Public Justice

June 19, 2013 In Blog

Pittsburgh citizens protest UPMC’s use of 14th Amendment to sue city

By Claire Prestel, Staff Attorney The outrage is building against the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s unsavory claim that its civil rights are being violated by the City of Pittsburgh’s challenge to its tax-exempt status. A few weeks ago, I blogged about Pittsburgh’s lawsuit against…

June 18, 2013 In Blog

DNA collection not as intrusive as car search, says Justice Stevens at ACS

By Leah Nicholls, Kazan-Budd Attorney Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld a Maryland law providing that, as part of the police booking procedure, DNA samples should be taken from arrestees and run through a state database whether or not the arrestee was arrested for…

June 12, 2013 In Blog

EPA delays again on CAFOs: The continuing lack of regulation over one of America’s most dangerous industries

By Jessica Culpepper, Food Safety & Health Attorney Advocates looked for the long-awaited release of a National Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Rule this week — to no avail. As part of a settlement agreement in Fowler v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a case filed against…

June 7, 2013 In Blog

Global warming: The good news and the bad

By Richard Webster, Power-Cotchett Attorney As I keep up with the news on global warming, I find myself alternately pessimistic and hopeful. Most of the world is behaving like addicts. We prefer to pretend either that we don’t have a problem or that we don’t…

May 31, 2013 In Blog

Schwab prefers no regulation

By Amy Radon, Staff Attorney We talk a lot around here about the class action. How it’s a mechanism consumers sometimes need available to them to challenge corporate greed. The same holds true for investors. Securities brokerage firms have long resisted government regulation of the…

May 29, 2013 In Blog

The people of Pittsburgh vs. a giant corporate enterprise

By Claire Prestel, Staff Attorney Pittsburgh is a great city with a beautiful natural setting, vibrant neighborhoods, and an energetic and dedicated mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, who earned a lot of local respect early on by briefly changing his name to Steelerstahl before the 2009 Ravens-Steelers…

May 23, 2013 In Blog

For those with criminal histories, a second look may be a second chance

By Victoria Ni, Senior Attorney An alarming government study predicts that 1 in 3 African-American men and 1 in 6 Hispanic men will spend time in prison during their lifetimes. For Caucasian men, the rate is 1 in 17. In 2010, 28 percent of all…

May 21, 2013 In Blog

In groundbreaking opinion, Third Circuit sends mass environmental tort back to Virgin Islands court

By Leah Nicholls, Kazan-Budd Attorney Before last week, no federal court of appeals had addressed the question of whether defendants could remove mass environmental torts alleging an ongoing harm to federal court under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA). But that changed on Friday when…

May 20, 2013 In Blog Anti-Bullying

Guilty bystanders: Why school officials must try to stop bullying

By Adele Kimmel, Managing Attorney Far too often, schools are not doing what the law and their own anti-bullying policies require to protect our children from bullying. In fact, eight out of every ten times that a child gets bullied at school, no adult intervenes….

May 14, 2013 In Blog

15-year Spruce mine litigation bends regulatory arc toward environmental justice

By Jim Hecker, Environmental Enforcement Project Director It is not often that the trajectory of a single case provides a barometer for regulatory change, but Public Justice’s 15-year battle to stop a huge mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia does. When we first sued the…