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Fifth Circuit: Police Immune for Arresting Journalist Just for Asking Questions

Laredo officials who arrested a citizen-journalist in 2017 for asking for information deemed nonpublic cannot be sued for violating the First Amendment rights of the reporter because the officers have qualified immunity because they believed they were following a Texas law — even though the law had never been successfully used in a prosecution and has been declared unconstitutional, a hotly divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled late Tuesday. The en banc court of the Fifth Circuit ruled 9-7 that police and prosecutors should not be required to know whether a state law is constitutional or not when enforcing laws.

But seven Fifth Circuit judges in four different dissents blasted the majority’s decision because it turns routine questioning by news reporters into probable cause for committing criminal activity and shows how screwed up the Fifth Circuit is when it comes to granting immunity to government officials who abuse their power.

(Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article states that the en banc vote was 10-7 instead of 9-7. The Lawbook regrets the error.)

Match Litigation Team Took on the 800-pound Gorilla and Won

When Google changed its policy in 2020 to require all businesses selling apps through the Google Play Store to use Google’s electronic bill pay system, officials at Match Group quickly realized that this meant hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. The alternative was even more devastating — being booted off Google Play, which generated billions in revenues from Android users for Match brands, such as Tinder, PlentyofFish and Match.com. The Match legal team — including Chief Legal Officer Jared Sine, Associate General Counsel Jeanette Teckman, Senior Litigation Counsel Stephen Myers and Litigation Counsel Katie Johnson — tried to work with Google on a resolution for two years, but finally decided in March 2022 to sue its largest business partner on allegations of market manipulation, broken promises and abuse of power.

The challenges for the Match legal group included Google’s extraordinarily positive public reputation and its army of successful lawyers, three million documents of discovery to review, an expedited trial plan set by the judge and co-plaintiffs combined into the litigation that did not always see eye-to-eye with Match on all issues. Winning at trial was anything but a sure thing. In fact, Apple had defeated a nearly identical lawsuit in 2021 and 2023. Efforts to reach an out-of-court agreement were fruitless.

Q&A: Katie Johnson of Match Group

When Google changed its policy in 2020 to require all businesses selling apps through the Google Play Store to use Google’s electronic bill pay system, officials at Match Group quickly

Q&A: Stephen Myers of Match Group

When Google changed its policy in 2020 to require all businesses selling apps through the Google Play Store to use Google’s electronic bill pay system, officials at Match Group quickly

Q&A: Jeanette Teckman of Match Group

When Google changed its policy in 2020 to require all businesses selling apps through the Google Play Store to use Google’s electronic bill pay system, officials at Match Group quickly

GC Mark Robinson Navigated GameStop Through Memes, Short-squeezes, NFTs and Seven CEOs

When Mark Robinson joined GameStop in 2015, the Grapevine-based gaming retailer needed him to be an absolute generalist handling garden-variety contracts, basic commercial disputes and employment issues. All that changed in 2020 and has continued changing ever since.

There was the Covid pandemic in 2020, which exacerbated steep declines in retail brick-and-mortar operations. Then GameStop became the poster child for both short-squeezes and meme stocks, even as Robinson was promoted to GC. He navigated the company through complex regulatory issues related to the new NFT marketplace and digital assets business. He temporarily served as GameStop’s principal executive officer after the company’s board fired its CEO. And then there’s the movie on GameStop starring Pete Davidson, Seth Rogen and Vincent D’Onofrio.

Updated: Toyota’s Kelly Chen is a DEI ‘Doer’

When it comes to DEI, Kelly Chen of Toyota is a person whose actions match her words. She says hiring diverse outside legal teams is important; she gives legal work to diverse teams. She values mentoring young diverse attorneys and law students because she didn’t have anyone to ask questions (“whether they looked like me or not”) when she was starting her career. She says the legal industry is full of people with smarts, advocacy and creativity to figure out how to move the needle forward despite a challenging DEI climate. And she doubles down to do her part to lead programs and collaborate with outside counsel on solutions.

“When I think about what ‘commitment and service to diversity’ means, what comes to mind is a person who shows up, rolls their sleeves up — in ways both big and small, and works — over and over again — not for one time, one event, one year … Kelly Chen comes to mind,” said Toyota’s Mey Ly Ortiz.

The Texas Lawbook and Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW chapter have named Chen the recipient of the 2023 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion. This is her story.

(Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include comments from a law student mentored by Chen).

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