Those who practice municipal law in the three states that make up the Seventh Circuit now have a new standard to consider when arguing that a law violates the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause. Laws that are both retroactive and penal run afoul of the Ex Post Facto Clause. Until recently, courts in the Seventh Circuit decided the first prong of that analysis—that is, whether a law was retroactive—by applying a rule adopted in United States v. Leach, 639 F.3d 769 (7th Cir. 2011), and Vasquez v. Foxx, 895 F.3d 515 (7th Cir. 2018). The upshot of the Leach-Vasquez rule was that a law was not ret ..read more

Since its enactment in 2005, the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) has provided defendants with additional opportunities to remove state-law claims to federal court. Among other things, the statute expands federal courts’ diversity jurisdiction to cases where at least one proposed class member is a citizen of a state different than at least one defendant, as long as the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million. But CAFA includes a number of mandatory and discretionary exceptions to the diversity jurisdiction that it provides. Yesterday, in Schutte v. Ciox Health, LLC, No. 22-1087, 2022 WL 79225 ..read more

You represent a business owner who ends up arbitrating a dispute with a supplier.  After spending tons of time and money preparing for the 5-day evidentiary hearing, you look up to hear snoring from the arbitrator - he fell asleep for part of the proceedings!  Surely you’ll be able to get the result vacated by the circuit court on appeal, right?  Well, no – not if you slept on your objection by failing to first specifically raise it with the arbitrator, according to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Loren Imhoff Homebuilder, Inc. v. Lisa Taylor, et al., No. 2019 ..read more

Under most of the federal civil rights laws, employers are covered only if they employ 15 or more employees.  See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b) (Title VII).  Businesses that employ fewer than 15 employees are not subject to the laws, the result of a Congressional policy judgment that requiring smaller enterprises to understand and follow the laws might be too burdensome. Of course, some businesses that employ fewer than 15 employees have sister and parent corporations that also employ workers.  Are those entities subject to the federal civil rights laws? No, said the Seventh Circu ..read more