March 2023
| It’s spring! Time for renewal and growth. At NCLA we are focused on growing our sphere of influence against the Administrative State. If you want to help, please check out the career opportunities available with our firm. This month we’ve got deposition tapes with Fauci and the FBI; a win against discriminatory criteria for Fulbright-Hays scholarships; an amicus victory over Biden’s unlawful vaccine mandate for federal employees. Keep scrolling to read what else is happening at NCLA Now to protect your civil liberties. |
| The Latest |
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| Video: Dramatization of Michelle Cochran’s Sisyphean task against SEC’s administrative proceedings |
| ???? WATCH: The Process Is the Punishment |
| Michelle Cochran’s daughters were little girls when she decided to go up against the Securities and Exchange Commission to fight to clear her name in what she knew was an unjust process. Now teenagers, the girls were proudly present to support their mother during oral arguments in her case before the Supreme Court in November. For Michelle and so many others, the process is the punishment at the SEC. The Justices are set to decide if she will be allowed to have her case heard before a real judge and not an SEC-appointed administrative law judge. Everyone deserves a fair hearing. Watch the animated video>> |
| ???? Lunch and Law | The Surveillance State Suffers Defeat |
| Just because you work in a regulated industry doesn’t mean the government can watch you all the time. NCLA successfully challenged an unlawful and unconstitutional regulation by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which required 24-hour GPS tracking of recreational charter boat fishing vessels and reporting of confidential economic data. NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione moderates a panel discussion with our local counsel Greg Grimsal, member of GAMB (Gordon Arata Montgomery Barnett), and Robert Alt, President and CEO of The Buckeye Institute, who submitted an amicus brief in support of the successful challenge. “…one of the primary reasons we got involved was because it was NCLA,” said Greg Grimsal. Watch video>> |
| Cases to Watch |
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| Photo: Veronica Gonzalez, Plaintiff in Lujan, et al. v. U.S. Department of Education, et al. (Photo Credit: New York Times) |
| Federal Judge Grants Injunction to NCLA Client, Overturns Discriminatory Fulbright Rule |
| A Texas court has granted NCLA client Veronica Gonzalez’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s discriminatory evaluation process for the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. NCLA believes the rule unlawfully discriminates because it essentially disqualifies American citizens and their children who immigrated here from non-English-speaking countries. However, the Court did not reach that issue after deciding that when the statute says “foreign language,” it means languages other than English. Read more>> |
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| Video: Dr. Anthony Fauci gets questioned during deposition on November 23, 2022 in Missouri v Biden, about his involvement in Big Tech censorship |
| NCLA Releases Video Depositions in Social Media Censorship Suit, Judge Orders Case to Be Heard |
| NCLA has released six video depositions taken in its federal lawsuit, State of Missouri, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al., which provide more clarity on the role that government actors, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, played in censoring people on social media during the pandemic. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana denied the government defendants’ motion to dismiss, “The Court finds that the Complaint alleges significant encouragement and coercion that converts the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action, and is unpersuaded by Defendants’ arguments to the contrary.” Read more>> |
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| Photo: When courts apply Stinson deference and follow Guidelines commentary, they systematically violate the due-process rights of criminal defendants |
| NCLA Comment Encourages Sentencing Commission to Alleviate Harms Inflicted by Judicial Deference |
| NCLA has filed a Comment partially supporting the United States Sentencing Commission’s proposed amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The amendments would address circuit conflicts that have emerged regarding two inchoate offenses. NCLA sees the amendments as a first step to alleviating harm that Stinson deference inflicts. Still, federal judges must stop deferring to Guidelines commentary, because unlike the Guidelines themselves, the Commission’s commentary never receives an up-or-down vote from Congress. Read more>> |
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| Photo: Firearms instructor and NCLA client Clark Aposhian is among the thousands of bump stock owners who would have been unlawfully turned into criminals overnight (Photo Credit: Kristin Murphy/Deseret News) |
| Reply Brief Asks Court to Bar ATF’s Attempt to Unilaterally Change Criminal Law with Bump Stock Ban |
| NCLA has filed a reply brief in Aposhian v. Garland, et al., challenging enforcement of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ rule banning bump stocks. ATF changed its position regarding the meaning of a federal statute to incorrectly interpret non-mechanical bump stocks as “machinegun[s]” and ordered Americans possessing those devices to destroy them or abandon them at an ATF office. NCLA asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah to declare ATF’s “Bump Stock Rule” invalid and require the government to return the bump stock confiscated from Plaintiff Clark Aposhian. Read more>> |
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| Photo: ALPRs are strategically placed at nearly every major artery in Coral Gables, FL |
| Oral Arguments Heard in Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of Coral Gables’s License Plate Readers |
| NCLA presented oral arguments in Raul Mas Canosa v. Coral Gables before Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals challenging the City of Coral Gables’s use of Automated License Plate Readers to collect geographic location data of drivers navigating the city and storing that information in a database accessible to law enforcement for three years. This warrantless surveillance infringes on the privacy rights of NCLA client Raul Mas Canosa, who is suing over the use of the ALPRs to track his every move as a long-time resident of the Gables. Listen to the oral argument>> |
| Click here for more cases to watch. |
| Friends of the Court |
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| Photo: President Biden’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate had required federal civilian employees to get the jab |
| En Banc Fifth Circuit Rules Against Biden’s Federal Employee Vaccine Mandate in NCLA Amicus Win |
| The full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas’s original injunction stopping President Biden’s unprecedented vaccine mandate. The order required federal civilian employees to get an unwanted medical procedure on them that provides no benefit to those with naturally acquired immunity to Covid-19 and serves no legitimate need of their employer. Read more>> |
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| Photo: AbbVie Inc. is a pharmaceutical company headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois |
| SDNY Federal Judge Relies on NCLA’s Amicus Curiae Brief in Key Ruling Limiting Antitrust Liability |
| Judge Lewis J. Liman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has unsealed an opinion in In re Bystolic Antitrust Litigation, dismissing a major antitrust lawsuit for failing to state a claim against eight pharmaceutical companies including Forest Labs (now a part of AbbVie). The decision marked a victory for NCLA, which filed an amicus curiae brief urging dismissal. Judge Liman’s opinion highlighted NCLA’s net-payment argument as a main reason for ruling that the antitrust plaintiffs failed to show that Forest’s payments were “unjustified,” given the services it received in return. Read more>> |
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| Photo: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation headquarters in Washington, DC |
| Amicus Brief Calls for Supreme Court to Review Unconstitutional FDIC ALJ Tenure Protections |
| NCLA has filed an amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to review a case, Calcutt v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, that challenges the tenure protections enjoyed by FDIC’s administrative law judges. In its brief, NCLA argues that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declined to decide this important separation-of-powers question based on a mistaken belief that it could afford Calcutt no remedy. Read more>> |
| Click here for more amicus briefs to watch. |
| In the News |
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| Video: NCLA President Mark Chenoweth sits down with Jan Jekielek of The Epoch Times for an American Thought Leaders segment at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference to discuss suing federal agencies ???? When It Doesn’t Help to Speak the Language: The Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, The New York Times ???? SEC Fines for Flutter and Rio Tinto Are Outside its Jurisdiction, Bloomberg Law, Opinion by NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Russ Ryan ???? Biden White House Accused of Silencing Opposing Views Online with ‘Censorship Enterprise’, St. Louis Record ???? Charter Boat Captains Don’t Have To Share Their Location Data With the Government, Court Rules, Reason ???? Collapse of the COVID Truth Regime, Tablet Magazine ???? The Ugly Truth about the White House FBI & Social Media with Jenin Younes & Todd Zywicki, The Bill Walton Show |
| Click here for more media mentions. |
| Recent Events |
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| Video: NCLA Sr. Litigation Counsel Russ Ryan moderates a discussion with NCLA’s Sheng Li and Cato Institute’s Neal McClusky regarding President Biden’s student loan debt cancellation plan |
| ???? Lunch and Law: Unforgivable Student Loan Forgiveness |
| The President does not have the legal authority to forgive student loans on his own. Only Congress can enact laws authorizing debt-forgiveness programs. And only Congress has the power of the purse to pay for debt forgiveness. That is why NCLA has filed a lawsuit on behalf of its client, Cato Institute, urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas to stop the Department of Education’s student-loan-debt-cancellation plan. NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Russ Ryan moderates a discussion on this thorny issue with NCLA Litigation Counsel Sheng Li and Neal McClusky, Director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. Watch now>>NCLA President and General Counsel Mark Chenoweth recently joined The Federalist Society’s Courthouse Steps for a breakdown of Supreme Court oral argument in two major cases challenging Biden’s student loan debt cancellation, Dept. of Education v. Brown and Biden v. Nebraska. Watch now>> |
| Open Positions |
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