Karim Khan, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court from 2021 until his removal in 2026, ultimately lost his position after an investigation concluded that he had engaged in serious sexual misconduct toward a female subordinate. Khan denied the allegations, insisting they were false and politically motivated. Nevertheless, following an extensive investigation by the ICC's oversight bodies, he was first suspended and then dismissed by an overwhelming vote of the Court's member states—the first sitting ICC prosecutor ever removed from office.
The scandal also cast a cloud over Khan's handling of the ICC's investigation into Israel. According to The Wall Street Journal, after learning in May 2024 that the allegations against him were about to become public, Khan abruptly canceled plans to continue gathering evidence in Israel and Gaza and instead quickly announced that he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leaders. Whether or not the timing reflected an effort to divert attention from his personal scandal, it undeniably deprived the investigation of additional fact-finding that Khan himself had apparently considered necessary only days earlier. The warrants were later issued by the ICC and remain in effect despite Khan's removal because they are orders of the Court, not of the individual prosecutor.
Anti-Israel activists such as Zohran Mamdani will no doubt continue to invoke those warrants as proof that Netanyahu is a "wanted war criminal." But even putting aside the troubling circumstances surrounding Khan's decision to seek them, the warrants suffer from a separate and fundamental legitimacy problem.
As my colleague and co-blogger Eugene Kontorovich observed in 2024, Khan's decision-making process was compromised by his reliance on a handpicked group of advisers and outside experts who had already spent years publicly accusing Israel of war crimes and advocating legal action against it. Rather than assembling a balanced panel representing a range of views on the difficult legal questions presented by the conflict, Khan chose individuals whose public records left little doubt where they stood. To say the least, this was hardly a process designed to inspire confidence in the ICC's impartiality.
As Kontorovich notes, the most striking example was Kevin Jon Heller of the University of Copenhagen, whom Khan publicly thanked for his assistance when announcing the charges. Heller had endorsed the anti-Israel BDS movement, described Israel as systematically denying Palestinians basic rights, called Israel "the Donald Trump of repressive states," and in 2020 referred to Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump as "two criminals conspiring to commit criminal acts against Palestine." He frequently relied on anti-Israel NGOs while dismissing pro-Israel organizations as traffickers in "fake law and propaganda." Nor were these isolated remarks. For example, in 2015, Heller declared that "my political sympathies are very much with Palestine" and said that he did not doubt Israel had committed various war crimes.
Kontorovich shows that the broader panel reflected the same pattern. Baroness Helena Kennedy had long urged ICC investigations of Israel, accused Israel of violating international law in Gaza, and publicly demanded that "enough is enough." Danny Friedman had already argued that Israel's pre-10/7 siege operations amounted to war crimes. Amal Clooney likewise had a well-established record of criticizing Israeli policy, while even the panel's Israeli member, former judge Theodor Meron, was better known for criticizing Israel's conduct than for defending it.
Missing entirely was anyone who had publicly questioned the ICC's jurisdiction over the conflict, challenged the legal theories underlying the proposed charges, or expressed skepticism that Israeli officials had committed international crimes. A panel assembled in that fashion could scarcely be expected to provide the independent, objective review that the gravity of seeking arrest warrants against the leaders of a democratic country at war.
To "protect children from obscenity," [Arkansas] Act 372's first section criminalizes "furnishing a harmful item to a minor …." A person commits this offense "if, knowing the character of the item involved, the person knowingly … [f]urnishes, presents, provides, makes available, gives, lends, shows, advertises, or distributes to a minor an item that is harmful to minors." Section 1 defines "[h]armful to minors" as
that quality of any description, exhibition, presentation, or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse, when the material or performance, taken as a whole, has the following characteristics:
(A) The average person eighteen (18) years of age or older applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance has a predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest in sex to minors;
(B) The average person eighteen (18) years of age or older applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance depicts or describes nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse in a manner that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors; and
(C) The material or performance lacks serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors.
Arkansas can punish violations of § 1 with up to a year of imprisonment.
To "increase accountability for public-library curation decisions," § 5 requires county and municipal libraries to adopt two written, publicly available policies. The first policy must "establish guidelines for the selection, relocation, and retention of physical materials that are available to the public." And the second policy must allow people who are "affected by the material" to "challenge the appropriateness of material available in the county or municipal library" and must lay out certain procedures the library will follow, "at a minimum," when someone lodges such a challenge….
Rhode Island property targeted for condemnation to prevent construction of affordable housing on the site. (PLF).
Last year, I wrote about SCLS Realty v. Town of Johnston, a case where property owners challenged a Rhode Island town's plan to use eminent domain as a tool for blocking a housing project opposed by local NIMBYs. A few days, ago a federal district court invalidated the use of eminent domain there. But not on the "public use" grounds discussed in my 2025 post. Rather, the Court ruled that the Town was never delegated the authority to use eminent domain for this kind of purpose in the first place. In Rhode Island (as in other states) eminent domain is a power of the state government, and localities can only wield it in so far as the state legislature authorizes them to do so.
Robert Thomas of the Pacific Legal Foundation (the public interest law firm that represented the property owners) has a helpful and more detailed summary of the court's ruling at the Inverse Condemnation blog.
NOTE: PLF is also my wife's employer. But she has no involvement in this case and does not work on property rights issues.
The prominent liberal legal scholar and former ACLU leader outlines how the Court has often checked Trump, but also critiques it for going against precedent.
The Supreme Court Justices (2023). (Pool/ABACA/Newscom)
Debate over the Supreme Court's performance in recent years has become highly polarized. So it's worth noting that prominent left-liberal Georgetown law professor David Cole recently published a qualified defense of the Supreme Court's recent rulings in the New York Review. He emphasizes their crucial role in constraining abuses of power by Trump. Cole is also the former National Director of the ACLU, and thus - to understate the point - not a natural ally of the Court's conservative majority. As we shall see, he's far from an unqualified fan of their recent performance, and still takes them to task on some points. But the more positive aspect of his appraisal is still notable:
Can we rely on the courts, and most importantly the Supreme Court, to resist major assaults on the rule of law by the Trump administration? That question was front and center during the Court's recently concluded 2025–2026 term. With its six Republican appointees—three nominated by Trump—some feared that, much like the Republican-controlled Congress, the Court would reflexively back the president….
By the end of the term, however, the story was more nuanced. The Court blocked four of Trump's major initiatives: ending birthright citizenship, imposing worldwide tariffs, firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and dispatching National Guard troops to Chicago, Portland, and other cities. In other significant cases as well, the Court rejected positions advanced by Trump. In a decision that he called "a tremendous loss," it held that federal law permits the counting of mail-in ballots posted by election day but received thereafter. And it refuted the Trump administration's assertion of constitutionally unchecked power to demand that Google turn over the cell phone location histories of unlimited numbers of Americans. The justices may not be, as Trump called them after he lost the tariffs case, "fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats," but this is not Donald Trump's Court….
These are not the decisions of a Court doing the president's bidding or voting exclusively along party lines. By contrast, had these issues been put to a vote in Congress, would a single Republican have broken ranks?
The rulings cannot be dismissed as mere token losses for Trump. Each one established important guardrails on the executive branch. The tariffs decision rejected the president's assertion of emergency powers, a step courts rarely take. Justice Samuel Alito called the birthright citizenship case "one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court." The decision blocking the firing of Cook protected the independence of the Federal Reserve, the nation's most powerful financial institution. And the National Guard decision kept troops off our streets, halting Trump's invocation of a classic authoritarian move.
Some argue that all these cases that went against Trump were so easy and clearcut that the Court deserves little or no credit for them. Cole disagrees:
Nor can the decisions be discounted on the ground that no reasonable judge could rule in Trump's favor. They all raised serious and unresolved questions. In Trump v. Barbara, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment, which extends citizenship to all persons born in the United States and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," was intended to adopt the then-existing common law rule of birthright citizenship….
In 1898 the Court affirmed this common law understanding in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. But that case involved the child of Chinese nationals who were permanently and legally domiciled in the United States, so it did not technically involve the classes of persons to whom Trump sought to deny citizenship: children of foreign nationals here illegally and children of transient visitors….
The tariffs case also presented a close question. The majority ruled that the president's power to "regulate" imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not include the power to impose tariffs, as the Constitution generally assigns the power to tax to Congress, a tariff is a type of tax, and the IEEPA does not explicitly delegate the authority to tariff to the president. But Kavanaugh wrote a thoughtful dissent for three justices that echoed an earlier decision by Judge Richard Taranto, a widely respected moderate member of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The Supreme Court had previously interpreted the IEEPA broadly, and President Richard Nixon had imposed tariffs under a predecessor statute. Reasonable people could differ on the legal question, yet the Court sided against the president.
Cole makes similar points about some of the other major cases that Trump lost.
I actually think the birthright citizenship and tariff cases were more clear than Cole suggests. While there were indeed "reasonable" arguments on both sides, the plaintiffs' arguments were much stronger than those of the administration. In the birthright citizenship case, the administration's arguments would have undermined the main purpose of the Citizenship Clause: guaranteeing citizenship to freed slaves and other Blacks. In the tariff case (which I helped litigate), there was a long list of strong arguments against the Trump's position, any one of which would have been enough to justify ruling against him. I summarized many of them here. Still, both cases raised largely unprecedented issues, and in both a Supreme Court inclined to do Trump's bidding could have found at least minimally respectable rationales for doing so. The same is true of the National Guard case, and others.
Overall, I very much agree with Cole's point that the Court has been a crucial check on Trump's power grabs, even if some of the cases weren't that difficult, and even if it hasn't always constrained him as much as it should. I have made similar arguments, myself (e.g. here and here). But, in some ways, it means more coming from Cole, as he is more ideologically distant from the Court's majority than I am.
It's possible to dismiss the Court's rulings against Trump on the grounds that, even if they went against Trump, they were still in line with the interests of at least some in the Republican Party. Thus, the Court could still be considered "partisan." After all, in each of these cases, there were at least some Republicans - including influential Republican legal elites and prominent conservative legal commentators - who opposed the administration's position.
But that claim runs into the painful reality that - at this point - the GOP overwhelmingly backs Trump's policies, including on the issues at stake in these cases. If having the support of a few Republicans or conservative legal commentators is enough to make a decision partisan, the claim would be nonfalsifiable. After all, almost any plausible resolution of any major case has the support of at least a few prominent Republicans. For example, there are pro-choice Republicans like Maine Sen. Susan Collins who would have preferred to see the Court preserve abortion rights and Roe v. Wade. It doesn't follow that a decision reaffirming Roe (the opposite of what the present Court actually did) would be a partisan Republican ruling!
It is fair to say, as liberal Justice Elena Kagan recently did, that this is a conservative Court, reflecting primarily conservative jurisprudential philosophies. As she puts it, "there's a conservative court doing things that conservative jurists have long thought it appropriate to do." But, as she also pointed out, that's different from being either a Trump Court or a bunch of GOP partisans.
In the last part of Cole's article, he takes the Court to task for neglecting the principle of stare decisis, overruling some precedents and severely narrowing others. I agree with his critiques of some of these decisions (e.g. - the awful Haitian TPS immigration ruling), and differ on others. But in each of these situations, it isn't so much the doctrine of precedent that is doing the work, as our (sometimes divergent) perceptions of whether the precedent the Court overruled or narrowed was right in the first place.
Few judges, legal scholars, or commentators are genuinely willing to apply stare decisis to preserve constitutional precedents they believe to be badly wrong - and rightly so. I wrote about this in a 2019 post, that I think remains relevant today:
I simply do not believe that stare decisis will prevent either the liberal or the conservative justices from overruling constitutional precedents they believe to be badly wrong, though both are happy to wave the stare decisis flag whenever precedents they like are imperiled…
The liberal justices who appeal to stare decisis today also applaud the work of the New Deal-era and Warren courts, both of which overturned numerous longstanding constitutional precedents. Given the opportunity, they would likely happily overrule such precedents as Citizens United and the travel ban case, both much reviled on the left (the latter deservedly so, in my view)….
The Supreme Court needs to have the power to overturn flawed constitutional precedent, as this is usually the only way to correct wrong constitutional decisions, short of using the extraordinarily difficult amendment process.
If precedent were sacrosanct, the Supreme Court could not have reversed or superseded any of its most notorious past decisions… [I]n the travel ban case, the Court repudiated Korematsu v. United States, the notorious 1944 decision that upheld the World War II-era racially-based internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans. Hardly anyone objected that it was somehow inappropriate for the justices to junk a 74-year-old precedent….
Few people, particularly on the left, pine for the return of Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case in which a narrow majority upheld the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. The Court eventually overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas (2003)….
Today, pretty much every…. legal commentator can name Supreme Court decisions they would like to see overruled….
The justices' highest legal obligation is not to the Court's past precedents, but the Constitution. If they are convinced that the latter conflicts with the former, they should overrule, if at all possible. There is a good case for adhering to precedent in situations where the court is uncertain whether it is correct or not. In such situations, it might be reasonable to defer to the seeming accumulated wisdom of earlier judges, especially if there was a broad cross-ideological consensus among them…. [I]t is also justifiable to maintain wrong precedent in some instances where massive reliance interests would be upset otherwise.
But none of these considerations justifies maintaining precedents that the Court believes are badly wrong, and causing more harm than good in the real world. In such scenarios, the Court has a special obligation to help undo the evil that it had a major role in creating
See also my discussion here, of overturning precedents that protect individual rights.
I am far from an unequivocal defender of the current Supreme Court majority, and I think they have gotten some issues badly wrong. Just this term, we had the TPS case, and a severely flawed Takings Clause ruling. Earlier, there were clunkers like the Trump immunity decision, Trump v. Anderson, and the travel ban case, mentioned above. But when the Court goes wrong, it's generally not because they showed too little respect for precedent.
The Court's work could use significant improvement in a number of areas. But it's also important to acknowledge its very real achievements. And to resist efforts to destroy those achievements - and judicial review generally - by measures such as court-packing.
Some excerpts from N.Y. Saratoga County trial court judge Jonathan Schopf's long decision in Anonymous School Dist. v. Anonymous a week ago:
This matter stems from the filing of a Petition for a Temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order (herein "TERPO") under … New York State's "Red Flag Law" …. Respondent is a thirteen (13) year-ol…
On June 16, 2026, a Petition was filed seeking the issuance of the Temporary Order preventing the Respondent from purchasing, possessing or attempting to purchase or possess a firearm, rifle or shotgun as well as seeking a "no knock" search warrant executable at any time of the day or night without notice of the officer's authority or purpose for an address associated with the Respondent's father and an address associated with the Respondent's mother, and the seizure of any firearms, rifles, or shotguns located therein pursuant to such warrant.
In support of this Petition, the district filed an Affidavit of L., a teacher's aide, an Affidavit of the superintendent of the school district, and a printout of the Respondent's disciplinary referral record for the current academic year. {The sole basis in the Petition for the search warrant was that on June 16, 2026: "[w]hile [Respondent] and another student were in the hallway, he said to another student: 'I can't wait to shoot up the school.' When speaking with an administrator, [Respondent] initially denied making the comment but then admitted to making the comment."}
From Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, joined by Judges Carl Stewart, James Graves, Stephen Higginson, Dana Douglas, and Irma Carrillo Ramirez, dissenting on Thursday in Ford v. Mckesson from denial of rehearing en banc:
The Supreme Court has already called the constitutional issue presented here "undeniably important": whether the First Amendment tolerates a negligent-protest theory that substitutes the mere foreseeability of a stranger's violence for intent. After a decade of litigation, full discovery, and another appeal, every threshold obstacle is gone. At last, the question is cleanly presented….
Every obstacle that complicated Supreme Court review in 2020 is now gone. The state-law uncertainty that prompted the Court's vacatur has been resolved. Discovery is complete. The pleading-stage assumptions have been tested. The district court entered final summary judgment. Counterman intervened, and the panel expressly held that it changes nothing. The en banc court has now declined to intervene.
The constitutional question is therefore squarely presented and unavoidable: may a political speaker be held liable under a negligence theory for an unidentified stranger's violence without proof that the speaker authorized, directed, ratified, or intentionally incited that violence? Claiborne, Counterman, and Brandenburg answer no. Our court now answers yes….
The Court should grant review and restore the constitutional line between advocacy and violence. Political speakers may be held to account for violence they commit, authorize, direct, ratify, or intentionally incite. But they may not be conscripted as insurers of a crowd—or as substitute defendants for an unknown assailant—simply because they were visible, prominent, and nearest the microphone.
This last paragraph is addressed to the Supreme Court; Judge Willett's opinion, in keeping with frequent legal usage, uses "the Court" to refer to the Supreme Court and "the court" to refer to the Fifth Circuit itself.
And here are some excerpts from the body of the opinion:
The Fourth Circuit considers "a question that has divided ... courts ...: whether the character combinations on personalized license plates ... are government speech or private speech."
From today's opinion in Whateley v. Lackey, written by Fourth Circuit Judge Pamela Harris and joined by Judges Agee and Keenan:
In Virginia, drivers may personalize their license plates with their own chosen character combinations. Virginia allows them to do so for a fee, and subject to certain restrictions for vulgarity and the like. Curtis Whateley took advantage of this opportunity and applied for a personalized license plate with the characters "FTP&ATF"—by which he meant, "Fuck the Police & Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms." Virginia first issued the plate but then revoked it on the grounds that it was vulgar and could be understood to promote violence….
This appeal requires us to address a question that has divided district courts and state supreme courts in recent years: whether the character combinations on personalized license plates (or "vanity plates") are government speech or private speech. Does Virginia speak for itself through the character combinations on the personalized plates it issues—in which case, it is entitled to express the views of its choice? Or do Virginia's personalized plates convey the private speech of drivers like Whateley—in which case, government restrictions on that speech must pass muster under the First Amendment? We conclude that Virginia's personalized license plate messages are private speech subject to First Amendment protection….
Whateley's private speech is entitled to First Amendment protection under the public forum doctrine, but whether he will prevail under that doctrine is a different question. That analysis will turn on the nature of the forum Virginia has provided for private speech on its personalized license plates and on Virginia's reasons for recalling Whateley's "FTP&ATF" message. {Oversimplifying somewhat, in traditional and designated public forums, open to all speakers on all topics, "governments have limited leeway to restrict speech," and restrictions generally are subject to strict scrutiny. In a nonpublic forum, by contrast, speech restrictions "only need to be reasonable and viewpoint-neutral."}
Two former George Washington University ("GWU") students and a student organization on behalf of its members sue GWU for its treatment of Jewish students and its handling of on-campus antisemitism. Though the Complaint paints a dark picture, its length—spanning nearly two hundred pages and over one thousand paragraphs—violates basic pleading rules. The Court will thus dismiss the Complaint without prejudice and permit Plaintiffs to file an amended complaint that complies with federal pleading rules….
Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
New case! Last fall, masked, heavily armed CBP agents raided IJ client Leo Feler's property in Chicago because they saw some construction workers out in front of his home. The agents didn't have a warrant (nor does any exception to the warrant requirement apply), jumped a locked gate, and caused a bunch of damage and left behind puddles of blood. On their way out, they tear gassed neighbors "for fun" (per an agent on bodycam). So we're suing under Bivens, the FTCA, Illinois tort law, and the Westfall Act, and one of these days the Supreme Court is going to say that there is in fact a way to hold federal officers accountable for violating the Constitution. Click here to learn more.
New on the Short Circuit podcast: Tim Sandefur tells us all about his new book Proclaiming Liberty: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence.
Remember how they started restricting the "good Sudafed" because of all the meth? But then there was this other stuff called "PE" that they claimed did the same thing? Turns out it was basically snake oil and that's been known since 2016. Class action plaintiffs: Drug companies did The RICO. District court: No. Second Circuit: Mostly affirmed. If the FDA says snake oil can be sold to fight cold symptoms, then you can't blame manufacturers for repeating those lies. But remanded on the claim that it's "maximum strength."
Law professors and nonprofit file a slate of grievance complaints against prosecutors in New York State, then bring First Amendment lawsuit to challenge the secrecy of the disciplinary proceedings that ensue. New York: You lose under Younger abstention! And O'Shea abstention too! And your case isn't ripe! District court: Cool it dudes. The plaintiffs absolutely have the right to be here. Also, they're right on the merits. Second Circuit: Chyeah. Attorney-disciplinary proceedings have been public since 1275.
This case involves negative online reviews posted by a client who retained Plaintiffs Lento Law Group PC and Lento Law Firm (together, "Lento Law") as counsel in two legal matters in the fall of 2024. Dissatisfied with Lento Law's communication, advice, and representation, Defendant Kris Emmanuel Estrada wrote critical reviews on multiple online platforms asserting Lento Law was unprofessional, unethical, and uncommunicative, and that it altogether provided inadequate legal services.
Lento Law holds itself out as a national law firm specializing in education matters. Lento Law Group was founded by Joseph D. Lento, who was also the sole owner of Lento Law Firm. As of July 2024, Mr. Lento was Lento Law Firm's only employee and Lento Law Group's managing attorney. Mr. Lento has been suspended from practicing law in multiple jurisdictions for a multitude of violations of the professional rules of conduct occurring both before and after the events of this case.
Nonetheless, Lento Law has sued its former client for defamation and other torts, asserting his negative online reviews have harmed its reputation and business prospects. {Lento Law has brought numerous other defamation cases, including at least ten in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in 2025 alone. E.g., Lento Law Group PC v. Schaffer, Case Id. No. 251201836 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Dec. 13, 2025); Lento Law Firm LLC v. Jones, Case Id. No. 251201833 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Dec. 13, 2025); Lento Law Group PC v. Bahram, Case Id. No. 251103741 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Nov. 26, 2025); Lento Law Group PC v. Christenson, Case Id. No. 251002164 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Oct. 20, 2025); Lento Law Group PC v. Coombes, Case Id. No. 250503786 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Aug. 21, 2025); Lento Law Group PC v. Anozie, Case Id. No. 250503791 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., May 30, 2025); Lento Law Group LC v. Sejour, Case Id. No. 250503782 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., May 30, 2025); Lento Law Group v. Coombes, Case Id. No. 250503786 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., May 30, 2025); Lento Law Group PC v. Feuerborn, Case Id. No. 250201901 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Feb. 12, 2025); Lento Law Firmv. Walker, Case Id. No. 250202270 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Feb. 17, 2025); Lento Law Firm v. Doe 1-8, Case Id. No. 231102406 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Nov. 20, 2023); Lento Law Firm v. Ibrahim, Case Id. No. 240400659 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Apr. 4, 2024); Lento Law Firm v. Pandey, Case Id. No. 231100674 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Nov. 4, 2023); Lento Law Firm v. Myers, Case Id. No. 230900741 (Phila. Ct. Comm. Pls., Sept. 8, 2023).} Estrada moves to dismiss, arguing, inter alia, the statements contained within his online reviews of Lento Law cannot sustain a defamation claim because they are not capable of defamatory meaning. The Court agrees. The online reviews are either admittedly true, statements of opinion, or otherwise not capable of the defamatory meaning Lento Law ascribes to them. For these reasons, and the reasons discussed herein, Lento Law's claims must be dismissed.
Moreover, because Lento Law's claims are based on Estrada's protected public expression and Lento Law has failed to state a claim, Estrada is immune under Pennsylvania's Uniform Public Expression Protection Act and is entitled to his attorneys' fees, court costs, and expenses of litigation….
A key paragraph from Tuesday's opinion in Scott v. Ill. Hum. Rts. Comm'n, decided by Justice Rena Van Tine, joined by Justices David Ellis and Debra Walker:
In his response, attorney Cole says that he "want[s] to completely avoid legalese and speak directly to this Court." We will speak directly to him: this is unacceptable. Attorney Cole's response should have included scrupulously accurate and precise citations. Instead, it is yet another sloppy filing that misstates the law and creates more work for this court. We do not know why attorney Cole feels compelled to rush out obviously flawed filings, but this must stop. This type of lawyering is harming attorney Cole's clients, his own professional reputation, and this court's workflow….
And more details:
[P]etitioner misquotes inapplicable statutes and fabricates statutory language…. Petitioner's briefs also contain false case citations…. Finally, petitioner cites cases that do not support the propositions of law for which petitioner cites them. [Details omitted. -EV] …
Citations of fictitious legal authority do not automatically justify striking a brief and dismissing an appeal. Accordingly, we deny respondents' request to strike petitioner's brief and dismiss this appeal. However, we must address petitioner's attorney's pattern of presenting multiple fabricated quotes of statutory language and case citations….
On June 30, 2026, we ordered petitioner's attorney Mason Cole to file a response explaining the false quotations and citations in his briefs by July 14, 2026. Attorney Cole filed his response on July 2, 2026, 12 days early. His response concedes that all the quotations and citations set out above are false for the reasons we have explained. Attorney Cole states that he "frequently use[s] a premier corporate subscription of ChatGPT" to "synthesize complex matters," including this case.
Some excerpts from Judge Jesse Furman (S.D.N.Y.) Wednesday in Skaf v. Google LLC:
Skaf, an Arab woman, was employed by Google from January 12, 2009, to April 17, 2024….
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and its affiliates in the Gaza Strip launched a terrorist attack on Israel, prompting Israel to attack Hamas in turn. In the wake of these events, Skaf was an outspoken critic of Google's involvement with Israel and, the Complaint alleges, was "increasingly subjected to anti-Arab bias." But Skaf's criticisms of Google for its involvement with Israel long predated the events on and after October 7, 2023.
In May 2021, Google won the bid for Israel's "Project Nimbus, a contract to provide cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence and other technology services to the Israeli government and its military, including and [sic] Israeli military efforts in the occupied territories." At or around the time, Skaf "raised concerns" about whether Project Nimbus adhered to Google's "AI Principles"—which provided, among other things, that Google would not design or deploy artificial intelligence technologies "whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people" or "whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights." "[I]n response, Google informally flagged" Skaf, but it did not "officially reprimand[ ]" her. In October 2021, Skaf signed a "drop Nimbus petition."
