It's raining lawsuits! ☂️

Trump sues NY attorney general

The BBC writes:

Trump sues NY Attorney General Letitia James for 'intimidation'

Donald Trump has sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, accusing her of conducting a "war of intimidation and harassment" against him.

It follows a lawsuit that Ms James launched against Mr Trump and three of his children last September, accusing them of fraud committed over a decade.

"We sued Donald Trump because he committed extensive financial fraud," the statement said. "That fact hasn't changed, and neither will our resolve to ensure that no matter how powerful or political one might be, no one is above the law."

Mr Trump's lawsuit is the latest twist in a long-running feud between Mr Trump and Ms James, who - on the night she was elected in 2018 - vowed to shine "a bright light" on his real estate dealings.

Mr Trump, for his part, has accused her of conducting a "witch hunt" and branded Ms James - the first black woman to be New York's attorney general - a "racist".

Ms James made a gigantic mistake by saying that Trump committed extensive financial fraud. She should have said there is solid evidence that Trump committed extensive financial fraud. Oh well. Now Trump can file a motion to get her off the case for saying that.

Doctor sues Indiana attorney general

CBS News writes:

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio, is suing Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, alleging he has relied on "baseless" consumer complaints to launch "overbroad" investigations into physicians who provide abortion care, and issued subpoenas seeking the confidential medical records of their patients.  

The lawsuit, filed by lawyer Kathleen DeLaney on behalf of Bernard and her medical partner Dr. Amy Caldwell in Indiana Commercial Court in Marion County, claims Rokita opened investigations into seven consumer complaints filed against Bernard after she came under scrutiny for performing the medication-induced abortion on June 30, days after the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.

Parents sue police

ABC News writes:

The parents of Gabby Petito have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the police department in Moab, Utah, where the slain travel blogger and her boyfriend Brian Laundrie were questioned about a possible domestic dispute weeks before she was reported missing.

The lawsuit, which was initially announced in August in a notice of claim before being filed Thursday, is seeking at least $50 million in damages.

"We feel the need to bring justice because she could have been protected that day," Petito's mother, Nichole Schmidt, said during a press conference Thursday. "There are laws put in place to protect victims, and those laws were not followed. And we don't want this to happen to anybody else."

The suit alleges that if the Moab police had followed a Utah law on domestic violence, "Gabby would still be alive today," James McConkie, one of the attorneys representing the family, said during the briefing.

Twitter employees sue Musk

Axios writes:

Twitter was sued on Thursday over Elon Musk's plan to cut as many as 3,700 jobs at the company.

Driving the news: The class-action lawsuit, filed by five current or former employees, alleges that Twitter violated federal and state laws that require at least 60-day notice of a mass layoff.

Federal judge would like to sue the Supreme Court?

This one is a total hoot! In a burst of both frustration and refreshing sanity, a federal judge rhetorically spit in the Supreme Court’s face. MSN writes:

In his Bruen decision last June, Justice Clarence Thomas ordered courts to assess the constitutionality of modern-day gun restrictions by searching for “historical analogues” from 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified. Ever since, judges have struggled mightily with this task—in part because most have no training in real historical analysis, but also because the record is often spotty and contradictory. In light of Bruen’s maximalist language, they have erred on the side of gun owners, finding a constitutional right to buy a gun while under indictment for a violent crime, to carry a gun into airports, and to scratch out the serial number on a firearm, rendering it untraceable.

Last Thursday, Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi charted a different course: He proposed appointing a historian to help him “identify and sift through authoritative sources on founding-era firearms restrictions” to decide the constitutionality of a federal law barring felons from possessing firearms. His proposal is the first positive development in Second Amendment law since the Bruen revolution. At worst, it will demonstrate the absurdity and impossibility of Thomas’ command. At best, it will restore sanity to an area of jurisprudence that is going completely off the rails.

Reeves’ order is bracingly honest about the sorry state of Second Amendment jurisprudence today. “The justices of the Supreme Court, distinguished as they may be, are not trained historians,” he wrote. Federal judges “lack both the methodological and substantive knowledge that historians possess. The sifting of evidence that judges perform is different than the sifting of sources and methodologies that historians perform. And we are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791.” Putting oneself in the mindset of a rich, white men in the 18th century requiring training and practice. “Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.”

To illustrate his point, Reeves wrote that while historians still fiercely contest the theory of an individual right to bear arms, that right remains the law. He quoted the academic Patrick J. Charles, who wrote that advocates of this theory “broke, and continue to break, virtually every norm of historical objectivity and methodology accepted within academia.” Charles’ complaint could be applied to a huge amount of pseudo-originalist legal theory. As he explained: “Minority viewpoints are cast as majority viewpoints. Historical speakers’ and writers’ words are cast in terms outside the bounds of their intended context or audience. The intellectual and political thoughts of different historical eras are explained from modern vantage point. Historical presumptions or inferences are sold as historical facts.”

By appointing a trained historian, Reeves could avoid these pitfalls. He would, indeed, stand a better chance of lighting upon the truth. Even as it may be mandated by Thomas’ Bruen opinion, any such undertaking remains fundamentally misguided: Renowned historian Eric Foner recently dismissed the “foolish” belief that the Constitution has “one original meaning,” since it always meant “different things to a lot of different people” who were involved in its ratification. But a historian will at least get closer to a plausible interpretation than Thomas. And if the whole undertaking fails to produce a good answer, it will have demonstrated the absurdity of defining rights on the basis of history alone.

It warms my little heart to see so much work going to the lawyers. And now maybe some will go to historians too! Lawyers and historians need work so they can make money to pay for groceries.

A corollary is that lots of people will be packing heat (carrying a gun(s)). It will be just like 1791 all over again! MAGA!!