SCRANTON, Penn. — The Scranton School District did not violate its Individuals with Disabilities Education Act obligations, a Pennsylvania federal court ruled in this lawsuit brought by a mother who says the district should have evaluated her elementary school student sooner for special education services. She says the district ignored warning signs such as poor test scores and speech issues, but the court finds the student’s extreme absenteeism made it “impossible to untangle” academic struggles from the impact of truancy.
CHICAGO — A charter school network in Illinois was unable to secure a preliminary injunction in federal court blocking a state law requiring “union neutrality clauses” in charter agreements. The law falls within the state’s authority and reflects a permissible condition on public funding. The schools failed to show a strong likelihood of success on their free speech claims.
JOHNSTOWN, Penn. — The insurer NORCAL won its motion to bifurcate and stay counterclaims brought against it by the pediatric clinic that employed Johnnie Barto, a doctor serving at least 79 years for sexually assaulting more than 30 children, most of them his patients. The court will first determine whether NORCAL owes the clinic defense and indemnification from a state-court lawsuit alleging it covered up Barto’s behavior, then can address the clinic’s counterclaims for bad faith and breach of fiduciary duty.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Santa Clara County officials largely won their motion for summary judgment on a federal lawsuit filed by former county employees who say they were denied the ability to continue working in person after they objected to the county’s Covid-19 vaccination policies. Some of the former employees did not exhaust their administrative remedies before suing, but at least one employee did, so her Title VII claim may proceed.
JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi federal court approved a 12% water bill hike in Jackson, Mississippi, a “survival measure” for a city whose water and sewage pipes and treatment plants are stressed to emergency levels and have reached the end of $150 million in federal subsidies. The 12% rate increase will bring in $20.4 million in annual revenue for the court-appointed interim third-party manager of the water system, who “must aggressively pursue needed structural reforms to prevent further financial strain on the rate-paying public.”
SCRANTON, Penn. — A federal court in Pennsylvania declined to dismiss a former senior manager’s retaliation claims against the Pennsylvania School Boards Association. The woman said she was placed on a performance improvement plan and her work-from-home privileges were revoked after she complained of her supervisor’s inappropriate sexual comments.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An Alabama federal court allowed a shoe store chain’s Black former manager to add three other Black ex-managers to her race discrimination suit. They allege hostile working environments and retaliation after they complained of their CEO’s behavior at a staff retreat where he allegedly led an assembly where he threw down a large “slave chain,” announced he was “the chain breaker” and asked a Black male to place himself in a box likened to the kind an escaped slave used to ship himself to freedom. Three of the managers were fired and a fourth quit soon after complaining, then were replaced by less-qualified white people.
CINCINNATI — An Ohio federal court granted The ICEE Company’s motion for sanctions against Slush Puppie, a competitor that had sued it for breach of contract. Metadata from Slush Puppie’s executive’s computer and witness testimony conclusively establishes the executive forged an agreement between his company and ICEE regarding distribution of products and overseas royalties, and because this fraudulent contract makes up the basis of the second amended complaint, all four counts in that complaint are dismissed with prejudice and ICEE is awarded fees and costs.
MANHATTAN — The Second Circuit upheld the $286,400 in attorney fees awarded to Donald Glover, the “Community” actor known also as hip-hop artist Childish Gambino, fees after he prevailed over rapper Kidd Wes’s copyright infringement lawsuit alleging that Glover’s 2018 hit “This is America” ripped off the flow in Wes’s song “Made in America.” Glover originally requested $934,600 in attorney fees, and Wes challenged the reduced award, but the appellate judges found no error in the court’s judgment.
SAN FRANCISCO — For a second time, a California federal court dismissed two consumers’ false advertising suit against the maker of Polar Seltzer, whose bottles advertise the flavored seltzer as “100% Natural.” The consumers say the seltzers contain synthetic ingredients, but cannot specify which of the “natural flavors” they challenge are actually synthetic ingredients, as their radiocarbon testing results “have gaps.”
DENVER — The Colorado Court of Appeals denied Tina Peters’ request to release her on bond because her plea was filed more than a year too late. Peters is Mesa County’s former elections clerk, who is serving a nine-year prison sentence after she turned off surveillance cameras monitoring voting machines, allowed a QAnon conspiracy proponent to access the room where the voting machines were stored and allowed him to make copies of the machine’s hard drive before and after an update.
