If you plan to attend the 2024 TBA Convention but have not yet booked your hotel, time is running out! The TBA hotel room block at the historic Peabody Hotel in Memphis will close Wednesday. Book now to take advantage of our special discounted rate.

ABA President Mary Smith is asking the ABA Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence to study the prevalence and impact of bar admission questions that require survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking to disclose their involvement in legal and administrative proceedings. The ABA Journal reports that three U.S. senators raised the issue in a letter to Smith, saying that character and fitness questions on bar applications often require would-be lawyers to disclose whether they have been a party to legal or administrative proceedings. The letter also points out that in some states, broad wording may require survivors to disclose campus sexual misconduct complaints or protection orders related to a domestic violence or sexual assault.

MATHIS, Circuit Judge. Many people consider a college education the ticket to the American dream. Some take out student loans to get the ticket. Paying back those loans can turn into a nightmare. Congress and the U.S. Department of Education stepped in to help by creating income-driven student-loan repayment plans and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Various problems arose with these plans, including student-loan servicers steering borrowers into postponing or reducing their student-loan payments for extended periods of time. In response, the Department of Education announced, in April 2022 and July 2023, a one-time account adjustment that would count months or years that borrowers spent in excessive forbearance status toward debt forgiveness. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Cato Institute did not take kindly to the Department of Education’s action, so they sued to stop it. The question presented is whether Plaintiffs’ complaint sufficiently alleged that they suffered an injury in fact resulting from the adjustment based on competitor standing and deprivation of a procedural right. We hold that it does not. We thus affirm the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

The U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that a separate hearing is not required when police seize cars loaned to drivers accused of drug crimes. Two Alabama women loaned their cars to individuals who later used them in drug crimes. They had argued that they were entitled to a preliminary hearing to determine whether police could retain their cars during the forfeiture process. The court said Congress and the states have long authorized police to seize and hold personal property pending a forfeiture hearing, without separate preliminary hearings. The ABA Journal has the story.

PER CURIAM. On February 23, 2024, we held Bannum, Inc. and Bannum Place of Saginaw, LLC (collectively “Bannum”) in civil contempt and ordered Bannum to pay to the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) reasonable attorney fees. The NLRB now seeks $14,872.80 in attorney fees. For the following reasons, we GRANT in full the NLRB’s request, and we order Bannum to pay the NLRB attorney fees in the amount of $14,872.80.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the "Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act," which would require event ticket sellers to disclose the total cost of tickets upfront to consumers, including so-called hidden fees. According to The Hill, lawmakers say the bill is aimed at increasing transparency in the live event ticket marketplace by requiring the full cost of event tickets to be disclosed to consumers upfront. The bill also seeks to ban sales of tickets that sellers do not have and guarantee refunds for event cancellations, according to a release detailing the measure. The bill also has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.

The defendant, Jonathan Keith Hughes, Jr., was convicted by a Dickson County Circuit Court jury of one count of first degree murder, one count of criminally negligent homicide, and three counts of conspiracy to commit murder. On appeal, the defendant challenges the trial court’s admission of evidence of his gang affiliation, the trial court’s failure to provide an accomplice instruction to the jury, and the sufficiency of the convicting evidence. Upon review of the record, we remand the case to the trial court for entry of corrected judgments reflecting the defendant’s convictions for conspiracy to commit first degree murder under the proper statute. We otherwise affirm the judgments of the trial court.

Kingsport City Manager Chris McCartt and Deputy City Manager Ryan McReynolds have announced that the new $19 million Kingsport Justice Center expansion and renovation, funded by $13.4 million in city bonds and $5.6 million in Sullivan County bonds, should be complete and ready for use no later than May 2026. The Times News reports that the project will add more than 17,000 square feet to the late 1980s building and put county offices still in the old City Hall under the same roof as city offices, Kingsport City Police and various courtrooms. Of the facility's 17,600 square feet, about 9,000 is on the first floor with the remaining 8,600 on the second floor.

FBI agents recently raided two East Tennessee residences, including a Carson-Newman University dorm room, which investigators say were part of a scheme allowing foreign technology workers to work for U.S. companies under the stolen identities of American residents. According to the search warrant, a laptop farm is a "location hosting multiple computers all connecting to the internet through the same network, wherein individuals at the laptop farm assist remote individuals with logging on to the computers." This makes it appear like the remote individual is working at the laptop farm to avoid suspicion from their employer. Knox News has more on the story. Read the school's statement about the situation to WBIR.

Seventy years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, ending segregation in schools. Chalkbeat has several articles on the impacts of that decision in Tennessee.