“Law Firm That Regularly Sues the City Over Police Misconduct Is Representing Peacock Councilors” —

• “A law firm that regularly sues the city on behalf of protesters and other citizens alleging police misconduct is now representing five Portland city councilors in an ethics case.”
• “All six members of the council’s progressive caucus—called Peacock—are now under investigation by the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for an August retreat. The ethics commission voted 7-0 on Friday to investigate the meeting and whether anything the councilors discussed during it violated public meetings law, which says that a quorum of councilors cannot discuss any policy in private that may reasonably come before the council or a council committee. Councilors maintain they did not talk about any policy-related matters.”
• “Ben Haile, a lawyer with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, represented five of the six councilors in front of the ethics commission. He’s working pro bono, he told WW in a brief phone call on Tuesday.”
• “Haile’s representation of the Peacock councilors is peculiar for a few reasons.”
• “OJRC, a civil rights law firm founded in 2011 to ‘improve legal representation for communities that have often been underserved in the past,’ typically works in civil litigation related to inmate rights, wrongful conviction, police misconduct and excessive use of force and other social justice areas. There’s nothing to suggest that OJRC regularly represents elected officials in front of the state’s ethics commission.”
• “But more importantly, OJRC regularly represents clients who are suing the city. OJRC has represented a handful of protesters and journalists who have sued the city alleging police misconduct and excessive use of force during the 2020 racial justice protests. In most of those cases, the city and OJRC have settled outside of court, with the city paying substantial settlement amounts to the plaintiffs. (Street Roots reported earlier this year that claims stemming from the 2020 protests have cost the city $9.1 million so far in settlements.)”
• “OJRC has also represented victims of Portland police misconduct. This summer, the City Council voted to approve a $3.75 million settlement awarded to the family of Immanueal ‘Manny’ Jaquez Clark-Johnson, whom a Portland police officer shot in the back in November 2022 after he was mistaken for a robbery suspect. OJRC represented Clark-Johnson’s family.”
• “The City Council is the final level of approval for every settlement over $50,000 that the city seeks to reach, and councilors can elect to increase the settlement amount if they choose. That means OJRC not infrequently has business in front of the City Council—and usually as an adversary.”
• “Tung Yin is a professor of law at Lewis and Clark Law School. He says that OJRC representing plaintiffs seeking settlements from the city, and representing city councilors raises questions about a perceived or real conflict of interest.”
• “‘It’s when we have these two things together that we have this appearance of conflict,’ Yin says. ‘It really is a question of: Does it look like the councilors might make decisions on behalf of the public that would benefit the same lawyers who are representing them pro bono?'”
• “Oregon law prohibits elected officials from accepting gifts of over $50 from ‘sources that could reasonably be known to have a legislative or administrative interest in the vote or decision of the public official who holds any official position or office.’ It’s not clear if free legal services meet the definition of a ‘gift’ under state statutes, but the laws do identify a gift as ‘something of economic value.'”
• “Haile declined to answer WW’s questions whether he or his firm had represented elected officials before in front of the ethics commission. But he said in a statement that ‘all of our legal work, advocacy, and public education…is consistent with our mission, mandates as a civil rights organization, and our work to defend democracy. As a resource center, we take great pride being available to those who seek to defend the rights and dignity of Oregonians.'”

“A Utah prosecutor’s relative was there when Charlie Kirk was shot. Tyler Robinson’s attorneys want his office kicked off the criminal case.” —

• “A key prosecutor’s family member was at the Utah Valley University campus event where Charlie Kirk was fatally shot — and now the defense team for the accused shooter argues that creates a conflict of interest that means the entire Utah County Attorney’s Office should be banned from handling the criminal case against him.”
• “Tyler Robinson’s defense team last week filed a motion asking a judge to disqualify the Utah County prosecutor’s office from the case. The court papers were initially filed under seal. But on Wednesday evening, the defense attorneys filed a public version that revealed why they felt it would be improper for the Utah County agency to prosecute their client.”
• “Some wording in the filing is redacted, so the public version doesn’t specify which lawyer on the six-person prosecution team has a ‘personal connection’ with a student who was at the Turning Point USA event when Kirk was shot in September.”
• “It also does not disclose the specific relationship between the prosecutor and the student. But it said that the young person texted the ‘family text group’ that day, writing that someone had been shot and added, ‘I’m okay.’ Later, the student texted the same group that it was Kirk who had been shot.”
• “Robinson’s defense attorneys noted in their filing that the prosecutor had been with Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray when these messages were sent, and he ‘shared those with Mr. Gray in real time.'”
• “That prosecutor’s ‘familial relationship with a witness presents a concurrent conflict of interest and disqualifies him from participating in the prosecution of this case,’ the defense team argued.”
• “They also noted that this prosecutor holds a supervisory role at the county attorney’s office, and argued that creates a conflict so significant that 4th District Judge Tony Graf should ban the entire office from prosecuting the case. There’s been ‘no effort’ to shield this prosecutor from the case so far, they asserted.”
• “Christopher Ballard, a prosecutor on Robinson’s case and the office’s spokesperson, said in an email Wednesday evening that his office disagrees and will file their opposition in court. Robinson’s team, he said, ‘has not identified any valid basis for disqualification.'”
• “‘Despite being present at the event, the individual identified in the motion knew less about the details of the shooting than non-attendees who were following news reports and social media posts,’ he said. ‘The Utah County Attorney based his charging decisions solely on the circumstances of the alleged crimes, without regard for the identity of any specific attendee.'”
• “The prosecutor disclosed the family relationship to the defense after speaking to the entire prosecution team about the potential conflict, they said. And, they alleged in the court filing, this prosecutor went back to campus with an investigator to determine the exact distance from where his family member was to where Kirk was when he shot. (It was 85 feet.)”
• “While Robinson’s attorneys wrote that they didn’t question the prosecutor’s integrity, they argued that the prosecutor’s personal relationship could affect his ability to handle the case ethically.”
• “There’s a ‘natural instinct’ to protect and shield a relative from ‘past and future harm,’ Robinson’s attorneys wrote, adding that the prosecutor and his family member aren’t immune from the trauma that many experienced that day when Kirk was shot.”

“Eleventh Circuit Upholds Embattled Corporate Transparency Act as Constitutional” —

• “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has upheld the Corporate Transparency Act, ruling that the law—the subject of court fights across the United States—is constitutional.”
• “A unanimous three-judge panel said the law was an appropriate exercise of Congress’ power over interstate commerce, as Commerce was regulating an economic activity when it passed the law. The CTA requires businesses to identify their corporate owners for a nationwide registry.”
• “‘By requiring these corporate entities to provide beneficial ownership information, the CTA regulates how they operate and the level of secrecy with which they do business,’ Circuit Judge Andrew Brasher wrote on behalf of the panel.”
• “In upholding the law, the panel deemed rational Congress’ findings that anonymous corporate dealings have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Based on reports from national security and law enforcement, Congress had concluded that anonymous shell companies were contributing to fraud and money laundering, the Eleventh Circuit explained.”
• “The panel decision reverses U.S. District Judge Liles Burke’s May 2024 ruling against the law. Burke, who sits in the Northern District of Alabama, was swayed by arguments from the National Small Business Association and small business owner, Isaac Winkles, that the law targets the non-economic activity of incorporation. The challengers are represented by Hughes Hubbard & Reed and Maynard Nexsen.”
• “But the circuit rejected that reasoning, saying the law regulates entities after they have been incorporated.”
• “‘The statute in no way affects how businesses incorporate. It does not alter any relevant state law. It addresses only what entities must do after they are registered to do business,’ Brasher wrote.”
• “Jamie Schafer, a partner and firmwide co-chair of Perkins Coie’s regulatory compliance and disputes practice, told the National Law Journal and Law.com that the Eleventh Circuit’s reasoning may be persuasive to the Supreme Court, which upheld the Bank Secrecy Act in its decades-old ruling, California Bankers Association v. Schultz. The Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to report large cash transactions and other suspicious activity.”
• Decision: here.