Joshua Villanueva is a JURIST Assistant Editor and a 2L at UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings), He files this dispatch from San Francisco. The recently-concluded Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit, originally designed to address economic challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, found itself overshadowed by the unfolding drama of the US-China relationship. As [...]
Search Results for: Seattle
DC Attorney General announces anti-trust suit against city's largest landlords
The Attorney General for the District of Columbia (DC) Brian Schwalb announced on Wednesday a lawsuit against 14 of the city’s largest landlords. The complaint alleges that these landlords colluded with RealPage, a rental management software, to artificially inflate rental prices in the city. In a video statement published on his X (formerly Twitter) page, [...]
Governor Gavin Newsom of California vetoed anti-caste discrimination bill SB 403 Saturday amidst an increase in anti-caste discrimination laws and ordinances in the US. SB 403 would have outlawed discrimination based on “ancestry” and “caste.” The bill defined ancestry as “lineal descent, heritage, parentage, caste, or any inherited social status,” and caste as “an individual’s [...]
Minnesota Senate passes bill ensuring minimum wage and benefits for rideshare drivers
The Minnesota Senate passed a bill mandating rideshare companies to provide their drivers a minimum wage and other benefits on Sunday in a narrow vote of 35-32. The bill requires that all drivers be compensated $1.45 per mile within the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and $0.34 per minute while transporting a rider. It also requires [...]
Seattle’s city council Tuesday voted to ban discrimination on the basis of caste. Seattle is the first city to adds “caste” to other anti-discrimination provisions of its municipal code, following the California state university system’s decision last January to prohibit discrimination on this basis. Caste discrimination has been banned in India since 1948. Discrimination on the [...]
Seattle Public Schools sues social media companies over youth mental health impact
Seattle Public Schools Friday filed a lawsuit in US District Court of Washington alleging that the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat should be held accountable for a “mental health crisis” among the youth attending their schools. The school district argued that the “excessive and problematic” use of social media among students [...]
US Supreme Court denies challenge to local employee benefit laws
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) Monday denied a petition concerning federal preemption of a local law requiring employee health benefits. The petition was brought by the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) against the City of Seattle over an ordinance requiring large hotel chains to give their employees $1,375 a month in insurance benefits [...]
Two DRC citizens plead guilty to US wildlife trafficking charges
Two men from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Tuesday pled guilty in federal court to charges of trafficking protected animal products from the DRC into the US. Herdade Lokua and Jospin Mujangi admitted before the US District Court for the Western District of Washington they had worked with a middleman since November 2019 to [...]
US Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote a six-page concurring opinion for the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari Monday in Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission v. Woods, stating that the court should decide whether religious organizations may practice hiring discrimination against LGBTQIA+ Americans and people of diverse faiths. According to his brief, Matthew Woods [...]
Going Back to Zero: How the Afghan Legal and Judicial System is Collapsing Under the Taliban Regime
The international community and the United States spent billions of dollars on rebuilding the Afghan legal and judicial system and improving the rule of law and governance over the past two decades. However, after the Taliban takeover, any such progress and achievements quickly disappeared and the foundations for the Afghan legal system that had been [...]