Tag: lawsuits

Food Service Giant Sued Over ‘White-Men-Need-Not-Apply’ Program

A former employee of a large food service corporation is suing the company in federal court after it fired her for refusing to participate in a program that discriminates against white male employees.

Courtney Rogers worked for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Compass Group USA Inc. from her home office in San Diego, California.

The company had more than 280,000 employees and $20.1 billion in revenue in 2019, according to its LinkedIn profile. One of the world’s largest employers, the company has thousands of employees in California and counts among its clients Dodger Stadium, San Francisco International Airport, Uber, Snapchat, Netflix, Disney Studios, and NBC Universal.

The company has won recognition for promoting so-called diversity, including appearing on the Forbes list of Best Employers for Diversity from 2018 through 2022.

Its corporate parent, U.K.-based Compass Group PLC, had $32.2 billion in revenue in 2019.

Ms. Rogers was hired in August 2021 and given the job title of “Recruiter, Internal Mobility Team.”

Her responsibilities included the processing of internal promotions, which encompassed posting job listings, reviewing applications, conducting interviews, writing and sending offer letters, carrying out background checks, ordering drug tests, initiating and reviewing onboarding, and ensuring that personnel updates were reflected in the system.

Compass created a program it called “Operation Equity” in March 2022, a purported diversity program that offered qualified employees special training and mentorship and the promise of a promotion upon graduation, according to the legal complaint that was filed in Rogers v. Compass Group USA Inc.

The lawsuit was filed on July 24 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California under the auspices of the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm headquartered in Chicago that organized the legal action.

But participation in the program was restricted to “women and people of color.” White men were not allowed to participate and receive the associated benefits of training, mentorship, and guaranteed promotion.

By calling it “Operation Equity,” the company “used a euphemistic and false title to hide the program’s true nature.” The program would more accurately be called the “White-Men-Need-Not-Apply” program because it is an example of “‘outright racial balancing,’ which is patently unlawful,” and is the kind of program “promoted by people … who harbor racial animus against white men,” according to the legal complaint.

Keep reading

“I Hope That We Succeed,” Man Suing Massachusetts Health Department For Silently Installing Covid Tracking App On His Phone Speaks Out

A plaintiff in a lawsuit against government “spyware” has shed more light on the situation. In a potentially far-reaching legal dispute, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is being accused of covertly partnering with tech behemoth Google to clandestinely install COVID-tracing software onto as many as a million unsuspecting smartphone users. This was the claim being presented in a class-action lawsuit filed by the Washington-based New Civil Liberties Alliance.

The legal challenge alleges an explicit violation of both US and Massachusetts constitutional law. It targets not just the perceived breach of privacy but also the audacity of the health department’s actions. “Such brazen disregard for civil liberties violates both the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions, and it must stop now,” the suit asserts.

The case, filed in 2021, was raised on behalf of Massachusetts native Robert Wright and Johnny Kula from New Hampshire, who commutes daily into Massachusetts. The duo vehemently objects to the installation of the COVID-tracing app on their phones sans their explicit consent. Kula, in particular, alleged that his attempt to delete the app proved futile as it surreptitiously resurfaced on his device.

“I hope that we succeed, and this sets a precedent, and that, in the future, no government even considers tracking Americans’ movements 24/7 without their knowledge or consent,” Wright said in a recent statement.

Originally conceived amidst the COVID pandemic’s height, Apple and Google jointly developed a contact tracing system. This system used a smartphone’s Bluetooth capabilities to alert users of potential proximity to an infected individual. An alert from an infected person’s phone could prompt nearby app users to take a COVID test.

The lawsuit asserts that the state’s health department colluded with Google to create a version to be forcefully installed on all Android phones, unbeknownst to the owners.

Keep reading

The Federal Trade Commission’s Latest Frivolous Antitrust Suit Takes Aim at Amazon

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) new antitrust lawsuit against Amazon is an amazing exercise in hubris and absurdity.

In a complaint filed Wednesday, the agency alleges that Amazon’s incredibly popular Prime program is a scam. Prime—a monthly or yearly subscription program that confers many benefits, including free shipping and tons of streaming content, to Amazon customers—is too easy to sign up for and too hard to cancel, the FTC alleges.

“Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime,” the agency said in a statement. “Amazon also knowingly complicated the cancellation process for Prime subscribers who sought to end their membership.”

But these claims of deception fall apart upon close examination (as noted by my colleague Eric Boehm yesterday). The FTC’s complaint revolves around mundane moves by Amazon, like conspicuously asking non-Prime customers if they want to sign up or requiring Prime subscribers to click through several screens to unsubscribe.

Patrick Hedger, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, noted that it took him under a minute and required just six clicks to cancel his Prime account—fewer clicks than it takes to submit a public comment on the FTC website.

Like many major companies, Amazon has some flaws. But the argument that it’s broadly harmful to consumers—let alone so harmful that it requires the intervention of the federal government—is so far removed from reality that only government bureaucrats with an ax to grind could make it with straight faces. (In fact, Amazon routinely garners extremely high favorability ratings in consumer polls.)

Keep reading

US Government Sued for Allegedly Seizing $100,000,000 in Cash, Gold and Jewelry From Citizens Without Explanation

The US government won’t specify why it abruptly seized more than $100 million from people’s safety deposit boxes in California, according to a new lawsuit.

The nonprofit Institute for Justice says it’s seeking to halt forfeiture proceedings for a group of citizens who’ve had their assets confiscated by the FBI with little to no explanation.

The case is centered on a Los Angeles-based couple who says the FBI abruptly seized $40,200 of their life savings from a safety deposit box.

Linda and Reggie Martin want to know why the FBI took their cash, along with the contents of hundreds of other people’s safety deposit boxes, from a financial storage company in Beverly Hills in March of 2021.

The couple says the agency seized their money without providing any evidence of illegal activity.

Attorney Bob Belden says the FBI’s move is plainly immoral and violates the Martins’ rights as American citizens.

Keep reading

Did You Know That Biden Is in the Midst of Three Lawsuits for Infringing on Free Speech?

Lawsuits and legal battles are everywhere lately.  Trump’s indictment for the mishandling of classified documents has been all over the news, but the Biden White House is also in the middle of a few lawsuits that may be of some interest to First Amendment enthusiasts.

Alex Berenson sues Twitter and Biden

Former New York Times journalist and popular novelist Alex Berenson sued Twitter in December 2021.  Berenson had retweeted Pfizer’s own data about the Covid jabs, but since he did not present the data in a flattering manner, he was booted off the site after being previously told by Twitter that they supported him in his Covid dissidence, as he explains in this interview with Clay and Buck.

Berenson filed his lawsuit in Northern California, and he won.  In July 2022, Alex Berenson was back on Twitter.

But some weird details emerged.  During the discovery phase of his lawsuit against Twitter, where the parties are given access to each other’s documents, Team Berenson got the chance to look over internal Twitter communications.  And Team Berenson found out that Twitter had been pressured by the White House and Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb to kick him off.  So, on April 12, 2023, Alex Berenson filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration.

Berenson v. Biden is moving really slowly, and who knows how it’ll end up.  But the Twitter Files releases look only to strengthen his argument; Michael Shellenberger found more email chains about the internal Twitter arguments over whether or not to ban Berenson and turned the emails over to him to use in his lawsuit against the White House.  The more time goes by, the more it looks like Berenson was correct in suspecting that outside forces were at work in removing him from Twitter.

Alex Berenson was a highly respected writer before Covid, though after 2020 many in the medical field adopted a “stay in your lane” attitude toward anyone not practicing medicine and who didn’t buy into the official narrative.

Keep reading

JP Morgan agrees to settle with Jeffrey Epstein’s sex abuse victims

Megabank JP Morgan has agreed to a settlement with victims of deceased billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The New York Times reports that the bank and attorneys representing the victims announced the settlement on Monday after what the paper describes as “weeks of embarrassing disclosures about the bank’s longstanding relationship with him.”

The victims filed a lawsuit against JP Morgan this past November in which they alleged that the bank continued doing business with Epstein despite having full knowledge of his history of sexually abusing underage girls.

Keep reading

MSU students are suing a professor after she required them to subscribe to a website she founded that funds Planned Parenthood

An adjunct professor at Michigan State University, Amy Wisner, is being sued by two of her students after requiring her business communications class to purchase a $99 subscription to an activist website she founded that funds Planned Parenthood.

The website, The Rebellion Community, was described in the class syllabus as “a global social learning community.”

Several students looked into the website and found posts from their professor on social media which detailed the leftwing causes that their membership fees were going to, most notably, Planned Parenthood.

MLive News reported,

Though Wisner initially told students that she would reap no benefit from the subscriptions, the lawsuit said, students found out that Wisner operated the site and had said in different contexts that its proceeds would be donated to Planned Parenthood or used to fund “an RV roadtrip around the United States to co-create communities of rebels.”

The university says that Wisner is no longer employed and the school has offered to refund the students the cost of their subscriptions.

Keep reading

U.S. government says it owns everyone’s THOUGHTS, calling it “cognitive infrastructure”

The fight is on to hold the United States government responsible for colluding with social media companies to censor Americans’ free speech rights online.

Missouri v. Biden, which was filed on May 5, 2022, has been taking quite the trip through the court system. It was amended three separate times, most recently to add an amendment that transforms the case into a class action suit due to the sheer number of Americans impacted by the government’s crimes.

Uncover DC has been tracking the case, offering play-by-play details about what has been happening with the case over the past year. The plaintiffs, including the states of Missouri and Louisiana, pushed for expedited discovery to obtain a limited set of evidence and depositions from certain individuals.

“They argued that this evidence would allow them to make the case for a temporary injunction to stop the government from infringing on the first amendment rights of Plaintiffs and their citizens,” Uncover DC reported.

The judge granted the motion for expedited discovery and depositions, prompting a fight between the government and the judge, in this case Judge Terry Doughty. In short, the defendants want to stop all discovery and certain plaintiffs from being deposed.

(Related: In 2021, a Missouri court declared that the Wuhan coronavirus [Covid-19] mandates and restrictions imposed by “the whims of public health bureaucrats” are illegal.)

Is Missouri v. Biden the reason why the deep state is trying to ram through the RESTRICT Act?

In its argument against expedited discovery and depositions, the government tried to claim that forcing government workers to sit for lengthy depositions is inappropriate, especially for the head of CISA, who was summoned.

Fortunately for the plaintiffs, Judge Doughty disagreed, forcing the CISA head, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and other alleged co-conspirators to sit down and tell all about what they did to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights.

Psaki, as you may recall, made threats to social media companies straight from the podium, which prompted her being deposed. She then left her White House position, conveniently.

Over and over again, the government has lost every single time so far in Missouri v. Biden. And it appears as though Americans may finally be winning, at least in the sense that we can now see what has really been going on behind closed doors.

Tony Fauci, at one point, was also deposed. This prompted the government to try to seal all depositions and video, claiming that government “employees” were being threatened – though it could provide no such proof to back this claim.

Meanwhile, it was revealed throughout this process that CISA has categorized people’s “thoughts” as being part of the government’s infrastructure – meaning the government believes it owns whatever activity takes place inside your head.

Keep reading

COVID Vaccine-Injured Sue Biden Administration Over Censorship

A woman who suffered severe nerve damage after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination and four others with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 vaccine injuries launched a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and his administration on May 22.

Top government officials violated the plaintiffs’ rights to free speech and peaceful assembly when they pressured Big Tech companies to crack down on people sharing their experience after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines, Brianne Dressen, the woman, and the other plaintiffs say.

“Through threats, pressure, inducement, and coercion, Defendants now work in concert with social media companies to censor content the government deems ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’—a feat that the government could never lawfully accomplish alone,” the 124-page suit, filed in U.S. court in southern Texas, states.

In addition to Biden, defendants include Rob Flaherty, a top adviser to Biden; White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre; the Department of Homeland Security; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment, or could not be reached.

Dressen hailed the lawsuit as a major development for those reporting to be suffering from vaccine injuries.

“People injured by the COVID vaccines in the United States have not been able to file suit anywhere, under any circumstance,” she told The Epoch Times. “So this is a landmark case for Americans injured by the COVID vaccine.”

COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers are largely immune from litigation in the United States due to the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act declaration entered by the Trump administration in early 2020. Most other vaccine manufacturers are also shielded from liability under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

Keep reading

NYPD reportedly stood by, failed to help Chinatown woman as homeless man stabbed her to death in her own home

In a recently filed lawsuit by the family of 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee, the Chinatown woman who was killed early in the morning on February 13, 2022 by a homeless man who followed her into her apartment, the victim’s family alleged that two NYPD officers heard her screams “for at least five minutes” and did nothing.

The New York Post reports that two unidentified cops dispatched out of the 5th Precinct responded to Lee’s 911 phone call, which she made while being attacked, and the cops responded within four minutes, “heard Ms. Lee screaming for help” but “failed to gain entry to Ms. Lee’s apartment until Ms. Lee had been stabbed more than 40 times by her attacker and succumbed to her injuries,” according to the lawsuit. 

According to the lawsuit, made against the city and the NYPD, the cops allegedly spoke to the killer “through the closed door of Ms. Lee’s apartment” and “Despite having reason to believe Ms. Lee’s life was in imminent danger, (the officers) failed to gain entry to Ms. Lee’s apartment or otherwise provide her with any potentially life-saving police or medical assistance at that time.”

The lawsuit, filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court, is seeking unspecified damages.

The victim’s aunt, Boksun Lee, said in the court filing that the cops did not enter her niece’s apartment until after she died.

Christina Yuna Lee, a digital producer originally from New Jersey, entered her Chrystie Street apartment around 4:20 am that morning and was allegedly followed by 25-year-old Assamad Nash, a homeless man out on bail for previous alleged violent crimes and who had been convicted of petty larceny and robbery. Nash has been charged with murder for Lee’s killing.

Keep reading