Last week, the Department of the Interior (DOI) took a little-known but important step to undo an eleventh-hour expansion of the law by the Obama Administration.  In a memorandum issued January 10, 2017, the DOI Solicitor determined that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) prohibits the accidental or "incidental" taking of migratory birds.  The practical effects of this opinion were very broad, but fortunately it was suspended pending review on February, and the DOI Solicitor officially rescinded it last Friday.

Looking forward to next year, the Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on a free speech case at the end of February. The case seems simple: can unions force a non-member to pay dues when the non-member disagrees and does not support what the union espouses? However, it is pitting two giants of American society against one another in a novel way.

Senator James Lankford went to the Senate floor and laid out the case against the unprecedented Democrat Obstruction of President Trump’s nominees.  We are not talking high profile nominees like Supreme Court Justices or Cabinet Secretaries, but basically all the ones appointed by the President that need to be confirmed by the Senate.

Today and next Friday, the RNLA will highlight the top blog posts of the Republican Lawyer Blog for 2017.  This is part 1: Top RepLawyer Posts for 2017, numbers 10-6.  Today’s post will focus on Justice Neil Gorsuch and election law.  No reasonable lawyers’ group can look back on 2017 and not celebrate the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch.  On elections, it is unfortunate that Democrats continue to use the race card and fight against those trying to make elections more open, fair, and honest for all.  

The General Services Administration (GSA) may have improperly turned over documents, including private and privileged documents, from the Trump transition team to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  RNLA member Kory Langhofer, counsel to Trump for America (TFA), the 501(c)(4) organization that supported the Trump Presidential transition, wrote:

The latest from the non-citizen voter registration problems in Pennsylvania is that the problem could be much larger than initially thought.  Back in September, Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt reported that 220 non-citizens registered to vote in Philadelphia through a "glitch" at the DMV that allowed persons to register to vote after they had proven that they were non-citizens.  41% had voted at least once.

A very famous election lawyer once told me: in elections it is “sometimes hard to tell where the incompetence ends and the fraud begins.”  In Florida, Broward County Election Official Brenda Snipes may be the poster child for this saying.  Earlier this year, Brenda Snipes confirmed the fact that non-citizens and ineligible felons were voting in Broward County.  Last year, Snipes “engaged in ongoing violations of Florida law governing the canvassing of vote-by-mail ballots [absentee ballots]. [T]ens of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots in Broward County are being opened by your staff: (1) before they have been canvassed by the county canvassing board; and (2) without providing the public the opportunity to review or file a protest against the canvass of a ballot believed to be legally deficient.”

RNLA Co-Chair Joanne Young wrote today in The Daily Caller about how successful President Trump has been restoring the rule of law in 2017.  It began with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice:

RNLA President Elliot Berke sent a letter today to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of current FEC Commissioner Matthew Petersen, who has been nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia:

RNLA member Eric Wang published a thorough analysis of the state of the law on donor disclosure requirements and what the law should be under First Amendment free speech principles.  "Staring at the Sun: An Inquiry into Compulsory Campaign Finance Donor Disclosure Laws" was published today as a Policy Analysis paper from the Cato Institute.  Mr. Wang begins by pointing out the tension at the heart of any discussion of disclosure (footnotes omitted):