By Gregory M. Lipper That’s how Tara Murtha describes the lawsuit brought by Real Alternatives and its three (male) employees seeking to enjoin application of the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive-coverage regulations. This lawsuit is different than the ones currently before the Supreme Court: Real Alternatives is not a religious organization, and its employees argue that…
By Gregory M. Lipper With the Supreme Court ready to review the constitutionality of restrictions on abortion providers in Texas, new research from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project suggests that between 100,000–240,000 Texas women ages 18 to 49 have attempted to terminate a pregnancy on their own (that is, without help from a licensed medical professional).…
By Gregory M. Lipper Thomas Jefferson famously said that “[i]t does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Note what Jefferson did not say: “my neighbor is entitled to pick my pocket and break my leg, so long…
[cross-posted at Prawfsblawg] By Jessie Hill In this second post on the certiorari petition in Whole Women’s Health v. Cole, I want to consider the likelihood that the Supreme Court will take this case, and if it does, what it is likely to do with it. I think it’s a very good bet that the…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch Perhaps foreshadowed by the dissent in the 10th Circuit that I wrote about here, the 8th Circuit has now officially launched a circuit split regarding the legal validity of the accommodation that allows modified compliance/objection to the contraceptives coverage mandate. Unlike the seven other circuits to have considered the question since Hobby…
[cross-posted at Prawfsblawg] By Jessie Hill Several Texas abortion providers have filed a petition for certiorari in Whole Women’s Health v. Cole, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of a Texas state law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and requiring all abortion clinics to qualify as…
By Gregory M. Lipper Over the weekend, Ted Cruz again lamented the role played by John Roberts in rejecting the plaintiffs’ arguments in King v. Burwell, the recent attempts to undermine the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court. After Chief Justice Roberts wrote the Supreme Court’s 6–3 opinion in the case, the emerging narrative…
By Rachel Sachs Regular readers of this blog will recall that I often think and write about the interaction between the induced infringement doctrine in patent law and medical method patents of various kinds (previous blog posts are here and here). Until the recent en banc decision in Akamai v. Limelight, courts had been extremely…
By Rachel Sachs Yesterday, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a unanimous en banc ruling in Akamai v. Limelight, altering the reach of patent liability for induced infringement of a method claim under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b). This is the second time the en banc court has considered Akamai. Three years ago,…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch Today, the 10th Circuit issued its opinion in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, holding that the accommodation offered to religious nonprofits – and now also to certain closely-held for-profits – is legally acceptable under the standard imposed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The accommodation, just recently finalized…
