Defense Declined

“[We] are surprised that the Attorney General, contrary to her constitutional duty under the Commonwealth Attorneys Act, has decided not to defend a Pennsylvania statute lawfully enacted by the General Assembly, merely because of her personal beliefs.”

–James Schultz, general counsel of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

On Thursday, Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane became the latest state AG to refuse to defend her state's gay marriage ban against a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU sued Kane and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett on behalf of 23 state residents whose marriages are not recognized by the state.

Kane, however, told the Washington Post that she cannot ethically defend the ban, which she considers unconstitutional. She also pointed out that Schultz can still defend Corbett, although the general counsel didn't seem overly pleased with that argument.

Secret Surveillance

“It's a tremendous boon to the rights of millions of ordinary Americans that the court has ruled the government can't summarily kick this question out of the public courts.”

–Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

The National Security Agency's (NSA) far-reaching surveillance program has been making headlines recently, but the agency's data monitoring is nothing new. Five years ago, the EFF sued the government after whistleblower Mark Klein revealed that the NSA had been tapping into AT&T data.

The Obama administration tried to block the lawsuit by invoking the government's “state secrets” privilege, which states that disclosing evidence related to Klein's allegations would compromise national security. But on Monday a district court judge rejected this claim, ruling that government surveillance is no longer a secret, and that a judge can consider any classified evidence privately under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Testing Tussle

“They are clearly using the same processes we are using in our testing.”

–Richard Marsh, general counsel of Myriad Genetics

Myriad Genetics, which just ended a lengthy court battle over two of its patents on human genes, is getting back into the patent litigation ring with lawsuits against two competitors. The Supreme Court in June invalidated the company's patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes—which are linked to increased risk of hereditary ovarian and breast cancers—ruling that naturally occurring human genes are not patentable.

But the high court did uphold the company's patents on certain forms of synthetic DNA. Myriad argues that Ambry Genetics Corp. and Gene by Gene infringed on Myriad's valid patents when they introduced their own tests for BRCA1 and BRCA2.