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Recent Litigation and Other Developments

Jun 6, 2025

Recent Litigation and Other Developments

You may be interested in the ethics complaint filed by the Lawyers Defending American Democracy and a broad coalition on Thursday, June 5, 2025, with the Florida Bar against Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General. https://ldad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Pamela-Bondi-Ethics-Complaint-6.5.25-1.pdf  The press release that summarizes the complaint and who prepared the complaint  is available at https://ldad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/EMBARGOED_BONDI-BAR-RELEASE.pdf . If you wish to join the list of signers go to https://ldad.org/letters-briefs/ethics-complaint-bondi  After co-writing the article DOJ Lawyers Aren’t the President’s-No Matter What a Memo Says, — US Law Week  (May 6, 2025),  https://ssrn.com/abstract=5243739 , I and my co-author believed that I had little choice but joining the signers. Consider whether any of you want to do so, which may pose a risk, both personal and professional, because you would be challenging the most powerful American law enforcement official

 

You may wish to look at the following items in concert

 

  • the June 5, 2025 Supreme Court decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services that an appeals court had been wrong to require a plaintiff  to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group.

 

  • the June 5, 2025 Supreme Court decision in Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin that Wisconsin violated the Constitution when it refused to give a Catholic social ministry group the same exemption from the state’s unemployment tax that it gives to churches, religious schools, and some other religious groups.

 

  • the June 5, 2025 Supreme Court decision in Smith & Wesson v. Mexico that because Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act for gun manufacturers bars the lawsuit.

 

 

 

  • The June 4, 2025 Chronicle of Higher Ed  report by Karin Fischer entitled, Why This Is the Most Damaging Time to Restrict Student Visas, which is below which explains why the new restrictions at this time on the approval of all student visas my be so devastating for both foreign students and American colleges and universities.

 

 

 

 

 Why This Is the Most Damaging Time to Restrict Student Visas

By Karin Fischer Chronicle of Higher Ed June 4, 2025

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Illustration by The Chronicle; Photo by iStock

The U.S. Department of State’s decision to halt the scheduling of all new student-visa interviews has sent shock waves across college campuses and among students worldwide.

The singling out of international students and the lack of clarity about the duration of the suspension — which the State Department said is needed to put in place a plan to screen all students’ social-media accounts — has fed the anxiety.

But a big part of the heartburn is the timing of the freeze. Here’s why:

Students can’t apply for a visa until they are sent a document, called an I-20, issued by their college. Colleges send out I-20s after they have admitted students and confirmed they meet certain requirements like having sufficient funding to pay for their degree. It takes about two weeks for students to receive their I-20s, although the wait time could be longer or shorter depending on staffing and student volume.

Although some colleges have rolling admissions deadlines and students can apply early decision, the majority of students make their college choices just before or on May 1, traditionally deadline day for college decisions.

That sets up a ticking clock for students to apply for a visa at their local U.S. embassy or consulate. While student visas accounted for less than five percent of the 10.4 million immigrant and nonimmigrant visas issued during the 2023 fiscal year, their issuance is unusually concentrated: Businessmen don’t apply for visas all at once; visitors don’t come for vacations or to visit family en masse.

In recent years, however, seven in 10 student visas have been issued during four critical months of May through August (except during the pandemic). Another 15 to 20 percent of visas are awarded ahead of the spring semester. During the rest of the year, as few as 7,000 visas may be issued in a month — worldwide.

Adding to the bottleneck: wait times for visa interviews, which are required for all new applicants for student and scholarly visas. As of late May, when the State Department announced the interview pause, the four American consulates in India, which sends the largest number of foreign students to the United States, all had a wait time of two months for student-visa appointments. That means that the best-case scenario for those students, before interviews were suspended, was to have them in July, as the start of the fall semester draws ever nearer.

Students applying for a visa in Abuja, Nigeria, face a three-month delay. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, it takes nine months. To keep up, some particularly busy consulates have had to add staff members or prioritize student over other visa interviews — and that’s in a normal year. Students are told at the time of their interview if they are approved for a visa, but it can take a few days or weeks to receive it.

Also in a normal year, almost all applicants are just starting their degrees — that’s because most students receive multiyear visas. Some experts worry that other actions by the Trump administration, such as efforts to revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, could force some current students who are overseas for the summer to reapply for visas, adding to the demand.

While some colleges allowed students to arrive late or start their semester online during the pandemic, such flexibility is atypical. And most students want to arrive earlier, not later — to attend orientation, to find a place to stay, to get over their jet lag. By mid-August — or late September for colleges on the quarter system — students need to be moved in and ready to begin their studies.