The Maryland House of Delegates and Senate on Wednesday approved a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by the year 2025. The bill proposes that the minimum wage be raised by 75 cents each year. The current minimum wage in Maryland is $10.10 per hour. In January 2020, the minimum [...]

Harvard University was sued Wednesday for allegedly profiting on the earliest known photographs of African-American slaves. In the complaint, plaintiff Tamara Lanier alleges that the slaves depicted in the daguerreotypes (early photographs) known only as “Renty” and “Delia” are her ancestors. Lanier outlines a rich oral history preserved in her family leading back to “Renty.” [...]

The European Commission called Wednesday for more efforts to ensure adoption of security proposals and fined Google €1.49 billion (USD $1.7 billion) for breaching EU antitrust rules. Market dominance is not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However, dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Flowers v. Mississippi, in which the state was alleged to have improperly dismissed African American jurors. The petitioner, Curtis Flowers, was convicted of a capital offense in 2010 and appealed his death penalty conviction on the grounds of racial discrimination. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday rebutted the Trump administration’s claim that no legal restrictions remained to preclude the implementation of a contentious transgender limitation on the military. In a three-page notice, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly called the administration’s assumption that it could move forward with the ban [...]

Mississippi senators on Tuesday passed, by a vote of 34-15, the final version of a bill that bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The Mississippi bill says a physician performing an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining if the unborn human individual has a detectable fetal heartbeat, or one who performs [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania filed a new complaint against the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) Tuesday over the jailing of mentally ill individuals. The new complaint comes several years after the ACLU of Pennsylvania first brought “a lawsuit on behalf of people who have been found too mentally ill to stand [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday in Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP that a business is not a “debtor collector” under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, except in enforcing security interest under 15 USC §1692f(6). Homeowner and political activist Dennis Obduskey sued law firm McCarthy & Holthus when they attempted to carry out [...]

In a per curiam decision Wednesday, the US Supreme Court remanded, for further review of standing, a case concerning whether cy pres settlements satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e)(2). The class action case, Frank v. Gaos, originated with an alleged violation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) by Google. Plaintiffs claimed that Google’s use of referrer headers breached the [...]

Facebook announced on Tuesday that a settlement has been reached in a civil rights case against the social media giant, as Facebook has agreed to take proactive steps to prevent advertisers from engaging in unlawful discrimination. Last year the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Communication [...]