With the Supreme Judicial Court expected to hear arguments in a little over a week over a lawsuit challenging Gov. Charlie Baker’s COVID-19 executive orders, Attorney General Maura Healey has filed a lengthy defense of the governor and the legality of his actions to control the coronavirus. Baker has been sued by a group of…

The constitutionality of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission judges is back at the U.S. Supreme Court with a fresh appeal from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a small-government group that wants the justices to greenlight a federal lawsuit taking aim at the judges’ independence from the president. The NCLA filed a petition Monday on behalf…

The New Civil Liberties Alliance [NCLA], a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, announced that the Arizona Supreme Court “adopted verbatim” an NCLA-drafted amendment to the court’s Judicial Review of Administrative Decisions Rules making it easier for litigants to obtain Superior Court stays of administrative decisions. The new rule goes into effect starting January 1, 2021 and affects all…

The U.S. government is trying to force charter boats and companies that take customers fishing and sightseeing in the Gulf of Mexico to purchase a vessel monitoring system. Federal agencies will use the VMS tracking devices to monitor boats’ movements and whereabouts on the water, even when they are not using their federal permits to fish. Read the…

Gov. Charlie Baker filed a court brief on Friday defending his use of a 1950 Civil Defense Law to declare a COVID-19 state of emergency, equating the virus to the “natural causes” referenced in the law and pointing out that the Legislature has not balked at his use of emergency powers to shut down the state’s…

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unveiled two interim final rules intended to deal with enforcement activities in connection with policies enunciated over the past four years, including the so-called Brand memo, which banned federal prosecutors from using federal agency guidance as leverage in prosecutions of private-sector entities. While the terms of the Brand memo…