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Online law schools could win ABA blessing in major policy shift

Signage is seen outside of the American Bar Association (ABA) in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 10, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly Acquire Licensing Rights

Nov 20 (Reuters) - The American Bar Association’s legal education arm is considering extending accreditation to fully online law schools, marking a major shift from its longstanding prioritization of in-person teaching.

The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar voted Friday to gather public comments on proposed changes to its standards that would enable new and existing law schools with no physical campus to apply for accreditation.

Only law schools with brick-and-mortar locations are currently eligible for ABA accreditation. The ABA has allowed a growing number of those schools to offer fully or mostly online Juris Doctor programs alongside their residential ones, but fully online schools have remained ineligible to apply for the ABA’s stamp of approval.

Daniel Thies, chairperson of the ABA Council’s Strategic Review Committee, on Friday called the proposal to accredit online law schools a “significant change” that could help lower the cost of a legal education. He noted that online J.D. programs offered by ABA-accredited law schools generally charge the same tuition for online and residential students.

“Likely, that’s because they’re all offered by brick-and-mortar law schools that have all the same expenses associated with brick-and-mortar law schools,” Thies said.

ABA accreditation would be a boon for the small cohort of existing online law schools because their graduates would be able to sit for the bar exam in any state. Currently only California offers the bar for graduates of non-ABA accredited law schools.

Thies suggested that some traditional law schools may object to the change for fear of added competition. But longstanding perceptions that distance education is lower quality than in-person teaching have diminished significantly following the rapid shift to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, several ABA council members said Friday.

Purdue Global Law School is the oldest online law school — it was founded in 1998 as the Concord Law School before its acquisition by Purdue in 2017. There are a handful of other fully online law schools scattered across the country.

Annual tuition for Purdue’s part-time online J.D. program is about $13,500. By comparison, annual tuition for ABA-accredited Southwestern Law School’s new fully online J.D. program is the same as its residential program — $38,944 for part-time students.

“I am very happy to see that the ABA is finally considering moving in this direction,” said Purdue Law Dean Martin Pritikin said Monday. “Virtually every other field of higher education has been quicker to embrace online learning.”

First all-remote, full-time law degree with ABA blessing set to start next fall

Online law school seeks bar exam eligibility in Indiana

Get the latest legal news of the day delivered straight to your inbox with The Afternoon Docket .

Reporting by Karen Sloan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomson Reuters

Karen Sloan reports on law firms, law schools, and the business of law. Reach her at [email protected]

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Maryland handgun licensure law is unconstitutional, US court rules

Posted: November 22, 2023 | Last updated: November 22, 2023

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday declared that Maryland's licensing requirements for people seeking to buy handguns were unconstitutional, citing a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that expanded gun rights.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote blocked enforcement of a 2013 Maryland law that required people to undergo training and background checks before applying for licenses to buy handguns, saying it violated the right to "keep and bear arms" under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment.

The Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in a case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen required gun laws to be "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation" in order to survive a Second Amendment challenge.

"Maryland has not shown that this regime is consistent with our nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," U.S. Circuit Judge Julius Richardson, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling.

Richardson called the Maryland law an "additional, preliminary step" that subjected law-abiding people to a 30-day waiting period before they could begin the usual process to acquire a firearm through a separate background check system.

Randy Kozuch, the executive director of the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legal Action, its lobbying arm, called it "a significant ruling for the Second Amendment and every American who cherishes our constitutional freedoms."

The NRA backed the lawsuit that challenged the law and covered the legal costs of the litigation, an NRA spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Maryland Attorney General Andrew Brown, a Democrat who is defending the law, said his office was "weighing options for next steps in this case."

At issue was a handgun qualification licensing requirement adopted as part of Maryland's Firearm Safety Act of 2013, a broader gun control measure.

Prospective handgun buyers were required to submit fingerprints for a background investigation and take a four-hour-long safety training course. They would then wait up to 30 days before undergoing the rest of the usual process to buy a gun.

A gun rights group called Maryland Shall Issue sued in 2016 along with two individuals and a gun store, arguing that the restrictions violated the Second Amendment. But a lower court judge twice rejected their claims, prompting the appeal.

Richardson on Tuesday said the Supreme Court in 2022 "effected a sea change in Second Amendment law" when it struck down New York state's limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home. The test set out under that ruling has led to a series of court decisions striking down federal and state restrictions on firearms.

Maryland had said its law mirrored historical limitations on "dangerous" people owning firearms. But Richardson said no historical laws worked by "preemptively depriving all citizens of firearms to keep them out of dangerous hands."

U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, dissented, saying the court majority's reasoning "would render presumptively unconstitutional most non-discretionary laws in this country requiring a permit to purchase a handgun."

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi)

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The Adult Survivors Act launched over 2,500 sex abuse suits. Now, it’s expiring

A year-long suspension of the legal time limit to sue over sexual assaults against adults in New York is coming to an end. Of the more than 2,500 filings in the past year, a large number involve allegations of abuse at prisons and local jails.

Alexandria Johnson, 35, stands for a photo, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in Oneonta, N.Y. Johnson filed separate lawsuits against New York City and the state corrections department under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging repeated sexual assaults while she was incarcerated at Rikers Island, as well as at the state’s Bedford Hills facility that led to the termination of her pregnancy. “I had to take a chance that there would be justice,” said Johnson, of her decision to file the law suits. (AP Photo/Heather Ainsworth)

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Alexandria Johnson, 35, becomes emotional during an interview, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in Oneonta, N.Y., while recalling details of being sexually assaulted while incarcerated. Johnson filed separate lawsuits against New York City and the state corrections department under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging repeated sexual assaults while she was incarcerated at Rikers Island, as well as at the state’s Bedford Hills facility that led to the termination of her pregnancy. “I had to take a chance that there would be justice,” said Johnson, of her decision to file the law suits. (AP Photo/Heather Ainsworth)

Alexandria Johnson, 35, kisses her fiance, Greg Fennell, 42, as he departs for work, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, in Oneonta, N.Y. Johnson filed separate lawsuits against New York City and the state corrections department under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging repeated sexual assaults while she was incarcerated at Rikers Island, as well as at the state’s Bedford Hills facility that led to the termination of her pregnancy. “I had to take a chance that there would be justice,” said Johnson, of her decision to file the law suits. (AP Photo/Heather Ainsworth)

Alexandria Johnson, 35, embraces her fiance, Greg Fennell, 42, as he departs for work, Thursday, November 2, 2023, in Oneonta, N.Y. Johnson filed separate lawsuits against New York City and the state corrections department under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging repeated sexual assaults while she was incarcerated at Rikers Island, as well as at the state’s Bedford Hills facility that led to the termination of her pregnancy. “I had to take a chance that there would be justice,” said Johnson, of her decision to file the law suits. (AP Photo/Heather Ainsworth)

A guard tower stands near the entrance to the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, in Bedford Hills, N.Y. A year-long suspension of the legal time limit to sue over sexual assaults against adults in New York has led to a tidal wave of claims on behalf of women who were incarcerated. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - In a June 20, 2014, file photo, the Rikers Island jail complex stands in New York with the Manhattan skyline in the background. A year-long suspension of the legal time limit to sue over sexual assaults against adults in New York has led to a tidal wave of claims on behalf of women who were incarcerated. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

A van passes the entrance to the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, in Bedford Hills, N.Y. A year-long suspension of the legal time limit to sue over sexual assaults against adults in New York has led to a tidal wave of claims on behalf of women who were incarcerated. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — For a year, a special New York law has cleared the way for a wave of headline-grabbing lawsuits against famous men accused of sexual misconduct, including former President Donald Trump, hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and the comedian and actor Russell Brand.

But when the Adult Survivors Act expires after Thanksgiving, it also will have led to a multitude of legal claims by women who say they were sexually abused while serving time in the New York’s prisons and jails.

More than 2,500 lawsuits have been filed so far under the law, which created a year-long suspension of the usual time limit to sue over an alleged sexual assault.

Some of those lawsuits have targeted employers, or institutions such as hospitals, accused of failing to do enough to stop abuse by doctors or other workers. The large majority, though, have been filed against the state, New York City and local counties and involve allegations of abuse at state prisons and local jail systems.

Survivors called it an opportunity to finally be heard.

“For so long, I didn’t have a voice. And it didn’t matter, I thought. Like, who was I?” said Alexandria Johnson, who says she was raped multiple times while incarcerated in state prison and a New York City jail. “I have to keep going forward with this because it matters. ... There’s so many stories, so many, not just mine.”

After Thursday, people will once again be barred from suing over abuse that happened many years ago.

New York was one of several states to revisit laws in recent years that set time limits for civil legal claims stemming from sexual assaults, though usually for people abused as children. Advocates say New York’s current window gives traumatized adults a chance to seek accountability from big institutions and powerful men who can use their wealth and position to shield themselves.

“The reason we fought so hard for this bill is because trauma takes time,” Safe Horizon CEO Liz Roberts said.

Precise counts for Adult Survivor Act filings were not yet available this week, but there were at least 2,587 electronic filings in state courts, with some lawsuits filed on behalf of multiple people. More than half those filings were prison-related claims against the state. Hundreds of additional filings named New York City’s corrections department.

The act was modeled after a previous New York law offering people abused as children a temporary window to file claims. By the time the Child Victims Act’s two-year window closed in August 2021, almost 11,000 people filed lawsuits, many involving the Roman Catholic Church.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said the initial law “ forgot ” people who suffered the same type of abuse as adults. She signed a new law opening a one-year window for adult survivors on Nov. 24, 2022.

A series of high-profile lawsuits followed.

One of the first filed after the window opened was against Trump. A jury in May found the former president liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in 1996 and awarded her $5 million. Trump has denied the allegation.

Harvey Weinstein was sued last month by actress Julia Ormond , who accused the former film producer of sexually assaulting her in 1995 and then hindering her career. Weinstein, who has been convicted of rape in New York and California, denied the allegations through his lawyer.

Grammy-winning music executive Antonio “L.A.” Reid was sued by Drew Dixon , who worked for Reid when he was chief executive of Arista Records. She says Reid sexually assaulted her twice in 2001, including an incident on a private plane. No attorney for Reid was listed in electronic filings.

Combs was accused in a lawsuit by R&B singer Cassie last week of subjecting her to a long-term relationship that included beatings and rape. The two artists announced a settlement a day after the filing. Combs denied the allegations.

Brand was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a film extra during the making of “Arthur” in 2010. British media outlets in September published claims by four women who said they were sexually assaulted by Brand, who says his relationships were “always consensual.”

Bill Cosby was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a young comedy writer more than 50 years ago. Joan Tarshis initially made the allegations against Cosby in 2014 that are in the new lawsuit. A Cosby spokesperson did not address the specifics of Tarshis’s claims, but asked of the recent lawsuits against famous men: “When is it going to stop?”

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they consent to being identified or decide to tell their stories publicly, as Carroll, Ormond, Dixon, Tarshis and Cassie have done.

Many more lawsuits allege assaults by relatively unknown people at everyday locations. One woman claimed in a lawsuit against a spa that she was fondled by a masseuse. Another woman who checked in airline passengers sued her employer over abuse by a manager.

The surge of lawsuits alleging assaults behind bars illustrates what attorney Adam Slater called a “widespread and systemic” issue of assaults on inmates. His firm said it made more than 1,200 filings alleging abuse in state prisons and more than 470 alleging abuse at New York City’s Rikers Island complex.

Anna Kull, who represents Johnson, expects to file up to 600 cases related to assaults in prisons and jails.

“Just a staggering amount of cases where male correctional officers were sexually assaulting female inmates,” Kull said.

Johnson’s lawsuit against New York City says she was raped in her Rikers Island cell by four corrections officers in 2014 while being held for a parole violation on a drug charge. A separate claim against the state said she was raped several times by a guard in 2015 at a state prison north of the city while she was pregnant. The lawsuit says the last assault caused her water to break prematurely and led to the loss of her baby.

Johnson said she still struggles with the trauma.

“I had big dreams, hopes of us going to the nursery and me getting out and raising my son and getting my life together,” she said. “They took that from me.”

Attorneys representing the state and city have denied the allegations in court filings and have sought dismissal of the two lawsuits. The city and state corrections departments separately said they have a zero-tolerance policy for sexual abuse.

Dozens more people have sued medical providers over abusive doctors in the past year.

Attorney Mallory Allen is representing more than 100 men who say they were sexually assaulted by Dr. Darius Paduch, a New York-area urologist who specialized in male reproductive health. Paduch also faces criminal charges accusing him of abusing patients.

One former patient, James O’Connell, said he sued a hospital system over alleged abuse by Paduch after glimpsing a law firm’s early morning TV ad seeking potential plaintiffs. He hopes his action helps bring change.

“I have nephews. I have a son. If I can do something to make sure that there’s a far lesser chance of anything like this ever happening to them, then I’ll do whatever I need,” O’Connell said.

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Backstop in debt limit law flips script on spending endgame

The fail-safe mechanism in the debt limit law was designed to bring both parties to the table to complete all 12 spending bills. Republicans liked it because it would trigger automatic cuts to most discretionary programs, while Democrats sold it as taking a much bigger bite out of defense than domestic and foreign aid accounts.

If all appropriations bills are not enacted by Jan. 1, the law’s statutory caps would reset to fiscal 2023 levels minus 1 percent. Then if all 12 spending bills aren’t completed by April 30, automatic cuts would bring funding extended in a CR at current rates down to those reset caps.

The baseline spending levels were what the CBO scored when the fiscal 2023 omnibus package was enacted in December 2022: $858.4 billion for defense and related programs and $743.9 billion for domestic and foreign aid accounts.

The debt limit law negotiated by Biden and McCarthy set a higher $886.3 billion cap for defense but cut the nondefense ceiling to $703.7 billion — not counting the side deal. The backstop provision resets those caps on Jan. 1 to $849.8 billion for defense and $736.4 billion for nondefense, or fiscal 2023 levels with a 1 percent haircut.

In theory, it looked like the Pentagon and other security-related accounts would take a $36.5 billion hit from the agreed-upon fiscal 2024 topline. Meanwhile nondefense programs would see a nearly $33 billion increase.

This turned out to be a backwards interpretation that assumed the fiscal 2023 levels scored nearly a year ago wouldn’t change. CBO scoring isn’t static, however, and accounting maneuvers available to technically keep costs down back in December 2022 ended up excluded from the calculation of stopgap laws enacted in late September and again last week.

As a result, total budget authority for fiscal 2023 carried over on an annualized basis under the two stopgap laws jumped by $34.5 billion from what was scored last December, almost entirely on the nondefense side which jumped all the way from $743.9 billion to $776.9 billion.

Major contributors to that boost included advance appropriations enacted last year for veterans health care and the Indian Health Service in fiscal 2024 that remain in place under the CR, inflating the totals by a combined $22 billion. There was also a steep decline in insurance premiums for federally backed mortgages used to offset Department of Housing and Urban Development funding, boosting HUD’s score by nearly $8 billion.

The CRs also contain “anomalies” that change certain programs’ funding rates, and they don’t carry over some rescissions of unspent funds, like money taken out of the Energy Department’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve account last December.

As a result, if any programs are left operating under a similar short-term CR by next May, budget authority for nondefense programs would be cut by $40.5 billion, or the difference between the CBO-scored level and the new $736.4 billion cap kicking in on Jan. 1. Defense would take a smaller $10 billion hit.

Sequester formula

It’ll be up to the White House budget office to implement the cuts, and their scoring sometimes differs from CBO’s. Whatever percentage cut they settle on, how the reductions get implemented is governed by a complicated formula first enacted in the 1985 deficit control law.

For defense, the $10 billion would be taken out of all accounts other than military personnel pay and benefits — assuming a presidential decree to keep those accounts whole — including unobligated prior-year balances in Pentagon coffers and any new supplemental funds for Ukraine and Israel. Depending on the size of a supplemental, the defense haircut could work out to roughly 1 percent.

For domestic and foreign aid programs, the $40.5 billion cut would come out of all funding made available for fiscal 2024, but not unobligated balances from previous fiscal years. The VA and Pell Grants to help lower-income students afford college would be spared, while Indian Health Service and community health centers cuts would be capped at 2 percent.

Meanwhile advance funds appropriated in the 2021 infrastructure and gun safety laws, as well as emergency disaster aid and other items added on top of last year’s spending caps, would be subject to cuts . All in, every nonexempt account would take a greater than 5 percent hit starting on April 30, the effect of which would be amplified hitting seven months into the fiscal year.

Full-year CR

Assuming Johnson makes good on his pledge of no more short-term CRs, he’ll go straight to a full-year stopgap measure if there’s no deal on the fully fleshed-out spending bills.

The law’s language on a yearlong CR can be interpreted in different ways, but under one commonly held view, it would turn off the cuts that would otherwise trigger on April 30. Even so, the problems for nondefense could just be starting.

Option 1: Simple extension. If lawmakers resort to a simple extension of the current stopgap law for the rest of the fiscal year, nondefense cuts could top $73 billion since the cap on that category technically drops to $703.7 billion. The sequester would be applied using the same 1985 methodology, resulting in nearly 10 percent cuts that take effect 15 days after enactment.

Under a yearlong stopgap measure, lawmakers would likely remove the extra VA and Indian Health Service appropriations carried over in the short-term CRs, resulting in slimmer but still hefty 7 percent nondefense cuts. Meanwhile Pentagon and security-related accounts wouldn’t face any cuts under a full-year CR since the ceiling for that budget category grows by $28 billion in fiscal 2024 under the debt ceiling law.

An alternative interpretation, which the Office of Management and Budget could theoretically apply, would be that a yearlong stopgap measure enacted early in 2024 is technically a part-year bill, which would keep the fiscal 2023 caps minus 1 percent in place. Defense would still take the 1 percent hit in this interpretation, but nondefense cuts would be scaled back to less than 3 percent.

Option 2: Substantial anomalies . Another scenario is Johnson writes a full-year CR with anomalies that conform to the new spending caps for fiscal 2024 and turn off the across-the-board cuts.

That would allow for 3 percent defense growth in line with the debt deal, and if the VA and DHS are exempt, other nondefense programs could be cut by somewhere between 7 and 10 percent depending on offsets. Programs enacted outside of regular spending bills, like the infrastructure law that’s a key plank of the president’s “Bidenomics” pitch to voters, would be spared, unlike under a traditional sequester.

Johnson has hinted at both potential options. In talking points distributed to the GOP conference last week, Johnson said if Democrats don’t come to the table and “responsibly” negotiate final bills, he’d bring up a full-year CR with “appropriate adjustments to meet our national security priorities.”

And in private comments reported by the Washington Examiner , Johnson told Republicans that without final bills early next year that contain “good conservative wins,” the House would take up “the most painful version of a full-year CR, that will result in large across-the-board non-defense cuts.”

Defense would “come out flat without losing much,” while nondefense would take a roughly 8 percent hit, Johnson reportedly said.

Threading the needle

For this strategy to work, Johnson would need unity in his conference.

If he can’t pass a full-year CR with GOP votes in his chamber — and his margin could potentially shrink to two votes if Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., is expelled and his Democratic-leaning district elects a Democrat early next year — Johnson’s leverage could dissipate.

House Republicans unifying around any CR is a tall order. Case in point: the stopgap measure McCarthy brought to the floor in September that would cut all nondefense spending outside of the VA and DHS by 30 percent and implement tough border and asylum restrictions. Twenty-one Republicans voted “no” and it was defeated 198-232.

But if House Republicans can unite around Johnson in a way they wouldn’t for McCarthy, Democrats and the White House could have a difficult choice: Accept cuts to nondefense programs or fight for higher spending at the risk of a government shutdown. That’s where it becomes harder to justify a “side deal” that wasn’t actually part of the debt limit bill lawmakers voted for, and which the current speaker wasn’t a party to.

But Democrats can rightly argue that the only spending bills with bipartisan support to date are the dozen that the Senate Appropriations Committee reported over the summer. Not only do those bills contain the side deal’s $54 billion — they threw in an extra $14 billion in emergency funds for good measure.

And with 60 Senate votes needed to get anything to Biden’s desk, that could put Johnson in the difficult position of having to go back to his unruly conference empty-handed.

Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.

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Supreme Court refuses to reinstate Florida’s anti-drag show law

Law signed by gov. ron desantis (r) likely violates first amendment and is at odds with parents’ “bill of rights,” a lower court said.

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to immediately clear the way for Florida officials to enforce a state law aimed at prohibiting children from attending certain live drag shows.

A lower court had blocked the law statewide, saying it likely violated the First Amendment and was “specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers.”

In a statement accompanying the Supreme Court order , two justices who were in the majority — Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — said their refusal to reinstate the Florida law does not reflect their view about whether it violates the First Amendment.

Three other justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — indicated they would have allowed the law to take effect while the litigation continues.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, in May signed the measure prohibiting the admission of children into any sexually explicit show that could be considered obscene based on the age of the child.

The law does not specifically mention drag shows, but allows state officials to impose fines and suspend the business and liquor licenses of restaurants that allow children to attend performances that include lewd exposure to “prosthetic genitals and breasts.”

An Orlando restaurant, Hamburger Mary’s, presents drag shows, comedy sketches, dancing, and, on Sunday afternoons, what it describes as family-friendly drag shows. The restaurant, part of a chain of drag-themed establishments, sued state officials, challenging the constitutionality of the law, which it said would result in a loss of business.

Federal judge rules against new DeSantis drag show law in Florida

A district court judge in June sided with Hamburger Mary’s and barred state officials from enforcing the law in a preliminary order. That ruling found the statute likely violates the First Amendment in part because its vague language does not define “lewd conduct” or “lewd exposure.”

The opinion quoted the bill’s sponsor, who described the measure as protecting “our children by ending the gateway propaganda to this evil — ‘Drag Queen Story Time.’” Before the order was issued, Florida’s Department of Professional and Business Regulation had already moved to revoke the liquor licenses of a Miami hotel and an Orlando performing arts venue for hosting drag shows where children may have been present.

U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell noted that Florida law permits any minor to attend an R-rated film at a movie theater if accompanied by a parent or guardian — films, he said, which “routinely convey content at least as objectionable” as that covered by the new law.

Presnell also said the new law clashes with another DeSantis priority, the “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” because it allows the state to decide what performances children can attend, rather than leaving that choice up to parents. He added that existing obscenity laws already protect children from “any constitutionally unprotected obscene exhibitions or shows.”

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed Presnell’s order and sided with the restaurant.

In dissent, Judge Andrew Brasher said he would have allowed the state to continue to enforce the law against parties other than Hamburger Mary’s while the litigation continues.

“We have a single plaintiff that operates a single brick-and-mortar restaurant in a single city,” Brasher wrote. “An injunction addressed to everyone in Miami, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa, and everywhere else in Florida provides no benefit to that plaintiff and solves no administrability concern, but it nonetheless imposes significant burdens” on state officials.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) asked the Supreme Court to intervene and limit the injunction to apply only to Hamburger Mary’s while the litigation continues. Blocking the measure entirely, she said in a court filing, “inflicts irreparable harm on Florida and its children by purporting to erase from Florida’s statute books a law designed to prevent the exposure of children to sexually explicit live performances.”

In response, the restaurant’s attorney Donald A. Donati urged the Supreme Court to continue to block enforcement of the law throughout the state. The restaurant’s shows are “not harmful to minors,” he said in a court filing, noting that parents and grandparents attend shows with their children. But the owners say they are concerned about violating the law because of its vague, broad language — and the loss of business if age restrictions are required.

Florida already has constitutional laws in place that prevent children from viewing sexually explicit materials, Donati wrote, and the state “will suffer no irreparable harm by maintaining the status quo for the duration of this litigation.”

As is typical when the court responds to emergency requests, the Supreme Court’s order on Thursday did not include the justices’ reasoning.

Kavanaugh, joined by Barrett, emphasized that the question of whether lower courts can block enforcement of a law against those not involved in litigation — businesses other than Hamburger Mary’s, in this case — is an important question that could warrant our review in the future.

But, he said, the Florida case is “an imperfect vehicle” for considering the question.

The case is Griffin v. HM Florida-Orl, LLC .

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Gain recognition with the help of my essay writer

Generally, our writers, who will write my essay for me, have the responsibility to show their determination in writing the essay for you, but there is more they can do. They can ease your admission process for higher education and write various personal statements, cover letters, admission write-up, and many more. Brilliant drafts for your business studies course, ranging from market analysis to business proposal, can also be done by them. Be it any kind of a draft- the experts have the potential to dig in deep before writing. Doing ‘my draft’ with the utmost efficiency is what matters to us the most.

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You may be worried that your teacher will know that you took an expert's assistance to write my essay for me, but we assure you that nothing like that will happen with our write essay service. Taking assistance to write from PenMyPaper is both safe and private. We respect your privacy and thus do not ask for credentials like your name, college, location, or your phone number. To pay for the essay writing, you can either use your debit or credit cards to pay via PayPal or use your wallet balance from our website. All we would need is your card details and your email-id. This is our responsibility that your information will be kept all safe. This is what makes our service the best essay writing service to write with.

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Benefits You Get from Our Essay Writer Service.

Typically, our authors write essays, but they can do much more than essays. We also offer admissions help. If you are preparing to apply for college, you can get an admission essay, application letter, cover letter, CV, resume, or personal statement from us. Since we know what the admissions committee wants to see in all these papers, we are able to provide you with a flawless paper for your admission.

You can also get help with business writing from our essay writer online. Turn to us if you need a business plan, business proposal, presentation, press release, sales letter, or any other kind of writing piece for your business, and we will tailor such a paper to your requirements.

If you say, "Do not write an essay for me, just proofread and edit it," we can help, as well. Just provide us with your piece of writing and indicate what exactly you need. We will check your paper and bring it to perfection.

Is buying essays online safe?

Shopping through online platforms is a highly controversial issue. Naturally, you cannot be completely sure when placing an order through an unfamiliar site, with which you have never cooperated. That is why we recommend that people contact trusted companies that have hundreds of positive reviews.

As for buying essays through sites, then you need to be as careful as possible and carefully check every detail. Read company reviews on third-party sources or ask a question on the forum. Check out the guarantees given by the specialists and discuss cooperation with the company manager. Do not transfer money to someone else's account until they send you a document with an essay for review.

Good online platforms provide certificates and some personal data so that the client can have the necessary information about the service manual. Service employees should immediately calculate the cost of the order for you and in the process of work are not entitled to add a percentage to this amount, if you do not make additional edits and preferences.

Alexander Freeman

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