Trump EOs have sparked lawsuits, Meta ex-COO Sandberg sanctioned for deleting emails, Prince Harry wins Murdoch newspapers lawsuit and more ??
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?? Good morning from The Legal File! Here is the rundown of today's top legal news:
?? Trump EOs raise legal questions, lawsuits
President Trump has released a spate of executive orders since being sworn in for a second term on Jan. 20, including one on TikTok. The executive order restoring access to TikTok has created a thicket of new legal questions for the short-video platform, along with new tensions between the White House, members of Congress who want the platform banned, and tech companies caught in the middle.
Legal experts said despite Trump's order, service providers and app distributors such as Google and Apple still face major uncertainty and potential massive financial liability for defying a law that banned TikTok in the U.S. unless Chinese parent ByteDance divested the company by Jan. 19. Read more about TikTok’s legal limbo.
Another executive order, one reinterpreting birthright citizenship, has also sparked legal questions. A coalition of 22 Democratic-led states along with the District of Columbia and city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston on Jan. 21 arguing that Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution. That lawsuit followed a pair of similar cases filed by the ACLU, immigrant organizations and an expectant mother in the hours after Trump signed the executive order, marking the first major litigation challenging parts of his agenda since he took office on Jan. 20.
Birthright citizenship is a principle that has been recognized in the U.S. for more than 150 years. Does Trump have the legal authority to restrict it?
?? Meta ex-COO Sandberg sanctioned in investor lawsuit for deleting emails
Meta Platforms' former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was sanctioned by a judge on Jan. 21 for deleting emails related to litigation over Facebook's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, despite being told to preserve the messages.
The judge, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster, of Delaware Chancery Court, said evidence showed Sandberg used a personal account under a pseudonym and erased messages that were likely relevant to the shareholder lawsuit.
The sanction will make it harder for Sandberg to tell her side of the story and avoid liability at the eight-day, non-jury trial scheduled for April. The judge also ordered her to pay the expenses related to the sanctions motion incurred by the shareholders, which include California's huge teachers' retirement system known as CalSTRS.
"Because Sandberg selectively deleted items from her Gmail account, it is likely that the most sensitive and probative exchanges are gone," Laster wrote in his opinion.
Sandberg had argued she was forthcoming about the personal account and rarely used it for business and when she did, others were copied on the messages so the information was preserved.
Laster imposed a higher standard of "clear and convincing evidence," rather than "preponderance" of evidence, for Sandberg's affirmative defenses, which are her arguments and evidence for why she should not be held liable.
The case was brought in 2018, when it emerged that Facebook allowed data from millions of users to be accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump's successful campaign for U.S. president in 2016.
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??? Prince Harry hails 'monumental' legal win over Murdoch newspapers
Prince Harry claimed a "monumental" victory over Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper group after the publisher settled his lawsuit, admitting unlawful actions at its Sun tabloid for the first time and paying substantial damages.
Harry, 40, the younger son of King Charles, had been suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, at the High Court in London, alleging the papers had illegally obtained private information about him from 1996 till 2011.
NGN also admitted it had intruded into the private life of Harry's late mother, Princess Diana. A source familiar with the settlement said the damages involved an eight-figure sum.
"In a monumental victory today, News UK have admitted that The Sun, the flagship title for Rupert Murdoch’s UK media empire, has indeed engaged in illegal practices," Harry and his co-claimant Tom Watson said in a statement.
The trial to consider Harry's case, and a similar lawsuit from former senior British lawmaker Watson, had been due to start on Jan. 21, but following last-gasp talks, the two sides reached a settlement, with NGN saying there had been wrongdoing at The Sun, something it had denied for years.
It also admitted targeting Watson, including when he was a junior minister under then prime minister Gordon Brown, who had been due to give evidence if the trial had gone ahead.
?? Harvard settles lawsuits over antisemitism on campus
Harvard University will provide additional protections for Jewish students under a settlement announced on Jan. 21 that resolves two lawsuits accusing the Ivy League school of becoming a hotbed of rampant antisemitism.
Harvard said it will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, including specific examples of discrimination and harassment, when evaluating whether conduct violates its non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies.
The university will also address Frequently Asked Questions about its policies online, report annually for five years on its enforcement efforts, and provide training on combating antisemitism to staff who review discrimination complaints.
Harvard's settlement resolves a lawsuit by Students Against Antisemitism, and a lawsuit by Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and includes unspecified monetary payments. The university did not admit wrongdoing.
Both lawsuits were among many accusing major universities of encouraging antisemitism after war broke out between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, leading to several months of pro-Palestinian protests on American college campuses.
?? That's all for today, thank you for reading The Legal File, and have a great day!
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