Judicial Notice (01.19.26): A Look at Minnesota's Legal Scene

Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here. Greetings. I hope you had a meaningful Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, replete with reflection on Dr. King’s life and legacy. Last week wasn’t very exciting for me, so allow me to turn to the future (and some shameless plugs). I’m looking forward to next month, when I’ll be speaking at both the 2026 CPG Legal Forum of the Consumer Brands Association and the 2026 annual conference of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC)—taking place in Dallas and New Orleans, respectively (three cheers for warm weather). I’m also looking forward to moderating a webinar about possible Supreme Court reform, sponsored by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA). If you’re interested in attending—it’s approved for CLE credit, in Pennsylvania and any reciprocal jurisdictions (including New York)—you can register over at NAPABA. Now, on to the news. Lawyers of the Week: Joseph H. Thompson and the other prosecutors who resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. According to Wikipedia, the term “Minnesota nice” is a cultural stereotype portraying Minnesotans as “unusually courteous, reserved, and mild-mannered,” as well as possessing “an aversion to open confrontation.” Whether it’s true in normal times, it’s not true right now, at least in Minneapolis. Since the January 7 killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, the streets of Minneapolis have been marked by tension and outright conflict between angry Minnesotans and heavily armed federal officers—more than 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents, sent to the City of Lakes as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge. And more could be on the way, with Donald Trump raising the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act to deal with the situation in Minneapolis (although on Friday he backed away somewhat, telling reporters, “I don’t think I need it right now”). Not surprisingly, these events have multiple legal aspects—which will figure prominently in this edition of Judicial Notice. For starters, many observers pushed for a federal or state investigation of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, and lawyers representing the Good family are conducting their own investigation. But bringing legal action against Ross could be difficult, for reasons that have been discussed by numerous commentators—e.g., Carolyn Shapiro at Lawfare (as to criminal prosecution) or Erwin Chemerinsky in The Times (as to civil litigation). The Trump administration, which has vigorously defended Ross in its public messaging, has disclaimed any interest in investigating him—with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche declaring that “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into Ross. Instead, the administration is investigating ties between Renee Good, her wife Becca, and groups that have been monitoring and protesting ICE agents in the past few weeks—with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem referring to Renee Good as a “domestic terrorist.” Objecting to the Trump administration’s handling of the situation, around six federal prosecutors in the District of Minnesota resigned, as reported by The New York Times and Bloomberg Law. They included Joseph H. Thompson, former chief of the fraud and public corruption section; Thomas Calhoun-Lopez, former chief of the violent and major crimes unit; and two other assistant U.S. attorneys, Harry Jacobs and Melinda Williams. The six resigning lawyers represent about 10 percent of the office’s total line attorneys (so at least in the short term, military lawyers and AUSAs from other offices might be brought in to temporarily fill in for them). Joseph Thompson, a longtime career prosecutor, was the most prominent of the departing AUSAs. In June, Trump appointed Thompson as acting U.S. attorney—perhaps in recognition of his leading role in the Feeding Our Future investigation, which unearthed hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud involving Covid-19 benefits. Many of the 59 individuals convicted as a result of the investigation were Somali American, which led Trump to condemn immigrants from Somalia and say that they should be sent “back to where they came from.” In addition, at least five senior lawyers in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice announced their departures—including Jim Felte, chief of the criminal section, and several of his deputies. One source suggested to Bloomberg Law that the resignations stemmed from dissatisfaction over the DOJ’s response to the killing of Renee Good. But a DOJ official said, in a statement, that “[t]he Criminal Section Leadership gave notice to depart the Civil Rights Division and requested to participate in the Department of Justice’s Early Retirement Program well before the events in Minnesota. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.” Other lawyers in the news: In other news involving U.S. attorneys’ offices, drama continues in the Eastern District of Virginia. Although Judge Cameron Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan wasn’t validly serving as U.S. attorney, Halligan continues to sign court documents as “United States Attorney and Special Attorney.” One of those documents was the administration’s forceful response to an order from Judge David Novak (a Trump first-term appointee), which asked whether he should strike Halligan’s title from the government’s signature block in light of Judge Currie’s ruling. For more on this, listen to the latest episode of Advisory Opinions. Still in the E.D.V.A., Halligan’s top deputy, Robert K. McBride, was fired—and there are conflicting accounts as to why. In other DOJ news, “President Trump has complained to aides repeatedly in recent weeks about Attorney General Pam Bondi, describing her as weak and an ineffective enforcer of his agenda,” according to Josh Dawsey, Sadie Gurman, and Ryan Barber of The Wall Street Journal (gift link). The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that J. Russell “Rusty” McGranahan—a former in-house lawyer for financial firms, alum of Skadden Arps and White & Case, and graduate of Yale Law School—will serve as the SEC’s next general counsel. The contretemps over who represents Nicolas Maduro has been resolved: Judge Alvin Hellerstein (S.D.N.Y.) removed Bruce Fein from the case, as requested by Maduro’s actual lawyer, Barry J. Pollack. Speaking of counsel changes, Nick Reiner—who has been charged with murdering his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner—has new representation. After the high-profile L.A. lawyer Alan Jackson withdrew (for reasons not publicly disclosed), Kimberly Greene, a longtime public defender, replaced him. Lawyers defend murderers—and sometimes lawyers are accused of murder. Adam Beckerink, a former tax partner in the Chicago office of Duane Morris, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Caitlin Tracey. Prosecutors allege that Beckerink threw Tracey over a stairwell railing from the 24th floor of their condominium building, causing her death; Beckerink denies this, claiming that Tracey took her own life while high on cocaine and tramadol. The University of Arkansas School of Law (Fayetteville) rescinded its deanship offer to Professor Emily Suski of the University of South Carolina. Suski was announced as the pick for dean on January 9. But after a few Arkansas state legislators and one executive-branch official learned that Suski had signed an amicus brief supporting the transgender athlete in B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education (discussed in more detail below), the government officials threatened the university’s funding, after which the law school rescinded its offer. In memoriam: Leonard Jacoby—a co-founder of Jacoby & Meyers, which my fellow ‘80s kids will remember for its ubiquitous television commercials—passed away at 83. Trial lawyer Stuart Weissman, who served as president of the Miami-Dade bar, passed away at 43, from gastroesophageal cancer. May they rest in peace. Judge of the Week: Justice Neil Gorsuch. Last Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in two challenges to state laws barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. I listened to the three-plus hours of argument while participating in the SCOTUSblog live blog. (And there will be another live blog tomorrow, when the Court is expected to issue new opinions; might we finally get the tariffs ruling?) Hecox and B.P.J. were argued skillfully by Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst, for Governor Brad Little; Kathleen Hartnett of Cooley, for Lindsay Hecox (pronounced HE-cox, at least by Hartnett); West Virginia Solicitor General Michael R. Williams, for his state; Joshua Block of the ACLU, for B.P.J.; and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan, for the federal government (in both cases). I was particularly impressed by Hurst and Hartnett, both first-time SCOTUS advocates, who argued their cases with care and candor. In terms of the outcome, I agree with the conventional wisdom: the Court will uphold the Idaho and West Virginia laws, probably by a vote of 6-3—with the same line-up we saw in United States v. Skrmetti (2025), in which the justices upheld Tennessee’s law prohibiting certain medical treatments for transgender minors. But if there are any surprises in Hecox and B.P.J., they’ll come from Justice Neil Gorsuch—one of the most interesting and independent-minded members of the Court today. As my husband Zach of SCOTUSblog told C-SPAN ahead of the arguments, Justice Gorsuch was the one to watch because of Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). Angering many social conservatives, Gorsuch wrote an opinion for six justices holding that an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII. But then in Skrmetti, after staying silent and expressionless during the argument, he joined the other conservatives to form a 6-3 majority in favor of Tennessee—with no separate concurrence, even though he’s basically tied with Justice Thomas when it comes to writing the most concurrences. This led some observers to wonder whether the Gorsuch of Bostock had left the building. But the Justice Gorsuch we heard from last Tuesday may dispel that impression. Of the nine justices, he was the most balanced in his questioning, posing tough queries to advocates on both sides. In particular, he stood out from his fellow conservatives in asking whether the transgender community might qualify as a discrete and suspect or quasi-suspect class, entitled to heightened judicial scrutiny of laws affecting them. In Hecox, Justice Gorsuch asked Kathleen Hartnett why she didn’t make the “suspect class” claim her “primary argument.” When she basically agreed with his point and noted the nation’s long history of discrimination against LGBTQ people, including the Court’s own decision in Boutilier v. INS (upholding the deportation of a gay man because LGBTQ people have a “psychopathic personality”), Justice Gorsuch referred to Boutilier as “perhaps not our finest hour”—leading to a humorous exchange between Hartnett, who told the justice it’s “not your fault,” and Gorsuch, who said, “Thank you for that.” And that wasn’t Justice Gorsuch’s only laugh line. On the whole, there wasn’t much laughter in the arguments—understandable, given the serious subject matter—but in B.P.J., Gorsuch elicited chuckles when he told Hashim Mooppan, who was starting to opine on biological differences between the sexes, “With respect, I don’t think you’re a Ph.D. in this stuff. I know I’m not.” In fact, as it turns out, Justice Gorsuch is currently the funniest justice on the Court, at least at oral argument. Nora Collins of SCOTUSblog reviewed all the argument transcripts from three full Terms (October Term 2022 through October Term 2024), tracking which justices generated “Laughter” (as noted on the transcript), and found that Justice Gorsuch was #1, with 135 laughs—well ahead of Justice Elena Kagan at #2, with 93, and Chief Justice John Roberts at #3, with 89. And Justice Gorsuch’s humor isn’t limited to oral argument, as reported by The Hill (via SCOTUStoday): Justice Neil Gorsuch landed a wisecrack in the court’s first opinion of the Term, writing, “Two years ago, in an obscure administrative law case, this Court expressly refused to treat Boechler as a permission slip for creating any manner of new interpretive presumptions that may happen to suit our tastes but that do not ‘approximat[e] rea[l]’ statutory meaning.” The “obscure administrative law case” in question? Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, of course—the 2024 landmark decision overruling Chevron deference. So those of us who listen to a lot of SCOTUS arguments and read a ton of SCOTUS opinions should be grateful for Gorsuch. Serving on the Supreme Court is serious business, obviously—but Justice Gorsuch shows that one can discharge these judicial duties both responsibly and humorously. In other news about judges and the judiciary: It looks as though the federal judiciary will be getting $9.2 billion in funding for the 2026 fiscal year—including $892 million for protection services and equipment at courthouses, a 19 percent increase over the prior year (reflecting the increasing number of threats directed at federal judges). Here’s an interesting idea for protecting the security of federal judges: let them pack heat. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal (gift link), three federal judges—Judges Elizabeth “Lisa” Branch (11th Cir.), Robert Wilkins (D.C. Cir.), and Trevor McFadden (D.D.C.)—endorsed the Protect Our Prosecutors and Judges Act, introduced by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). If passed, the law would allow federal judges and prosecutors who have completed firearms training in their home jurisdictions to carry concealed guns across state lines. The Times published a news article pointing out that Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who’s presiding over the Maduro prosecution, is 92—i.e., really, really old. This is the paper’s second piece on the subject, on top of Jeffrey Toobin’s guest essay arguing that Judge Hellerstein should let another judge handle Maduro. Turning to the state courts, the justices of the Florida Supreme Court amended bar-admission rules to allow graduates of law schools accredited by entities other than the American Bar Association (ABA) to sit for the Sunshine State’s bar exam. Earlier this month, the Texas Supreme Court took the even more drastic step of taking away the ABA’s accreditation authority, instead giving itself the task of approving the law schools whose graduates can sit for the Texas bar. Look for this trend to spread throughout red states, flowing from distrust of the ABA among conservatives (who view the ABA as too far to the left). If you have a clerkship lined up in your future, check out Advancing American Freedom’s Judicial Clerkship Training Academy (via Josh Blackman of The Volokh Conspiracy)—especially if you’ll be clerking for a conservative judge. The application deadline is January 30, so if interested, don’t delay. (Clerkship training is something that The Heritage Foundation used to do—and it’s still mentioned on their website—but in light of all the legal experts who have moved from Heritage to AAF, I’m guessing that the clerkship training has moved with them.) In terms of judicial nominations, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the nominations of six district-court picks—including Indiana litigator Justin Olson, who faced tough questions from Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) about controversial statements that Olson made during sermons he delivered as an ordained elder of his church. Senator Kennedy (who’s now a bestselling author) met privately with Olson, and after that conversation, Kennedy concluded that Olson would “apply the rule of law” as a judge, regardless of his own personal views on various issues. Job of the Week: an exclusive in-house opportunity with a global, $37 billion company.