ABA's new diversity rules draw critics' ire, new details emerge in Trump's bid to overturn election loss, Kalshi can restart elections betting ?

?? Good morning from The Legal File! Here is the rundown of today's top legal news:

?? Cutting 'race and ethnicity' from ABA's law school diversity rules goes too far, critics say

Eliminating the terms “race and ethnicity” from the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation rules will hobble longstanding efforts to bring in diverse students and faculty, critics warned in?public comments on the proposal.

Among the groups opposing a?proposed revision ?of what is currently called the ABA's “diversity and inclusion” standard are legal education heavyweights including the Law School Admission Council; the Society of American Law Teachers; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; and a coalition of 44 law school deans.

The ABA, which sets accreditation standards for 197 law schools in the U.S., currently requires law schools to provide “full opportunities” for “racial and ethnic minorities” and have a diverse student body “with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”

The proposed new standard — renamed the “access to legal education and the profession” standard — eliminates references to race, ethnicity and gender and instead requires law schools to provide access to “persons including those with identities that historically have been disadvantaged or excluded from the legal profession.”

A subcommittee of the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar spent months revising the standard after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023?barred ?colleges and universities from considering race in admissions resulting from a pair of cases filed against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The council voted in August to gather public comments on the change through Sept. 30.

Many of the 10 public comments opposing the change said the ABA had gone further than the court’s ruling requires, while three comments supported the change.

“Nothing in the Court's ruling precludes schools from continuing to pursue diversity as an objective,” the law deans wrote in their opposition letter, adding that the Supreme Court only limited the means by which schools may pursue their diversity goals. Deans from the law schools at the University of Michigan; the University of California, Berkeley; Vanderbilt; and Boston University are among the letter's signatories.

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?? US prosecutors show new details of Trump's bid to overturn election loss

U.S. prosecutors said Donald Trump was acting outside the scope of his duties as president when he pressured state officials and then-Vice President Mike Pence to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat, in a court filing made public on Oct. 2.

The 165-page filing is likely the last opportunity for prosecutors to detail their case against Trump before?the Nov. 5 election ?given there will not be a trial before Trump faces Democratic Vice President?Kamala Harris .

Prosecutors submitted the court filing on Sept. 26, but U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had to approve proposed redactions before it was made public.

The filing is meant to keep the federal criminal election subversion case against the Republican presidential candidate moving forward following a July U.S. Supreme Court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for their official actions in office.

If Trump wins the election, he is likely to direct the Justice Department to drop the charges.

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??? US appeals court clears Kalshi to restart elections betting

A U.S. federal appeals court on Oct. 2 upheld a lower court's order that permitted New York derivatives trading platform KalshiEX to list contracts?that allow Americans to bet on election outcomes .

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, KalshiEX's regulator, did not show how the agency or the public interest would be harmed by KalshiEX's "event" contracts, as it had argued. The CFTC declined to comment.

The ruling means that Kalshi can offer trading in such contracts, potentially paving the way for other firms to offer such derivatives in the future. The?U.S. elections will be held on Nov. 5 .

"Ensuring the integrity of elections and avoiding improper interference and misinformation are undoubtedly paramount public interests, and a substantiated risk of distorting the electoral process would amount to irreparable harm," the ruling read.

"The problem is that the CFTC has given this court no concrete basis to conclude that event contracts would likely be a vehicle for such harms."

Kalshi sought permission from the CFTC in June 2023 to list contracts that would let Americans bet on whether a particular party will control the House of Representatives and Senate in a given term.

But the CFTC prohibited?Kalshi from listing and clearing ?its cash-settled political event contracts due to concerns about unlawful gaming and other activities that it said were not in the public's interest. Kalshi sued, saying the CFTC exceeded its authority.

A D.C. District Court judge?sided with Kalshi in September , ruling that its contracts do not involve unlawful activity or gaming but instead involve elections, which are neither. That cleared the way for Americans to trade political event contracts ahead of next month's presidential election, which polls indicate?will be one of the closest in recent history .

But the CFTC immediately appealed, requesting an emergency stay on the lower court's order.

The case tests the scope of the CFTC's regulatory authority.

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?? Jury urged to hold formula makers responsible for premature baby's illness

A lawyer for a Missouri mother on Oct. 2 urged jurors to hold Abbott, Reckitt's Mead Johnson unit and St. Louis Children's Hospital responsible for a severe intestinal illness that she says her prematurely born son developed after the hospital fed him the companies' formulas.

Tim Cronin, who represents Elizabeth Whitfield and her son Kaine, told the jurors in an opening statement at trial in St. Louis state court that the two companies have long known that feeding cow's milk-based formula to very small premature babies increases their risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). But, they "made no attempt to tell parents at all, and no serious legitimate attempt to communicate to hospitals or doctors about the extent of the risk," he said.

James Hurst, a lawyer for Abbott, told jurors that formula did not cause NEC, but rather that a baby's mother's milk, and to a lesser extent donated human milk, protected against it. Cronin rejected that distinction as "silly," saying that a lack of protection was effectively the same as causing the disease.

NEC occurs almost exclusively in premature babies and has an estimated fatality rate of more than 20%.

The lawsuit is one of close to 1,000 similar cases now pending, and the third to go to trial. It is the first time both companies have faced trial together, and the first against a hospital. The previous trials have resulted in verdicts of?$60 million ?against Mead Johnson and?$495 million ?against Abbott.

The lawsuit and others like it concern specialized formula for premature babies used in hospitals, not ordinary formula sold in stores.

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?? That's all for today, thank you for reading?The Legal File and have a great day!

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