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From al Ghashiyah v. Oster, decided last Thursday by Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judges JoAnne Kloppenburg, Jennifer Nashold, and Chris Taylor:

Al Ghashiyah is the only brother of James C. Charles Casteel. Casteel died in October 2024. Thomas Oster, a longtime friend of Casteel, filed a petition for the formal administration of Casteel’s estate and filed Casteel’s will with the circuit court.

Casteel’s will bequeaths the contents of his estate to certain friends and family members. The will does not bequeath any of Casteel’s estate to al Ghashiyah. Al Ghashiyah filed a motion requesting that the court apply Islamic law to the administration of the estate. Al Ghashiyah asserted that, under Islamic law, Casteel’s estate must be distributed among Casteel’s surviving siblings, with any surviving male siblings receiving twice the share of any surviving female siblings.

At an evidentiary hearing on Oster’s petition and al Ghashiyah’s motion, al Ghashiyah confirmed that his motion was a request that the circuit court apply Islamic law instead of the laws of the State of Wisconsin, and instead of following Casteel’s will. Al Ghashiyah testified that, with his brother’s death, al Ghashiyah became the head of the Casteel family, and as head of the family, he has decided that Islamic law is the law that applies to the family.

Al Ghashiyah also testified that he and Casteel did not discuss whether or not Casteel’s property should be distributed according to Islamic law, and that, to al Ghashiyah’s knowledge, Casteel did not practice the Islamic faith. The court denied al Ghashiyah’s motion requesting that the court apply Islamic law….

Al Ghashiyah … argues that the circuit court’s denial of his motion to apply Islamic law is discriminatory and violates fundamental rights protected under the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” … [A]l Ghashiyah does not develop this argument with citation to relevant legal authority that illustrates court error. Rather, al Ghashiyah asserts that “human rights principles are universally applicable” and cites to Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2003) in support of that assertion.

However, in that case, current and former residents of the Republic of Sudan brought suit alleging that an oil company in that country committed “gross human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, forcible displacement, war crimes, confiscation and destruction of property, kidnapping, rape, and enslavement.” Al Ghashiyah does not explain how the Presbyterian Church of Sudan case supports his argument that the court here violated al Ghashiyah’s rights when it declined to apply Islamic law to the administration of the estate of Casteel, who the court found expressed no desire that Islamic law should apply.

In his reply brief, al Ghashiyah asserts that courts “routinely consider religious doctrine in … cases where relevant and voluntarily invoked by the parties.” He also states that the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the right of religious communities to arrange their affairs in accordance with their beliefs.

It may be true that in certain circumstances courts may apply and consider international or human rights law, and the rights of religious communities. However, al Ghashiyah does not develop an argument as to how his right to practice Islamic law is relevant to the administration of Casteel’s estate, he does not assert any evidence that Casteel invoked Islamic law, and he does not explain his conclusion that the court should recognize the religious beliefs of al Ghashiyah in deciding Casteel’s will.

Rather, al Ghashiyah’s argument amounts to the conclusory assertion that, because he asked the court to follow Islamic law, it was discrimination and a human rights violation for the court to decline the request. We do not further address this argument as it is undeveloped….

The post "Al Ghashiyah Testified That … as Head of the Family, He Has Decided that Islamic Law Is the Law that Applies to the Family" appeared first on Reason.com.

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In Withers v. City of Aberdeen, decided yesterday by Judge Sharion Aycock (N.D. Miss.), both sides had filed briefs containing citations to nonexistent cases; the briefs were drafted by out-of-state counsel, each of whom had local counsel (as the rules generally require). Withers was represented by Wilson with Ridgeway as local counsel; the City was represented by Williams with McClinton as local counsel. I focus here just on the sanctions imposed on local counsel:

Ridgeway is a Mississippi licensed attorney who works for Christian & Small, LLP. She sponsored Wilson’s pro hac vice admission in this case and serves as local counsel for Withers. As noted, Ridgeway appears as a signatory to Withers’ Opposition to Defendant City of Aberdeen’s Motion for Summary Judgment [105], which contained two citations to nonexistent cases. Though she was not the drafter of that document, she admitted to failing to review and verify the accuracy of the legal authority cited therein. In other words, she did not check the cases after authorizing her signature on the filing.

At the hearing, Ridgeway explained that she was unaware of Wilson’s AI use but did not attempt to excuse herself on that basis. She explained that she does not personally use AI and that her firm has a policy in place pertaining to AI use. In essence, Wilson would present Ridgeway with a copy of proposed filings drafted by Wilson, and the two would discuss the substance of the same. Despite this communication between the two, Ridgeway admitted to not reviewing the legal citations in those drafts before they were filed, including Withers’ Response [105]. Ridgeway accepted responsibility for her role in the violation stemming from the fake cases cited in that filing as well as in others. {Following the show cause hearing, Ridgeway informed the Court that she had self-reported to the Mississippi Bar. The Court finds that this act demonstrates her acceptance of accountability.}

As briefly discussed above, Ridgeway conducted a thorough analysis of all filings submitted on behalf of Withers in this case after entry of the Court’s show cause order. The Court appreciates her efforts in attempting to remediate the issue and her acceptance of responsibility but finds that those factors do not shield her from being sanctioned. In addition to admitting her violation of Rule 11, Ridgeway also conceded that her omissions violated this Court’s Local Rules. Local Rule 83.1 provides in pertinent part:

Association and Duties of a Resident Attorney. No eligible non-resident attorney may appear pro hac vice unless and until a resident attorney has been associated. The resident attorney remains responsible to the client and responsible for the conduct of the proceeding before the court.

Certainly, resident attorneys are responsible for providing guidance and oversight of non-resident attorneys to ensure that they are complying with procedural and ethical rules. After all, resident attorneys are basically the gateway for out-of-state attorneys to have access to Mississippi’s court system. The Court does not take a violation of that core duty lightly. At the same time, taking into account the specific circumstances of this case, it does not find that Ridgeway acted in bad faith. Her omissions were negligent and careless but not purposeful….

McClinton … was a signatory to the two filings submitted on behalf of the City, which contained hallucinatory citations. At the hearing, McClinton explained that he was not aware that the motions at issue were being filed but acknowledged that he had previously given Williams permission to affix his signature on prior filings without reading the documents. Though he was not provided the filings for his review prior to their filing, McClinton did not attempt to use that as an excuse and explained that it was not unreasonable for Williams to have done so based on their course of practice. In other words, he had impliedly given permission for her to do so.

McClinton also explained that only two attorneys practice at his law firm, that he does not use AI in his practice, and therefore does not have an AI policy in place. Much like Ridgeway, McClinton was unaware that his co-counsel, Williams, had used an AI research tool to conduct legal research in the case. McClinton also acknowledged that he should have reviewed the filings when he received the automatic notification of electronic filing and expressed his remorse for having failed to do so. Again, he does not contest his Rule 11 violation.

For the same reasons provided above concerning Ridgeway, the Court finds that he too violated his duties as a sponsoring resident attorney pursuant to this Court’s Local Rules. Because he was not the drafter of the filings at issue and did not use AI in this case, the Court has no reason to believe that he acted in bad faith. Like Ridgeway, the Court finds that McClinton acted negligently and carelessly. However, he accepted responsibility for his role in the violation and, like Ridgeway, informed the Court that he had self-reported to the Mississippi Bar following the show cause hearing. The Court credits his candor and steps taken towards holding himself accountable.

In an era of rampant unverified AI usage within the legal field, this case presents a prime example of the risk associated with serving as a rubberstamp when acting as local counsel.

Local counsel were therefore disqualified from the case, ordered to pay $1000 each in fines, and referred to bar authorities. Wilson and Williams, the lawyers who drafted the filings, were fined $2500 and $3500 and otherwise disciplined as well.

The post Nonexistent Case Citations on Both Sides + "Rubberstamp[ing]" by "Local Counsel" appeared first on Reason.com.

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Protests over poor living conditions for detainees at Delaney Hall immigration detention center erupted over the weekend, leading to the arrest of over 80 people, the Associated Press reported on Saturday. Some of the protesters arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are accused of assaulting law enforcement officers, obstruction, and threats. But questions remain about whether the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) enforcement policies violate the First Amendment and chill speech on the ongoing public debate over immigration policies.

The crackdown on protesters is not surprising given Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s statements during congressional hearings last week, in which he took a hard line against violent protesters. During a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on June 3, Mullin testified that he is “OK with protest,” so long as it is done “in a peaceful way, in a legal area.” However, Mullin asserted, he has “zero tolerance” for individuals who “verbally assault our officers,” “go after our vehicles,” or
“assault our property.” “You assault one of our officers, we will find you. We will arrest you,” he continued. 

While Mullin is right that the destruction of government property and assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers are both federal crimes, there is no such thing as “verbally assaulting” an officer under the law, Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), tells Reason.

Under the First Amendment, individuals are free “to criticize, mock, or disparage law enforcement officers” who “have no greater right than anyone else to be shielded from offense or criticism,” Terr explains. “In fact, the Supreme Court has recognized that properly trained officers are expected to show even more restraint than the average citizen when confronted with provocative or challenging speech.” 

“The First Amendment’s broad protections are essential to preserving the public’s ability to criticize and hold accountable those entrusted with enforcing the law,” Terr says, which is why speech is generally protected “unless the speech falls into one of the narrow categories of unprotected expression.” 

One such category includes true threats, defined by the Supreme Court in Virginia v. Black (2003) as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”

When assessing whether speech constitutes a true threat, “context always matters,” says Terr. “Courts look at the surrounding circumstances to determine whether a reasonable person would understand the statement as a serious expression of intent to commit unlawful violence, as opposed to a joke, hyperbole, or venting,” all of which fall under protected speech. 

The distinctions between true threats and other forms of protected speech can be rather nuanced. For example, in 1969 the Supreme Court in Watts v. United States reversed a jury’s decision to convict a young man, recently drafted into the Vietnam War, for saying at a public rally, “If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” The Court held that the statements were protected speech and amounted to crude political hyperbole rather than a true threat. “The language of the political arena,” the Court wrote, “is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact” but must be interpreted “against the background of a profound national commitment” to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate on public issues. 

When asked by Reason how the DHS defined verbal assault and whether it aligned with First Amendment law, a spokesperson responded via email with the Justice Department’s statement regarding the arrest of a Delaney Hall protester, Nicholas Matthew Scelfo, who allegedly threatened to assault and murder an ICE officer and his family. Video posted by ICE on social media shows Scelfo pointing at agents during a May 27 protest, shouting, “I’ll kill your whole fucking family. Your whole fucking family is dead.” If convicted on the threat charge, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000, according to the Justice Department. 

Another Delaney Hall protester was detained and dragged away by ICE agents on June 5 for allegedly threatening an officer. Video of the incident shows an ICE agent yelling at a group of protesters to back up before singling out a protester off-camera, shouting, “What did you just say? You’re going to kill me? You’re going to kill me?” Agents surround the suspect and drag him away as he exclaims, “I ain’t say nothing! I ain’t say nothing!” 

As shocking as these statements may seem, “a statement like ‘I’ll kill you’ is not automatically a true threat simply because those words are used,” said Terr. Things like “the nature of the protest, the level of antagonism between the protester and the officer, the protester’s tone, and any accompanying conduct” are all relevant to a court’s analysis on whether statements rise to the level of a true threat, Terr says. 

But whether law enforcement officers with the power to make arrests abide by the courts’ distinctions between true threats and otherwise protected speech is another question entirely. “Unfortunately, administration officials and federal agents have repeatedly demonstrated either a misunderstanding of, or disregard for, the distinction between protected speech and illegal conduct,” says Terr. The DHS under President Donald Trump has put forth policies inconsistent with the First Amendment, Terr continued, from saying recording on-duty officers constitutes unlawful doxxing or obstruction, to attempting to unmask online anonymous critics. “These actions all seem designed to chill protected speech rather than enforce the law,” says Terr. 

The post DHS Says It Has 'Zero Tolerance' for Protesters' 'Verbal Assaults.' Here's What the Law Says. appeared first on Reason.com.

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One shouldn’t get into the habit of feeling sorry for high-ranking federal employees, who wield power over our lives and get a salary of our tax money for their trouble. Still, serving as a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer arguing on behalf of the government seems like an unenviable gig, as accomplished attorneys are reduced to backfilling legal defenses of their bosses’ harebrained schemes.

When President Joe Biden decided to wipe out broad swathes of student loan debt, the DOJ argued that he could do so without Congress’ approval using a law explicitly tailored to soldiers in active duty. The HEROES Act allowed the government to waive student loan repayment during “a war or other military operation or national emergency”; Biden’s DOJ argued that the then-ongoing COVID-19 national emergency qualified to forgive billions of dollars in student loans for millions of borrowers. (By a 6–3 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court was unconvinced.)

But nowadays that example seems almost quaint. President Donald Trump’s administration now rather routinely subjects its DOJ attorneys to the indignity of making facially indefensible claims about the president’s power, simply because the executive demands it.

Last year, Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House with plans to build a gigantic ballroom in its place. His cited legal authority was a decades-old statute pertaining to general facility upkeep and maintenance.

In March, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon granted a motion enjoining construction on the ballroom. Congress did not authorize the project, Leon wrote, and “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have.”

Last week, DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn Leon’s order and allow construction to continue.

Not only did Leon err in his decision, Roth argued, but courts have no authority to stop the project once it’s begun—after all, the East Wing is already demolished, and construction on the ballroom is “well on its way.” (On the other hand, when asked at what point the courts lost the ability to intervene, Roth said it would have been improper “even on day one.”)

But when questioned, Roth went even further. “If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty,” asked Judge Patricia Millett, “[if] the government moved too fast…nothing can be done?”

“I think that’s right, yes,” Roth replied, which, according to ABC News, “sparked audible gasps in the courtroom.”

Roth’s position is not just laughable; it’s offensive to the constitutional vestment of powers within three coequal branches of government.

But then again, what choice does he have? Trump claims he can demolish federal property and rebuild new ones in their place to his specifications, with no oversight or authorization. At that point, why would any federal structure be off-limits?

In fact, Roth’s admission fits a pattern in which Trump’s DOJ attorneys make increasingly maximalist arguments about presidential power in order to match their boss’s policy goals.

Early in his second term, Trump imposed double-digit tariffs on nearly every nation on the planet. Like all taxes, the power to enact tariffs lies with Congress, not the president, but Trump argued that persistent trade deficits constituted an “emergency” that allowed him to act unilaterally.

As with Biden’s student loan gambit, the Supreme Court was unimpressed with this line of logic. But during oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch posed a hypothetical to Solicitor General D. John Sauer: If the president can impose any tariffs he deems fit to address an emergency of his own designation, could a future president then impose tariffs on gasoline-powered cars “to deal with the ‘unusual and extraordinary’ threat…of climate change?”

“It’s very likely that could be done,” Sauer replied.

Sauer was also on hand when Trump deployed National Guard troops to Chicago. A federal judge enjoined Trump’s order, and the administration appealed.

“The President’s determination to call up the National Guard,” Sauer wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court, “is not judicially reviewable at all; at minimum, it is entitled to extremely deferential review, under which it should be upheld.”

The government made a similar argument after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to bypass immigration procedures and deport hundreds of Venezuelan nationals to a prison in El Salvador. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit pressed the administration to explain how the deportees met the statutory definition of alien enemies.

“The president’s determination that the factual prerequisites of the [Alien Enemies Act] have been met is not subject to judicial review,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign replied. Instead, “it’s subject to extremely deferential review.”

Just last month, DOJ attorney Abhishek Kambli appeared before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. At issue was Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms that represented or employed Democrats, which included revoking their attorneys’ security clearances. In response to the judges’ questions, Kambli argued that a future Democratic president could punish Republican firms in exactly the same way.

Would it be legal, asked Judge Cornelia Pillard, “if an incoming president—let’s say, a Democrat—says, ‘I think that any lawyer who represents a Republican, by virtue of that representation…is a threat to national security?'”

Yes, Kambli responded, that would be allowed, and the courts would have no recourse. Kambli even concurred with Pillard’s hypothetical that the president could deny security clearances to “law firms that represent Catholics,” “African-Americans,” or “Asian-Americans.”

It’s no surprise Trump believes his authority is unchecked—”I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” he told The New York Times in 2017. But in court, DOJ attorneys are echoing his position, arguing that presidents enjoy unlimited, unreviewable power.

We should all hope that argument never wins out—no matter what president is in office at the time.

The post DOJ Claim That Trump Could 'Bulldoze' Statue of Liberty Fits a Pattern appeared first on Reason.com.

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