Attorney Kevin Latta of Columbia law firm Parks, Bryant & Snyder was yesterday featured in a New York Times article on the Tour Divide – a 2,700 mile ultra-endurance bikepacking race from the Canadian Rockies to New Mexico. Roughly 200 cyclists gathered in Banff, Alberta, to start the 2022 race. Fifteen cyclists had to be airlifted out of the race, which was made complicated this year by extreme weather including above average rain, snowfall and New Mexico wildfires. Caught in a storm, Latta was swept down a river on his bike, later realizing he’d been taken 10 miles off course by a broken GPS device. “It didn’t occur to me that I was off the route,” he said. “I just thought this was the continuing sadism of the 2022 Tour Divide.” Ultimately, Latta voluntarily disqualified himself by accepting a ride from a forest service truck. Though he was disqualified, Latta was determined to get back on the route and finish the race. Read the New York Times article.

Knox County lawyer Keith Allen Pope today received a public censure from the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility. Pope engaged in criminal conduct, pled guilty to a violation of an Order of Protection and violated his bond conditions, which the BPR wrote “reflects adversely upon his fitness as a lawyer in other respects.” The censure is conditioned on Pope complying with a Tennessee Lawyer Assistance Program monitoring agreement with mandatory reporting to Disciplinary Counsel every six months.

The Nashville office Hughes & Coleman PLLC is looking to hire an associate attorney with two to three years of experience. The successful candidate will have experience evaluating, handling and managing client cases, including nursing home cases, and experience managing others. Excellent writing and research skills are required. The position will involve extensive writing, research, discovery, client contact and case management. To apply, email mortiz@hughesandcoleman.com. Find more job postings on the TBA’s JobLink site.

Longtime Chattanooga attorney Howard Ivan Levine died Wednesday. He was 84. A graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, Levine joined Chattanooga’s Miller, Martin, Hitching, Tipton & Lenihan, which is known today as Miller & Martin. Levine practiced at Miller & Martin his entire career, serving several years as chairman/managing partner. He practiced in corporate, healthcare and trusts and estates law and previously served as chair of the TBA’s Health Law Section. A memorial service will be held for Levine on July 12 at 10 a.m. EDT at Mizpah Congregation and a lunch reception following at noon at Chattanooga Golf & Country Club. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Mizpah Congregation, 923 McCallie Ave., Chattanooga, TN 37403; The McCallie School, 500 Dodds Ave., Chattanooga, TN 37404; or the charitable organization of your choice.

The TBA’s annual FastTrack program provides an opportunity for registrants to customize their learning schedule and fulfill all of their CLE requirements for the year. Earn 15-hours of CLE through a combination of live programming and prepaid credits to complete online when it works best for you. The programming offers tips and updates in diverse areas of law, designed to be relevant to a wide range of practice areas. The FastTrack program will be held live in Memphis on Aug. 26, Nashville on Sept. 16 and Knoxville on Sept. 23. Learn more on the TBA CLE webpage.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for President Joe Biden to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy, The Hill reports. The policy, put in place by former President Donald Trump, requires U.S. asylum-seekers at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their applications are processed. The 5-4 ruling found that the administration did not violate federal immigration law when it sought to rescind the policy and returned the case to lower courts for additional proceedings. Although it’s headed back to the lower courts, an October rescission by the Department of Homeland Security says it will take effect “as soon as practicable” following a decision from the court.

A Shelby County woman contesting a permanent revocation of her voting rights must now take her case to a Special Three-Judge Trial Court, the Daily Memphian reports. Pamela Moses says she was unaware that pleading guilty in 2015 to a felony charge related to evidence tampering would result in permanently losing her voting rights. She filed paperwork to restore her right to vote in 2019 and, in January, was sentenced to six years in prison for illegally registering to vote. Those charges were ultimately dismissed in April. Shelby County Circuit Judge Felicia Corbin-Johnson yesterday determined that Moses’ case to restore her voting rights was not within the jurisdiction of the district attorney’s office and that the attorney general would need to be the opposing party in the matter. The three-judge panel will be selected by the Supreme Court and will consist of Corbin-Johnson and trial judges from the Middle and Eastern Districts. 

Kentanji Brown Jackson was today sworn in as the first Black female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Tennessean reports. She replaces retired Justice Stephen Breyer, who yesterday informed President Joe Biden that he would officially retire today, hours after the high court released the last two rulings of its current term. Jackson, a Harvard-trained lawyer and former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was confirmed to the Supreme Court in April on a 53-47 vote by the U.S. Senate. Chief Justice John Roberts administered one oath of office to Jackson and Breyer – for whom Jackson clerked more than 20 years ago – administered the other. With that, Jackson became the 104th associate justice – marking the first time women and people of color outnumber white men on the court.

Tallahassee, Florida, lawyer Melissa Ellen Dembicer was reinstated to the practice of law on June 27. She had been placed on inactive status on Nov. 23, 2010. The Tennessee Supreme Court found that her petition for reinstatement was satisfactory and reinstatement was appropriate. The court made the reinstatement retroactive to June 13.

The Tennessee Supreme Court this week suspended 15 attorneys for failure to pay the annual registration fee; 11 of them also failed to file proof that client funds are held in an IOLTA-compliant account. View the June 28 fee suspension order and IOLTA suspension order. See the list of all lawyers suspended for fee and IOLTA violations in 2022 or access all administrative suspensions dating back to 2005.