LEGAL

Mexico: Barriers for Trans People in Guanajuato State

(León) – Trans people in the Mexican state of Guanajuato experience discrimination in work and education and onerous legal impediments due to the state’s lack of legal gender recognition, Human Rights Watch and Amicus DH said today. Guanajuato should comply with Mexican and international law and create an administrative procedure to allow trans people to accurately reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.

Each of Mexico’s 32 states has the authority to determine its laws and policies in civil, family, and registration matters in accordance with the constitution. So it is up to the state legislature or administration to pass a law or enact an administrative decree that enables legal gender recognition through a simple administrative procedure at a state-level civil registry. Twenty Mexican states already have such a procedure. Guanajuato does not.

“Trans people in Guanajuato are disadvantaged in work and education and weighed down with legal proceedings due to state authorities’ undue delay in recognizing the right to gender identity,” said Cristian González Cabrera, LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Guanajuato should align its laws with national and regional jurisprudence and establish a legal gender recognition procedure, which would reduce discrimination against transgender people in work,

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June 26, 2022 by LEGAL

In the words of Larysa Denysenko, Ukrainian legal expert: “Sexual violence is a tactic of intimidation, torture and humiliation” – Ukraine

Larysa Denysenko is a journalist, attorney, human rights activist and co-founder of the Association of Women’s Lawyers of Ukraine “JurFem”. Before the war, Denysenko and JurFem mainly advocated for women’s leadership in legal professions, provided mentorship and supported strategic court cases related to domestic violence and gender-based discrimination. Now, this has extended to representing the interests of those who have survived conflict-related sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by the Russian military in Ukraine.

During the first days of the invasion, we were providing legal advice to refugees and internally displaced people, in terms of the procedures, necessary documents, etc. At the beginning of March, the nature of the cases changed significantly. Both women and men – but mostly, women – were calling the hotline to report sexual violence that they, or their closed ones, had been subjected to in the context of the war.

Any violence – including conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) – is about power relations and dominance. Perpetrators want to demonstrate their power; they want to prevail. That is why sexual violence is so common during wars and armed conflicts. The root of this aggression and impunity lies in domestic violence. The ratification of the Istanbul Convention

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June 25, 2022 by LEGAL

Opinion | ‘Detached From Reality’ Is Trump’s Best Defense at This Point

One potential charge that is getting a lot of attention on social media is conspiracy to defraud the United States, which would require the Department of Justice to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump agreed with others to obstruct a lawful function of the government by deceitful or dishonest means. I’ve charged that statute before when I was a federal prosecutor in the context of a dishonest tax avoidance scheme.

At the core of any fraud prosecution is proving the defendant’s dishonesty and intent to defraud beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s why Trump’s state of mind — in particular, proof regarding whether he believed what he was peddling — is so important. And why his rather complicated state of mind presents serious problems for prosecutors.

Some have suggested that prosecutors can sidestep this problem by relying on a willful or deliberate ignorance theory. In certain circumstances, the law recognizes that a defendant’s deliberate attempts to avoid knowledge of an incriminating fact demonstrates their knowledge of that fact. For example, if someone approaches you a few miles from the U.S. border and offers you $5,000 to drive a U-Haul across the border, your deliberate refusal to look at what’s

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June 24, 2022 by LEGAL

John Eastman Is Team Trump’s Pick for Jan. 6 Scapegoat

With the Justice Department and Jan. 6 committee taking a close look at Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he and his cronies could certainly use a fall guy, and it looks like they’ve found their patsy: right-wing lawyer John Eastman.

Eastman worked for Trump as the attorney devised legal strategies to overturn the election to keep the outgoing president in power. But, in recent weeks, Trump has confided to those close to him that he sees no reason to publicly defend Eastman, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president is also deeply annoyed with Eastman and all the negative “attention” and media coverage that the lawyer’s work has brought Trump and his inner sanctum, including during the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill.

Furthermore, to those who’ve spoken Trump about Eastman in recent months, the ex-president has repeated an excuse he often uses when backed into a corner, as investigators confront him with an associates’ misdeeds: He has privately insisted he “hardly” or “barely” knows Eastman, despite the fact that he counseled Trump on taking a string of extra-legal measures in a bid to stay in power and wrote the so-called

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June 23, 2022 by LEGAL

‘Non-Lawyer Legal Help’ Are No Longer Banned Words in New York

Welcome back to the Big Law Business column on the changing legal marketplace written by me, Roy Strom. Today, we look at a case that pits free speech against the provision of legal advice by people who are not lawyers. Sign up to receive this column in your inbox on Thursday mornings. Programming Note: Big Law Business will be off next week for Memorial Day.

The late comedian George Carlin famously said there are seven words you can’t say on TV.

For non-lawyers, there have been far more than seven words they can’t say—if they drift anywhere close to practicing law. Those banned words include, “Check that box.”

But now that’s changing.

A federal judge in Manhattan this week ruled a non-profit can train regular people to provide free help for New Yorkers filling out responses to debt collection lawsuits.

The order lets Upsolve Inc.’s “justice advocates” tell debt collection defendants what boxes to check on a one-page response to the lawsuits.

The ruling could create a roadmap for other programs to provide less-expensive legal advice in other types of cases. The increasingly high cost of hiring a lawyer is driving similar efforts in other states.

Everyone involved in

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June 21, 2022 by LEGAL
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