, 2025, 9:11 am CDT

Updated: Chief Justice John Roberts has temporarily blocked reinstatement of fired board members of two independent agencies after an en banc federal appeals court ruled in their favor Monday.

On Wednesday, Roberts issued an administrative stay that paused reinstatement of Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne A. Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board, Law360 reports.

In its April 7 order, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated a three-judge panel decision that allowed Trump to remove Harris and Wilcox.

The NLRB enforces labor laws, while the MSPB considers workplace disputes by federal employees. Boards overseeing the agencies resolve appeals following decisions by administrative law judges.

The D.C. Circuit’s en banc order revived a reinstatement order by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of the District of Columbia, Law.com reports.

The en banc court cited a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, and a 1958 Supreme Court decision, Wiener v. United States. Those decisions upheld restrictions on removal of government officials on multimember adjudicatory boards, the appeals court said.

“The Supreme Court’s repeated and recent statements that Humphrey’s Executor and Wiener remain precedential require denying the government’s emergency motions for a stay pending appeal,” the en banc majority said.

Four out of 11 en banc judges dissented.

The case is Trump v. Wilcox.

Updated April 9 at 4:17 p.m. to include information on Chief Justice John Roberts’ administrative stay.

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3. Lawyer alleges BigLaw firm fired her 11 days…

Disability Law

Lawyer alleges BigLaw firm fired her 11 days after she disclosed epilepsy diagnosis, violating disability law

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 10, 2025, 9:00 am CDT

A former lawyer at Ballard Spahr has filed a lawsuit alleging that she was fired for taking medical leave after suffering gastrointestinal problems and a seizure.

Kimberly Steefel, a former of counsel for Ballard Spahr, filed the April 8 suit in the U.S. District for the Southern District of New York, Law360 reports in a story noted by Above the Law.

Steefel learned that she was being fired in October 2022 on the day that she returned to the law firm’s New York office from medical leave, according to her suit. Only 11 days before she had disclosed her epilepsy diagnosis and her medical provider’s recommendation for an accommodation in the form of a flexible work schedule, the suit says.

Steefel suffered from gastrointestinal problems and what she thought was her first seizure before beginning the medical leave. She later sought “16 reasonable accommodations for her epilepsy,” the suit says.

The accommodations stemmed from the effect of epilepsy on stamina and concentration and the need to “avoid environments pervaded by anxiety and hostility,” which can lower the seizure threshold, according to the suit.

There was no attempt to discuss accommodations, the suit says. Steefel was initially told that her employment would end no later than mid-January 2023, but the date was later pushed back to mid-April 2023.

Before she learned of her firing, Steefel had “received nothing but praise and positive feedback” for her work, the suit says.

Her suit alleges discrimination, retaliation, hostile treatment and wrongful termination on the basis of Steefel’s disabilities and gender in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and state and local anti-discrimination laws.

The suit alleges that the firm has a history of discriminating against disabled people, pointing to Ballard Spahr lawyer job ads with “nonsensical physical requirements” that include the ability to “stand, walk, bend and stoop,” to sit for long periods of time, and to “lift up to 40 pounds.”

Steefel also alleges that her practice group, the employee benefits and executive compensation group, created a hostile work environment on the basis of sex.

The group had a “systematic practice” of “replacing the junior- or mid-level female attorneys with other female attorneys at the same or lower level, thus keeping the cycle of maintaining females at lower-level positions only, and at the same time, hiring into and promoting to more senior-level positions only males,” the suit says.

Ballard Spahr provided this statement to the ABA Journal: “The firm disputes the allegations contained in Ms. Steefel’s complaint, and in particular, that she was terminated due to an alleged disability or her gender. The firm will defend the case vigorously.”

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3. Top military lawyers are fired; will replacements…

Military Law

Top military lawyers are fired; will replacements allow more aggressive battlefield approach?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 24, 2025, 10:03 am CST

The secretary for the U.S. Department of Defense is looking for new judge advocates general for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, he said in an announcement Friday.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the lawyers currently in those top JAG positions, the New York Times reports, representing “an opening salvo in his push to remake the military into a force that is more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.”

Commenting Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Rosa Brooks, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said firing the top lawyers is “what you do when you’re planning to break the law: You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”

On Fox News Sunday, Hegseth was asked for his response to Brooks, report Law & Crime and the Daily Beast.

“We want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens in their spots,” he said.

The New York Times identified the fired lawyers as Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and Rear Adm. Lia M. Reynolds.

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The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump‘s firings of approximately 5,900 probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who have been booted since he took office in January.

In a stay issued on Wednesday by embattled MSPB member Cathy Harris, who has been fighting for her job herself, the board condemned the terminations as “planned eliminations” and violations of “personnel practice.”

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the agency engaged in a prohibited personnel practice,” Harris wrote in the MSPB order, noting how Biden ethics enforcer Hampton Dellinger — who is battling Trump’s Justice Department in federal court over his firing at the Office of Special Counsel — provided findings from an OSC investigation on the USDA removals this week that “reasonably” alleges and outlines personnel violations by the Trump administration.

Harris said the board believed there were “reasonable grounds” to stay the firings for 45 days while MSPB members continue to investigate, on account of there being so many people involved.

“Because there is a possibility that additional individuals, not specifically named in the agency’s response, may be affected by these probationary terminations, and given the assertions made in OSC’s initial stay request and the deference to which we afford OSC in the context of an initial stay request, I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the agency terminated the aforementioned probationary employees in violation of (civil service laws),” Harris explained.

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3. 20 immigration judges fired, despite backlogs;…

Immigration Law

20 immigration judges fired, despite backlogs; one labels dismissal ‘political pink slip’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 18, 2025, 1:56 pm CST

Immigration judges have not been spared from firings in the Trump administration, despite a backlog of 3.7 million cases in their courts at the end of last year.

Twenty immigration judges have been fired, including 18 let go Friday, a union official told the New York Times, Bloomberg Law and the Associated Press, which was first to report the news.

The firings are “inexplicable,” and “it makes no sense at all,” said Matthew Biggs, the official, in an interview with the New York Times. Biggs is the president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers.

Biggs said the firings are contrary to President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration. Immigration judges, who are administrative law judges, preside over asylum claims and deportation cases.

Among those who were fired Friday, 13 were recently hired and had not yet been sworn in. Five were assistant chief immigration judges. Another two were fired in the past week.

One of the fired judges was Judge Kerry E. Doyle, who was formerly the deputy general counsel for immigration for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“Unfortunately, I was unable to avoid the political pink slip,” Doyle wrote on LinkedIn.

The fired judges included former prosecutors and military veterans, Doyle told Bloomberg Law.

See also:

DOJ says it will prosecute local officials over immigration enforcement

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An employee of the National Labor Relations Board who was fired by President Donald Trump is firing back in court with a federal lawsuit, calling her removal “unprecedented and illegal.”

Gwynne A. Wilcox called her Jan. 27 firing by late-night email a blatant violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which allows the president to remove board members only in cases of “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause,” and only after “notice and hearing,” according to the complaint.

“The President’s unprecedented removal of Ms. Wilcox defies 90 years of Supreme Court precedent that has ensured the independence of critical government agencies,” Deepak Gupta, an attorney for Wilcox, said in a statement. “Federal law is clear: The members of the National Labor Relations Board may only be removed for neglect of duty or misconduct, and only after a notice and a hearing. The President has violated the law.”

A deputy prosecutor in Indiana has been fired for voicing her disdain with Donald Trump voters on social media — writing on Facebook after the election that they “disgust” her and “clearly don’t respect” human beings — in addition to sharing posts about them being Nazis, according to her boss.

“If you voted for Trump, please unfriend me,” wrote Jordan Stroh, former deputy prosecuting attorney for the Hancock County District Attorney’s Office, in a Facebook post cited by District Attorney Brent Eaton this week in her termination letter, which was obtained by local CBS affiliate WTTV and local Fox affiliate WXIN.

An election staffer in Colorado claims in a new lawsuit that the City and County of Denver booted her from a supervisor position for allegedly talking about poll worker safety on Apple TV+’s “The Problem with Jon Stewart” show — and now she’s suing.

Virginia Chau, a Voter Service and Polling Centers supervisor fired in 2022, alleges in a civil rights lawsuit filed on Monday that Denver officials axed her shortly after her Season 2, Episode 4 appearance. She claims the city didn’t appreciate her talking about the “increasing hostility from voters” being shown at the time toward “all election judges, particularly after former President Trump was spreading the Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from him, Chau’s lawsuit said.

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3. It’s ‘past time to proceed to the merits’…

Law Firms

It’s ‘past time to proceed to the merits’ in fired BigLaw associate’s bias case, judge says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 16, 2024, 12:26 pm CDT

A federal judge in California last week refused to toss an amended gender-bias and retaliation lawsuit filed against Kirkland & Ellis by a fired associate, saying “it is past time to proceed to the merits.”

“There already has been more than enough ink spilled on aggressive pleading litigation in this case,” said U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. of the Northern District of California in a Sept. 10 order.

Gilliam’s ruling allows fired associate Zoya Kovalenko to sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress, retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, violation of California anti-discrimination law and violation of the Equal Pay Act, report Law.com and Bloomberg Law.

But Gilliam granted Kirkland’s motion to dismiss a defamation claim in connection with her performance review because it was filed one day after the one-year deadline.

Kovalenko had alleged in an October 2022 suit that male associates in the intellectual property litigation group at Kirkland were treated better and paid more money than females, leading to “an alarmingly high turnover of female associates relative to male associates.”

Kovalenko claimed that she was fired in September 2021 after complaining about disparate treatment and was then falsely told that poor performance was the reason that she was let go.

Gilliam said Kirkland and other defendants could have raised most, if not all, of their arguments in their prior “extensive” dismissal motions.

“But the tiresome reality is that denying the motion on this ground would result in yet another round of pleading litigation,” and that is why he ruled on the merits, Gilliam said.

Gilliam also said a motion by two partner defendants for reconsideration of prior rulings was “duplicative” and appeared to rely on some “repackaged” arguments rejected in a prior court order.

The judge also rejected Kirkland’s motion to overturn rulings by a magistrate judge who refused to allow the law firm to subpoena Kovalenko’s former employers Fish & Richardson and Paul Hastings. Kirkland had sought documents on Kovalenko’s work performance, leaves of absence and medical records at the prior firms.

Kovalenko’s performance at prior firms is only “marginally relevant” to her performance and treatment at Kirkland, Gilliam said. In addition, Gilliam said, the magistrate judge did not clearly err by requiring more evidence before allowing access to “such extremely sensitive personal information” regarding medical records.

Gilliam is an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

The case is Kovalenko v. Kirkland & Ellis.

See also:

‘Routine performance management’ can’t be basis for fired associate’s bias suit, BigLaw firm argues

Kirkland & Ellis must face ex-associate’s sex bias claims, federal court says