SCOTUS on religious liberties, law firms on abortion ruling, gender inequality and judicial workplace reforms ??
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???Good morning.?U.S. Supreme Court endorses football coach's on-field prayers, large U.S. law firms have mostly been quiet since Friday's abortion ruling, a new survey offers clues into law firm gender inequality gap, and a U.S. House panel pushes for judicial workplace reforms with a new funding measure. We break it all down below in today's Legal File ??
In the latest of a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings taking a broad view of religious liberty, the justices in a 6-3 decision expanded the religious rights of government employees by ruling in favor of a Christian former public high school football coach in Washington state who sued after being suspended from his job for refusing to stop leading prayers with players on the field after games.
The ruling, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, rejected the local school district's concerns that in a public school setting prayers and Christian-infused speeches by Joseph Kennedy, who until 2015 served as a part-time assistant football coach in the city of Bremerton, could be seen as coercive to students or a governmental endorsement of a particular religion in violation of the First Amendment’s so-called establishment clause.
The Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings this year on religious rights. On June 21, it endorsed the use of public money to pay for students to attend religious schools in a Maine case.?On May 2, it?backed?a Christian group that sought to fly a flag emblazoned with a cross at Boston city hall.?The high court also?sided with?a Catholic organization receiving public money that barred LGBT people from applying to be foster parents.
A growing number of large U.S. companies made statements following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade on Friday, saying they will cover travel costs for employees who must leave their home states to get abortions. Legal experts said these new policies could expose businesses to lawsuits and even potential criminal liability.
Meanwhile, there was a dearth of public statements from the large U.S. law firms, despite many having signaled ahead of the ruling that they planned to provide free legal support to women seeking abortions if Roe was overturned.
Reuters on Friday asked more than 30 U.S. law firms, including the 20 largest by total number of lawyers, for comments on the?Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling and whether they would cover travel costs for employees seeking an abortion.
The vast majority did not respond by Saturday afternoon, and only two, Ropes & Gray and Morrison & Foerster, said they would implement such a travel policy.
Morrison & Foerster's chair, Larren Nashelsky, said in a statement that the firm would "redouble our efforts to protect abortion and other reproductive rights."
“This is a tightrope to walk for firms,” said Kent Zimmermann, a law firm consultant with the Zeughauser Group. “They have a diversity of views among their talent and clients.”
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And in other top legal news...
A?new survey?of 752 lawyers offers clues into why women remain persistently underrepresented in the partnership ranks. Findings by legal recruiter Major, Lindsey & Africa and Law360 Pulse show that male lawyers appear to care less than their female counterparts about diversity. They’re also less keen on transparency in compensation and origination credit, and less concerned that everyone has a voice within their firms.
The?U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee?in a?report?accompanying the 2023 fiscal year?funding bill?said it was directing the Judicial Conference of the United States, the judiciary's policymaking body, to report to Congress within 30 days whenever a judge is found to have engaged in misconduct.
The committee's report also recommends $1 million of the $8.6 billion funding package it was considering on Friday be spent for a study exploring how to institutionalize workplace surveys of judicial employees, like one that?recently leaked?involving district and appellate court judges in Washington, D.C.
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