Welcome to Supreme Court Brief. A gun-related challenge testing Section 230 liability under the Communications Decency Act recently landed at the Supreme Court. Meet the Manatt Phelps lawyers on the petition. You could say the justices are heavy hitters in the judicial field–and some of their clerks have their own “big league” experience. We’ll tell you about them. And former Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben finds a temporary home after leaving the Justice Department. Thanks for reading. Contact us at [email protected] and [email protected], and follow us on Twitter at @Tonymauro and @MarciaCoyle.

New Petition Confronts Online Firearms Ads

A trio of lawyers from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips is taking the lead in a Supreme Court gun-related petition that challenges a classified advertising website connecting private buyers and sellers of firearms of all kinds.

New York-based counsel Samantha Katze is counsel of record, along with New York partner Jacqueline Wolff and Los Angeles-based associate Molly Wyler, in the case Daniel v. Armslist. The Manatt team is working pro bono with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The petition asks the high court to reverse an April decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that said Armslist could not be held liable for the shooting death of Zina Haughton by her husband. According to the petition, Haughton’s husband was able to obtain a firearm via Armslist despite a restraining order barring him from possessing a firearm for four years.

Brady Center litigation director Jonathan Lowy said the group regularly works with co-counsel “because we have cases all around the country. Some are trial lawyers; some are major firms and usually pro bono.”

Manatt, Lowy said, has been a major supporter of the Brady Center “in all sorts of ways” for many years. “They put a great team together with Jacqueline Wolff and Samantha Katze to work on the case,” he said.

The Manatt-Brady lawyers argue that Armslist can be held liable under an exception to the federal Communications Decency Act, or CDA. That law, which offers a broad shield to online sites that host information posted by third parties, has been called “the most important law protecting Internet speech.”

The state Supreme Court, reversing a lower appellate court decision, said the law’s section 230 “prohibits claims that treat Armslist, an interactive computer service provider, as the publisher or speaker of information posted by a third party on its website.”

In the petition, Manatt claimed state and federal appellate courts have differed on whether the federal law imposes sweeping immunity or more limited immunity to websites like Armslist.

“Regardless whether one feels the CDA should provide sweeping immunity or not, I hope we could all agree there needs to be a definitive interpretation of the CDA and only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that,” Lowy said.

Armslist hasn’t yet filed a response at the high court. The company was represented in the state Supreme Court by a team of lawyers from Milwaukee’s Quarles & Brady, led by partner Joshua Maggard and associate James Goldschmidt. The justices have agreed to hear one gun-related case in the new term thus far—a challenge to New York City’s rules governing transport of firearms outside the city. U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco on Monday asked the court to grant argument time to DOJ.

Armslist is the target of a second Brady lawsuit in state court in Boston. Blank Rome partner John Kimball is counsel to Boston police officer Kurt Stokinger who was shot by a weapon obtained through Armslist. Kimball is working with Boston’s Crowe & Mulvey. —Marcia Coyle

Touching Base: From the Diamond to Clerkship

Justice Clarence Thomas’s hire of Williams & Connolly associate Matt Rice as a law clerk for the upcoming term made headlines recently because of an unusual part of his resume: He was once drafted into major league baseball and played a two-year stint in the minor leagues for the Tampa Bay Rays.

But it turns out that Rice is not the first or only law clerk with baseball credentials. Mark Mosier, a Covington & Burling partner who clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. can also boast that he was a minor league player for the San Francisco Giants from 1997 to 1999.

“It was a great experience, but with a demanding lifestyle and a high stress level,” Mosier recalled in an interview last week. The “do the best you can” attitude he learned amidst adversity in baseball has helped him in his legal career too. When Mosier played in San Jose, the locker next to his belonged to Bobby Bonds Jr., the brother of famed Giant Barry Bonds. Bobby would give Mosier his brother’s used shoes, so Mosier can accurately state that he filled the shoes of Barry Bonds.

After he injured his hand with torn ligaments, Mosier ended his baseball career and took a different path, enrolling in the University of Chicago Law School.

After that, he clerked for then-Tenth Circuit judge Deanell Tacha, who said of Mosier last week, “I knew about Mark’s baseball history, but that was not the reason I hired him! He was a spectacular student with a gold-standard clerk’s resume.”

Rehnquist also talked baseball with Mosier, but the chief justice was ill when Mosier’s clerkship began. It was a sad time at the court, and when Rehnquist died in September 2005, Roberts kept Mosier and other Rehnquist clerks on. Roberts is “a big sports fan too,” Mosier said. —Tony Mauro

Supreme Court Headlines: What We’re Reading

• Winston & Strawn Protests Ex-Partner’s ‘Firm Always Wins’ Characterization. Lawyers for Winston & Strawn pressed their argument at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday that a former partner should be forced to make her discrimination and retaliation claims through a confidential arbitration proceeding and not in court. Orrick’s E. Joshua Rosenkranz, above, is counsel of record to Winston & Strawn.[NLJ]

• Michael Dreeben, Longtime SCOTUS Advocate, Joins Georgetown Law Faculty. Michael Dreeben, a former longtime U.S. deputy solicitor general who is widely considered a leading authority on criminal law, will join Georgetown University Law Center in Washington as a distinguished lecturer in government for the 2019-20 academic year. [NLJ]

• Texas and Louisiana Tout Pro-Trump Emoluments Ruling to Defend Abortion Restrictions. Fifth Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham, a former Alito clerk, dominated questioning of Debevoise & Plimpton’s Shannon Selden, who urged the appeals court not to create a fast track for merits review from the denial of a motion to dismiss. [NLJ]

• She Recorded Her Rapist’s Confession. Now, the Supreme Court Could Hear It. “The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to review and reverse what it describes firmly as a ‘misunderstanding of the law.’ Allowing it to stand would ‘subvert the military’s concerted effort to eradicate sexual assault, erode confidence in the military-justice system, and fuel the impression that ‘nothing will happen to the perpetrator.’” [CNN]

• Justice Department Urges Civil Rights Agents to Flip LGBT Stance. “The commission’s blessing isn’t necessary, but having the EEOC’s general counsel named on the brief would allow the Trump administration to present a unified front in a contentious, potentially landmark case.” [Bloomberg Law]

• Appellate Pro Steffen Johnson Leaves Winston & Strawn. Steffen Johnson, a 14-year veteran of Winston & Strawn, has reportedly left the firm for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. [NLJ] Bloomberg Law has more here.

• DOJ’s Noel Francisco Wants to Argue in Disputed Gun Case the Justices Might Not Hear. But the government hasn’t taken a position on whether the case is now moot as a product of New York giving the challengers what they wanted. [NLJ]