During the January 9, 2018 oral argument in Collins v. Virginia — a case concerning the right of homeowners to be secure against warrantless police searches for stolen or contraband vehicles — Chief Justice John Roberts referenced the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This was a likely nod to an amicus brief composed by Subbaraman PLLC on behalf of Restore the Fourth which uses the events of Ferris Bueller to illustrate the Fourth Amendment rights at stake. The Chicago Tribune and Lowering the Bar’s Kevin Underhill spotlight this connection.

On January 4, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in ALDF v. Wasden that an Idaho law restricting the free-speech rights of investigative food journalists to make audio/visual recordings at agricultural production facilities is unconstitutional. The Court thus took the same position expressed in a friend-of-the-court brief authored by Subbaraman PLLC on behalf of fifteen prominent food law & policy scholars scholars.

On March 29, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of New York merchants in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman. Addressing the merchants’ First Amendment challenge to New York’s ban on credit-card surcharges, the Court found that this ban regulated commercial speech — not mere conduct — because the ban simply controlled how merchants described credit-card surcharges to customers. The Court thus took the same position expressed in a friend-of-the-court brief authored by Subbaraman PLLC on behalf of a group of prominent First Amendment scholars and the First Amendment Lawyers Association. That brief can be read here.

Reporting on an important legal challenge to the use of body scans and full-body pat-downs by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to screen airline passengers, Law360 cites a letter that Subbaraman PLLC drafted and filed on behalf of several consumer privacy and passenger-rights organizations: “Consumer groups asked the D.C. Circuit on Thursday to consider two recent highly publicized passenger screening incidents at airports in Los Angeles and Detroit as it weighs a challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s final rule on airport body scanners, saying the technology is intrusive and hurting passengers.” Read the full article here (subscription required).

We are pleased to announce that we have filed an friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief on behalf of Restore the Fourth in an important Fourth Amendment case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court: Hernandez v. Mesa. The case concerns a U.S. border agent’s shooting of a 15-year-old boy across the U.S.-Mexico border. This brief explains why under the U.S. Constitution, U.S. officials may always be held liable for their arbitrary use of lethal force, no matter where the force was used or the nationality of the victim. The brief can be read here.

We are pleased to announce that we have just filed an friend-of-the-court (amici) brief on behalf of several prominent First Amendment scholars and the First Amendment Lawyers Association supporting a group of New York retailers before the U.S. Supreme Court. The brief explains why New York’s credit-card surcharge ban limits commercial speech and thus warrants First Amendment review. The case is called Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman.

The Minnesota Lawyer has published a detailed article on an important case before the Minnesota Supreme Court that Subbaraman PLLC helped to brief. At issue is whether Minnesota’s Anti-SLAPP immunity law violates Minnesota’s jury-trial guarantee: “[Attorney Robert] Hill hopes the court will declare that provision of the law unconstitutional on its face, saying the court needs to give ‘guidance’ to the Legislature, as well as the litigants and the bar, to protect the rules of civil procedure. To that end, Hill recruited Mahesha Subbaraman, a highly regarded appellate litigator with a solo practice in Minneapolis, to draft the brief. He also persuaded his old friend Eric Magnuson, the former chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court and now a partner at Robins Kaplan, to argue the case. ‘Whenever I’m in a knife fight, I like to bring a Howitzer,’ Hill quipped.” Read the full article here.

Reporting on a major commercial speech case that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review, the Wall Street Journal quotes a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief that Subbaraman PLLC drafted and filed on behalf of ten distinguished First Amendment scholars: “In a brief supporting the merchants, a group of First Amendment scholars argued that it’s misleading to say the case is just about price-control regulations.” Read the full article here.

We are pleased to announce that we have just filed an friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief on behalf of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance in an important First Amendment case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The brief explains why, as a matter of First Amendment law, Florida should not be able to monopolize the definition of “skim milk” — especially when Florida’s definition conceals the artificial addition of Vitamin A to skim milk and forces small farms that produce natural skim milk (which has no Vitamin A) to label their product “imitation skim milk.”

We are pleased to announce that we have just filed an friend-of-the-court (amici) brief on behalf of fifteen prominent food law & policy scholars in an important First Amendment case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The brief explains why the First Amendment rights of consumers are implicated and violated by state “ag-gag” laws, which effectively ban journalists, whistleblowers, and activists from using undercover investigations to inform consumers about what really goes on behind closed doors at livestock and agricultural processing facilities.