Jake Wunsch
The USTA’s censorship of the crowd's reaction to Trump is cowardly, hypocritical and un-American.
USTA’s Bad Call on Free Speech at the US Open
The USTA’s censorship of the crowd's reaction to Trump is cowardly, hypocritical and un-American.
Ten Questions to a Media Lawyer
Cowan DeBaets partner on her father's role in her decision to pursue law, AI and copyright, the Arnie Svenson case involving snapshots of NYC apartment dwellers, and the time she assisted a writer on The Good Wife.
Texas Supreme Court Narrows Available Relief Under the Public Information Act
The ruling significantly narrows the enforcement mechanism of the TPIA and raises new questions about access to public records held by Texas’s most powerful elected officials.
Ninth Circuit Affirms Order Compelling Release of Contractor Diversity Reports
Looking forward, as more government work continues to be outsourced to federal contractors, this ruling provides media attorneys with another path when litigating Exemption 4 cases: commerciality is the new battleground. The Ninth Circuit proved that records must be more than simply “related to” a business to pass the threshold test of Exemption 4.
Seventh Circuit Holds Indiana “Police Buffer” Law is Unconstitutionally Vague
The decision highlights that the Due Process Clause––complementing the First Amendment––provides journalists with important tools for challenging law enforcement discretion that threatens to chill newsgathering.
S.D.N.Y. Denies DOJ Request to Unseal Ghislaine Maxwell Grand Jury Transcripts
The government argued that the Maxwell grand jury materials would reveal new insights about the extent to which Epstein and Maxwell worked together to abuse children — or, at least, that the grand jury transcripts would shed new light on how the government investigated the two. But Judge Engelmayer said these reasons were “demonstrably false.”
Second Circuit Rules That Undecided Motions Are Judicial Documents Entitled to Presumption of Public Access
The Second Circuit found that the district court erred as a matter of law in holding that undecided motions rendered moot by the parties’ settlement of the case were categorically not “judicial documents” subject to a presumption of public access.
All in a Day’s Work? Carroll v. Trump and the Boundaries of Presidential Speech
If Trump’s statements were indeed within the scope of his employment, the Presidential office gains extraordinary defamation immunity.
California Court Dismisses Amazon Tribe’s Libel Suit Against The New York Times and TMZ
At the heart of the suit was the allegation that The Times had claimed that the tribe was addicted to online pornography—something that The Times never said.
Illinois Legislature Amends the State’s Anti-SLAPP Law
The amendments to the CPA were specifically intended to override the Illinois Supreme Court’s nullifying interpretations in the Sandholm and Glorioso cases. After years of disuse, practitioners representing defamation defendants in Illinois courts should again consider filing CPA motions—with the opportunity to guide the development and rejuvenation of the law.