In the News

Professor Gregory Germain Provides Analysis of New York State Bill That Seeks to Discredit Trump-Related Pro Bono Work

Professor Gregory Germain spoke with the New York Law Journal about a recently introduced New York State bill that would ensure the state wouldn’t recognize pro bono work “resulting from the Trump Administration’s unlawful extortion of private law firms and attack on the practice of law.”

“The bill does not restrict the provision of pro bono work. It only restricts using the hours spent on pro bono work directed by the federal government for pro bono bar credit,” Germain said. “It’s very hard to know what pro bono work the federal government will direct law firms to perform. It’s very possible that some of the pro bono work directed by the federal government would be traditional pro bono work on behalf of the poor, for example. So the legislation might be over-inclusive.”

The full article may be behind a paywall.

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks Discusses the Alien Enemies Act with The Telegraph

Professor of Law Emeritus William C. Banks provided historical background for an article on the Alien Enemies Act in The Telegraph. President Trump has indicated the law’s use for the deportation of immigrants.

For Banks, using the act sent a powerful message to voters.

“The language of the legislation uses the term invasion, and another term, predatory incursion,” he told The Telegraph

“That sounds like language that strikes fear into the hearts of Americans and so on. So it served a very powerful rhetorical purpose when he gave his inaugural address on January 20, and then in a series of executive orders that he promulgated on that day and then several days afterwards,” he said.

“Legally, it has almost certainly no application to the circumstances that the United States now finds itself in. It was written, as you probably have learnt, in the 1790s in anticipation of what was feared to be a coming war with France,” said Banks.

“The Unitary Executive Theory is a Pathway to Autocracy,” says University Professor David Driesen

University Professor David Driesen spoke with Mother Jones for an extensive article on the “unitary executive” theory.

“The unitary executive theory is a pathway to autocracy,” says Driesen, whose 2021 book, The Specter of Dictatorship, details the dangers of centralizing power in a single leader. “In every functional democracy I’m aware of, there is a civil service that can’t be easily fired, and there also are pockets in the government where even the top levels are somewhat independent of the head of state.”

In countries like Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, which have all recently experienced democratic backsliding, Driesen says civil service purges were an early step in the project of replacing the rule of law with autocracy. “The unitary executive theory is important,” he says, because it “legitimates this kind of thing in the minds of the elite.”

 “The vision of the founding is that the president was to faithfully execute the law. That’s what the Constitution says,” says Driesen. “That’s what the rule of law is all about.”

Professor Gregory Germain Discusses Public Comments Made in the Luigi Mangione Murder Trial

Professor of Law Gregory Germain spoke with The Guardian for the story “Judge cautions prosecutors in healthcare exec murder trial to refrain from public comments.” The Judge in Luigi Mangione’s murder trial recently pointed prosecutors to a district court policy barring lawyers on both sides from making “public commentary that could impede Mr. Mangione’s right to a fair trial”.

It is hard to say exactly when out-of-court statements by public figures might have an impact.

“The rules are vague enough that it’s hard to know when they cross the line,” said Germain.

“What the judge did is what judges usually do if they think they’re getting close to the line: they admonish them and remind them of their obligation,” he said. “They hope then that the prosecutors will behave themselves and not try the case in front of the public, but try the case in the court and not impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”

Professor Shubha Ghosh Discusses FTC Suing Uber One and Enforcement of Subscription Services

Crandall Melvin Professor of Law Shubha Ghosh recently spoke with CNET for the story “FTC Sues Over Uber One, Saying It ‘Deceived Consumers’.” At issue are customers who sign up for free trials but are charged for services after the subscription is canceled.

“Very likely there will be more suits as the FTC, across administrations, seeks to address anticompetitive practices that harm consumers, especially practices that raise prices and limit consumer choices,” Ghosh told CNET. “Ticketmaster is one example. We may see actions against crypto and payday loans online.”

But don’t expect rewards from these FTC lawsuits if you feel you were taken advantage of by a subscription-based service. For customers, it’s not the same as a class action suit in which plaintiffs may get money from court-designated damages, Ghosh said.

“The FTC cannot recover restitution for consumers after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in [a 2021 case involving] AMG Management,” he said. “The FTC can change business practices, however, through injunctive relief under the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC can also obtain refunds for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the (Better Online Ticket Sales) Act.”

Professor Katherine Macfarlane Discusses ADA Discrimination Case with Law360

Professor Katherine Macfarlane, Director of the Disability Law and Policy Program, spoke with Law360 for the article “3 Takeaways After ADA Suit Over High Heels Cleared For Trial”.

The case revolves around a disability discrimination lawsuit by a fired cocktail waitress who’d asked to wear comfortable black shoes to work instead of the required high heels.

One takeaway was to keep essential job functions gender-neutral when possible. Macfarlane said it depends on the job, and how the employer defines what it considers an essential function.

“With a cheerleading uniform, you could say that you want to have everyone in the same thing, you want to be able to maximize what is most attractive,” she said, in an example of an all-woman professional cheer squad. “But we’re far afield from that … this is a job where people are supposed to be able to deliver drinks quickly.”

In fact, Macfarlane continued, she might argue that high heels could be a liability in a work environment that depends on speed and carrying heavy trays of food or drink.

The idea that the black high heels are an essential function of the work of cocktail servers at this company “should have been interrogated,” she said.

Another takeaway was that granting an accommodation may be the easiest solution, even as the ADA doesn’t actually require workers to produce a doctor’s note at all — let alone produce a note containing specific prescriptive language for a certain brand of shoes — in order for them to wear what works best for them.

“The interactive process is supposed to be flexible, and a conversation. If you can defer to the employee’s preference, you should,” she said. “There’s something really irrational and punitive about the way this came down, because the easy solution is, ‘Of course, you can wear your Skechers. Thank you for letting me know.’ Move on.”

She said it’s a bad human resources decision that led to lawyers on both sides “because someone wants to wear black Skechers.”

Professor Casey Weissman-Vermeulen Discusses Funding Cuts to CNY Fair Housing

Professor Casey Weissman-Vermeulen, Director of the Housing Clinic, spoke with the Daily Orange about local housing advocate CNY Fair Housing and its future as federal grants and funding are diminished for education initiatives.

CNY Fair Housing is a local nonprofit organization that receives funding through grants from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. It responds to tenant or renter discrimination cases by conducting investigations and taking legal action when necessary. But it now faces the elimination of grant funding for its education and outreach efforts, which are being challenged in court.

CNY Fair Housing’s mission, Weissman-Vermeulen said, extends beyond legal enforcement. He also said the organization also works to raise awareness about how housing discrimination impacts individual families and the greater community.

“Issues of discrimination and then isolating folks to areas of concentrated poverty, lead to all kinds of problems that we all sort of collectively pay for in terms of folks not being able to access jobs and being upwardly economically mobile or perhaps engaging in crime or non-legal economic activity,” Weissman-Vermeulen, a former attorney for CNY Fair Housing, said.

Professor Shubha Ghosh Discusses Google Antitrust Case Remedies

Crandall Melvin Professor Shubha Ghosh spoke with the National News Desk about possible remedies in the Google antitrust ruling.

“The courts generally, and I don’t see a change in this, tend to like contractual remedies like trying to make sure contracts are not being used in a way that is anti-competitive, and that’s more their bailiwick,” said Ghosh, Director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute. “That’s something they may be more comfortable with in terms of just not having the kind of exclusivity arrangements that Google might have had with Apple, in terms of just trying to open up like the data.”

Dean Terence Lau Speaks with NBC News on How Automotive Tariffs Will Affect Consumers

Dean Terence Lau L’98 recently spoke with NBC News on how new automotive tariffs will impact consumers. One anticipated way is for auto insurance premiums to increase.

It will cost insurance companies more to replace damaged car parts that are subject to tariffs. “When you get into an accident, your car insurance company is the one that’s going to be buying those parts to repair your vehicle,” said Lau, who was previously a trade lawyer for Ford Motor Co. “Many products are imported, and so I expect that we will see some upward pressure on car insurance premiums.”

For consumers, Lau advised: “Don’t panic. Because when you panic, you make bad decisions.”

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks on the Transfer of the Roosevelt Reservation to the Military to designate as “National Defense Areas”

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks spoke with AZ Central/The Arizona Republic for the story, “What Trump’s executive order on the Roosevelt Reservation means at the Arizona border.”

“Symbolically, it puts the military right in the center of immigration enforcement,” said Banks, who has studied and written about the use of the military in the U.S. interior.

“When (the military) has been deployed in recent years, including in the Bush and Obama (administration) … they’ve been undertaking activities that we would not call law enforcement. The worry, historically, about putting soldiers in the position of cops is that they’re not trained to do that. Their orientation is entirely different — they’re trained as warfighters, not as law enforcers,” he said.