Mountain State Contractors, one of the state’s largest road building companies, agreed to pay a $2.25 million fine to settle fraud claims regarding minority contract work. The company is a subsidiary of Mt. Juliet-based Jones Brothers. An investigation was launched after a Jones Brothers executive claimed he was told to falsify documents to make it seem as if a minority contractor was doing work that was actually performed by Jones Brothers. Federal contracting laws require that a percentage of federally funded road projects go to small, minority or women-owned firms. Read more from The Tennessean. 

The Tennessean takes a look at what it calls the General Assembly’s “lax” system for handling ethics complaints, noting that the state House and Senate’s respective ethics committees have not met in years. The article outlines the complicated system in Tennessee for filing a complaint, pointing out that the system is unlike many others. 

The U.S. Supreme Court today avoided ruling on the dispute between faith-based groups and the Obama administration over birth control when it asked lower courts to reach a compromise on the issue. The unanimous opinion said it would not rule on the merits of the challenge and effectively threw out lower court rulings that had favored the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. Religious nonprofits claimed they could reject the requirement under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “The decision to send the case back to the appellate level appears to be a direct impact of Justice Antonin Scalia's death in February,” CNN reports.

State Safety and Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons is vacating his position at the end of August. Gov. Bill Haslam appointed Gibbons, former Shelby County district attorney general, to his current Cabinet position in January 2011. The Commercial Appeal reports Gibbons is expected to lead a new partnership between the Memphis Crime Commission and the University of Memphis.

Court of Appeals Judge Neal McBrayer was one of several speakers who visited Capshaw Elementary School in Cookeville to discuss personal experiences with severe food allergies. The Herald Citizen reports speakers at the event, held Monday during Tennessee’s Food Allergy Awareness Week (May 8-14), encouraged students and school staff to help keep those with food allergies safe. 

 A judge today approved sentencing Allard “Jesse” Nayadley, the assistant principal and athletic director at Ooltewah High School, for failing to report child abuse of four students. The incident happened in December while basketball team members were in Gatlinburg for a basketball tournament. Nayadley was sentenced to community service and a class on mandatory reporting. Two former Ooltewah basketball coaches were also charged for failing to report child sexual abuse, WBIR reports. 

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump said that if elected, he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would likely overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion. The Huffington Post reports Trump made the comments regarding his now pro-life stance yesterday while on Fox News with host Bill O’Reilly. 

The Tennessee Supreme Court issued a number of orders today suspending Tennessee-licensed attorneys for the following reasons: Non-Payment of Annual Registration Fee; Non-Payment of Annual Registration Fee and Non-Compliance with Mandatory IOLTA Reporting Requirements; and Non-Payment of Annual Registration Inactive Fee. A directory of administrative suspensions is available on the TBA website. 

Three Vanderbilt Law School students are among 40 receiving scholarships from the Nichols Humanitarian Fund to pursue humanitarian projects this summer. The recipients were: Rachel Z. Johnson of Temple, Texas; Olivia Marshall of Washington, D.C.; and Alexandre Todorov of St. Louis, Missouri. 

A copyright battle over of a 2014 short film’s use of Star Trek themes and Klingon – the language spoken by fictional humanoids – could impact legal disputes over programming languages. The Language Creation Society recently sided with the creators of Prelude to Axanar in an amicus brief, saying that if the language is copyrighted, then all ideas subsequently expressed in it could be too. Quartz explains how the lawsuit could impact software developers’ ability to copy codes and also outlines other cases where symbol copyrights are being debated.