Week in a Nutshell, 8/23/24

August 23, 2024

Week in a Nutshell, 8/23/24

Former U.S. Rep. George Santos arrives for a court hearing at U.S. District Court Eastern District of New York Long Island Courthouse on August 19, 2024. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Here is some of the legal news making the headlines this week:

Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) pled guilty to wire fraud and identity theft.

The embattled former representative appeared in federal court in the Eastern District of New York to enter his guilty plea on Monday. He was facing 23 felony counts, but, under the terms of the agreement, he pled guilty to only two charges.
According to the plea deal, Santos admitted to filing false documents with the Federal Election Commission and the House of Representatives, embezzling money from campaign donors, and charging credit cards without authorization. In his own words, Santos “filed a list of false donors with the FEC…[listing] donors, who are friends and family members…[who] didn’t actually donate and didn’t give me permission to use their names. We used the names of our friends and family to make it seem like real people were donating to my campaign.” Santos said he “made these misrepresentations to artificially inflate the amount my campaign raised to meet thresholds set by the NRCC, so that the NRCC would spend money on my campaign.”
Santos will be sentenced next February. He is facing a mandatory minimum of two years in prison but could receive a sentence of up to 22 years in prison.

The Supreme Court blocked enforcement of a Biden administration policy aimed at protecting transgender students from discrimination.

In April, the U.S. Department of Education issued a rule clarifying Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Under the law, schools that receive federal funding are prohibited from discriminating against students “on the basis of sex,” which the 2024 rule defines as barring “discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Litigation over the Title IX definition is ongoing, with lawsuits involving 26 Republican-led states. The Biden administration had asked the Court to allow the protections take effect while the cases proceed. But by a vote of 5-4, the justices barred implementation of the policy, leaving a lower court’s injunction in place. The majority included five conservative justices, with the Court’s three liberal justices and conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
The majority explained, “In this emergency posture in this Court, the burden is on the Government as applicant to show, among other things, a likelihood of success on its severability argument and that the equities favor a stay. On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the Government has not provided this Court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower courts’ interim conclusions.”
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that she would have let most of the rule take effect, except for three subdivisions at the heart of the dispute, writing, “A majority of this Court leaves in place preliminary injunctions that bar the Government from enforcing the entire rule—including provisions that bear no apparent relationship to respondents’ alleged injuries. Those injunctions are overbroad.” One of the contested provisions permits students to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.