Lydia Wheeler

Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Justice Department to expand any planned investigation into the hundreds of fake comments that appeared on the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rule to rulemakings from all agencies. In a letter, Reps Bobby Scott (D-VA), Frank Pallone Jr.

Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of seven professors Monday in support of the Columbia Knight First Amendment Institute’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s ability to block opponents from his @realDonaldTrump Twitter feed.

Legislation to allow Congress to repeal in a single vote any rule finalized in the last 60 legislative days of the Obama Administration sailed through the House Jan 4, the second time in less than two months. The GOP-backed Midnight Rule Relief Act, which passed the previous Congress in November, was approved largely along party lines by a vote of 238-184 on the second day of the new Congress, despite Democratic opposition. If passed by the Senate and signed by President-elect Donald Trump, the legislation would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow lawmakers to bundle together multiple rules and overturn them en masse with a joint resolution of disapproval. That could include things like Federal Communications Commission broadband privacy regulations or Lifeline subsidy reforms that drew fire from Hill and FCC Republicans. The White House has already threatened to veto the bill if it were to make it to President Obama's desk before he leaves office.

The nation’s second most powerful court upheld a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a labor dispute between the DirecTV and employees of its subcontracting satellite installation company MasTec. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit court ruled 2-1 that DirecTV must reinstate the MasTec technicians it fired for complaining about the company’s new pay policy in an interview with a local news station. Employees that protest an employer action or policy are protected under NLRB rules from being retaliated against unless their actions rise to the level of "flagrant" or they say malicious or untrue statements about the employer.

In this case, DirecTV argued that the technicians were not protected under NLRB rules because the statements they made in the TV interview were "maliciously untrue and flagrantly disloyal, wholly out of step with the employees’ objections to the pay policy." NLRB disagreed and found that the company’s firing of the employees was an unfair labor practice. In it’s decision, the court upheld NLRB’s order requiring DirectTV to reinstate the employees.