Appeals Court Says Judicial Workers Can Engage in Political Activities

???The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., is refusing to allow a series of restrictions on the political activity of some judicial workers.

???The court’s ruling last month said the two workers who sued to block the restrictions have a First Amendment right of free speech that was being infringed.

???The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts was trying to avoid conflicts of interest by ordering its employees to abstain from activities that indicate political advocacy. Its administrators wanted to eliminate any image the judiciary was biased when they instituted the rules in 2018.

???So far, the decision applies only to the two plaintiffs but the court recommended a review to see whether other judicial workers with similar job responsibilities should be included.

???“We certainly hope that the Administrative Office will take the hint from the court” and expand the court’s ruling to more of its employees, said Scott Michelman, legal director for American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia.

???The plaintiffs were represented by the ACLU, which hailed the ruling as a victory for First Amendment rights.

???Some limitations on political activity still are allowed for employees of the agency who work more directly with judges.

??The plaintiffs, Lisa Guffey and Christine Smith, succeeded in 2020 in U.S. District Court in winning an injunction against enforcement of the ban on political activities. The Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction after the Administrative Office appealed.

???The Administrative Office, established in 1939, is the main support entity for the federal judiciary. It provides administrative, legal, financial, management and information technology services.

???Guffey works for the office's Defender Services Office. Smith works for its Department of Technology Services. Neither of them influences the outcomes of cases.

???Judge Justin Walker wrote that “no one in this case takes issue with the [Administrative Office’s] longstanding prohibition of political speech by its employees when they are at the office. But the AO cannot prohibit political speech by Guffey and Smith when they are away from work and in no way affiliating themselves with the Judiciary.”

???The restrictions prohibit employees from donating to political campaigns or working for candidates, even on a volunteer basis.

???They also banned them from displaying campaign signs or buttons, attending political fundraising events, driving voters to polls to support a party or candidate and organizing political rallies.

???The majority opinion said the restrictions are unnecessary in most cases because Administrative Office employees work behind the scenes on clerical duties. They do not participate in adjudicating cases.

???The case is Guffey v. Mauskopf, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, No. 20-5183.

???For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.

D.C. Attorney General Sues Billionaire

For Alleged Income Tax Evasion

???Washington, D.C., is accusing billionaire corporate mogul Michael Saylor of evading $25 million in local income taxes in a whistleblower lawsuit filed this week.

???The District of Columbia’s attorney general says Saylor fraudulently claimed he lived in Florida and Virginia while his company, MicroStrategy Inc., helped him in the tax evasion.

???Saylor made a fortune off cryptocurrency investments after becoming the largest corporate buyer of Bitcoin. Forbes magazine estimates his net worth at $2.3 billion.

???Until he resigned last month, Saylor was chief executive officer of MicroStrategy, a Tysons, Va.-based company that provides analytics, mobile software and cloud-based services to other businesses.

???The lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court says that Saylor began living in a luxury Georgetown penthouse in 2005 and docked his yachts on the Potomac riverfront.

???He calls his home “Trigate” after he purchased three side-by-side condominiums and had them combined into a single roughly 7,000-foot home during a multi-million dollar renovation.

???“Despite being a District statutory resident and domiciliary, not once during the period from 2005 through 2021 did Defendant Saylor file an income tax return with, or pay any income taxes to, the District’s Office of Tax and Revenue,” the lawsuit says. “Instead, Defendant Saylor fraudulently purported to be a resident of either Virginia or Florida, jurisdictions that have materially lower income tax rates.”

???It also says, “Defendant MicroStrategy knew that Saylor was in fact a District resident, but instead of accurately reporting his address to local and federal tax authorities and correctly withholding District taxes, the company conspired with Defendant Saylor to facilitate his tax avoidance scheme.”

???D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced the lawsuit on Twitter.

???He acknowledges that Saylor also owns a home in Miami Beach but says he typically spent more than half a year at his home in Georgetown, which made him subject to local income taxation.

???Racine was tipped off by an unidentified whistleblower, who filed a False Claims Act complaint in April 2021.

???The whistleblower complaint says, “Demonstrating his disdain for the rules that everyone else has to live by, Saylor publicly flaunted his billionaire lifestyle while bragging to his friends and associates about how he was evading District taxes.”

??Saylor denied the allegations. MicroStrategy issued a statement saying, “The District of Columbia’s claims against the company are false and we will defend aggressively against this overreach.”

???Shares of MicroStrategy fell 3.6 percent to $231.56 after Racine announced the lawsuit. The stock has lost about 57 percent of its value this year as the price of Bitcoin also declined.

???For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.

Instacart Settles Consumer Lawsuit

Over Deceptive Service Fees

???Grocery delivery service Instacart is paying $1.8 million to settle a District of Columbia lawsuit that accused the company of charging customers deceptive service fees and withholding tax payments on them.

???The D.C. attorney general accused the company of collecting millions of dollars from the service fees but failing to pay $740,000 in taxes on the money.

???The $1.8 million settlement will compensate delivery workers and Instacart customers.

???Beginning in September 2016, Instacart began charging customers 10 percent service fees that its website implied would be paid as tips to delivery workers, the lawsuit says. Actually, the service fees went directly to the company but delivery personnel received none of it.

???Initially, the website said the 10 percent fee was for tips. Later in 2016, the company switched the tip option to a service fee but displayed it in the same location on the website.

???Instacart explained the service fees as a means to "pay all shoppers more consistently for each and every delivery, not just the last shopper to touch the order," according to the lawsuit. The company changed the way it charged the service fee in April 2018 amid a wave of bad publicity.

???Instacart and its parent company also agreed in the settlement to pay the back taxes from the service fees it collected.

??Instacart denied wrongdoing, saying in a statement, "We believe our communications with customers are highly transparent, and we have industry-leading tip protections in place for our shopper community."

???The San Francisco-based company has operated in the District of Columbia since 2014. It experienced a surge in business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

???D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said in a statement after the settlement, "D.C. consumers expect their tips to go to workers – not the c-suite. Any business operating in the district must provide consumers with truthful information, pay workers the wages and tips they have earned, and pay the sales taxes that they owe."

???The case is District of Columbia v. Maplebear Inc. d/b/a Instacart, case number 2020 CA 003777 B, in Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

???For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.

Reporters and Lawyers Sue CIA

After Interviewing Wikileaks Founder

???American lawyers and journalists who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London are suing the Central Intelligence Agency for what they call "an extraordinary campaign of illegal spying" against them.

???Assange is fighting extradition to the United States to stand trial on espionage charges in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

???The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that they were required to turn over their electronic devices to a private security firm at the embassy before visiting Assange. The firm then copied data on the devices and turned it over to the CIA, the lawsuit says.

???They claim a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. The Fourth Amendment says an American has "a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches and seizures of his person, his houses, his papers and all his possessions."

???Assange is an Australian publisher and activist who in 2006 founded Wikileaks, which publishes leaked classified information from governments worldwide.

???Wikileaks gained international attention in 2010 when it published military information from U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. It included clandestine video about an American airstrike that killed civilians in Baghdad and information about military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

???Afterward, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into Wikileaks that led to espionage charges against Assange. Free speech advocates have defended him by arguing his publications were protected as free speech.

???He faces as much as 175 years in prison on 18 charges.

???He was granted refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from 2012 to 2019. Since 2019, he has been confined at a prison in London while he appeals to avoid U.S. extradition.

???The lawsuit pending in federal court in New York was filed by civil rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler, media lawyer Deborah Hrbek and national security journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz. Kunstler and Hrbek have represented Assange.

???They allege that more than 100 American visitors were subjected to surveillance by the Spanish firm Undercover Global, which had a contract with the Ecuadorian embassy to provide security.

???The lawsuit also accuses Undercover Global of placing microphones around the embassy then sending the CIA the recordings and footage from security cameras.

???"Defendant [Former CIA Director Mike] Pompeo was aware of and approved the copying of information contained on plaintiffs’ mobile electronic devices and the surreptitious audio monitoring of their meetings with Assange," the lawsuit says.

???The case is Margaret Ratner Kunstler et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency et al., case number 1:22-cv-06913, in the U.S. District court for the Southern District of New York.

???For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.

Police Union Loses Appeal

Over Officer Discipline Rule

???A union for Washington, D.C., police lost its legal battle late last month against a law that bans negotiations over disciplinary action against officers.

???The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the law “furthers a legitimate interest in improving police accountability.”

???The D.C. Council approved the change in officers’ rights to contest discipline during a police reform movement in 2020, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

???“Police brutality is abhorrent and does not reflect the District’s values,” says emergency D.C. Act 23-336.

???The Fraternal Order of Police sued on behalf of its members in the Metropolitan Washington Police Department.?

???Limiting officers’ rights to contest discipline violates their 14th Amendment equal protection and due process rights, the lawsuit says. It also violates the contracts clause of the Constitution by overriding the union’s agreement with the city, the plaintiffs say.

???The police are the only D.C. employees who now lack a right to bargain over disciplinary matters, which the lawsuit describes as discriminatory against them.

???The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2020 in U.S. District Court. The Court of Appeals said the union’s lawsuit lacked evidence.?

???The D.C. Council has “significant leeway to pass emergency legislation to protect the public safety or welfare,” the appellate ruling said.?

???The union made “no serious effort to show that the Council acted beyond its discretion,” says the ruling written by Judge Gregory G. Katsas.

???The case is Fraternal Order of Police v. District of Columbia, D.C. Cir., No. 21-7059, Aug. 19, 2022.

???For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.