Tag: Sheryl Lipman

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Judge Orders Memphis 7 to be Reinstated at Memphis Starbucks

(Photo by Asael Peña/Unsplash)

A federal judge ordered Thursday that the seven Memphis Starbucks employees who were fired for attempting to organize a union must be reinstated. 

Federal Judge Sheryl Lipman ruled that Starbucks must fully reinstate the group, which because known as the Memphis 7, within five days. Lipman ordered Starbucks to no longer engage in the type of activities that gave rise to the case. Those activities include discharging, disciplining, or discriminating against employees because of their union support and activities.

The Memphis 7 were fired from the Starbucks store at Poplar and Highland. Five of them were members of the organizing committee. Advocates said that after they were fired, Starbucks fired over 80 union leaders across the country, and shuttered three union stores. 

“We’re beyond thankful the federal court ruled in our favor, and this just goes to show that Starbucks will do everything in their power to silence us,” said Nabretta Hardin, a lead organizer from the Poplar and Highland store. “Memphis is a union town. We remain the only store to have organized in Memphis for fear of workers being fired like we were. 

“We hope this ruling brings comfort to our partners in the Memphis area and shows them the power they can have in a union. There is no need to fear retaliation because the [National Labor Relations Board – NLRB] will protect them as they have protected us.” 

The NLRB charged Starbucks with a number of federal labor law violations. The agency is now prosecuting Starbucks on 20 administrative complaints across the country. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Snarled in Knots

Katrina Robinson after Senate expulsion (Photo: Courtesy the Tennessee Journal)

The Katrina Robinson case, involving the conviction of a Democratic state senator from Memphis on charges of wire fraud, has taken several unanticipated leaps since federal authorities first began their investigation of her last year.

Robinson first came under suspicion for misuse for personal purposes of some $600,000 in federal funding intended solely for a nursing school she was operating. It was on that basis that she was originally charged on 15 counts of fraud. U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman dismissed 11 of those charges — an action that raised few eyebrows, since it seemed to make sense in the name of case consolidation.

Subsequently, although Robinson’s attorney Larry Laurenzi, citing an accountant’s figures, would argue strenuously that Robinson’s personal expenditures came from her school’s profits and not from federal sources, a jury convened in Memphis would convict Robinson on four of five remaining charges, finding her not guilty of one.

What remained, as Robinson and Laurenzi meditated on various appeals, were two questions: What would be the ultimate legal consequences for Robinson of the four convictions? And what would be the reaction of the state Senate, which has rules requiring the expulsion of a member convicted of a felony?

A partial answer to the first question is that in January Judge Lipman, in a move that caught most observers by surprise, chose to acquit Robinson of two of the guilty verdicts found by the jury.

And what the state Senate did was debate expulsion of Robinson from the body, which voted 25-7 on party lines last week to do so. Democrats in both the Senate and the House objected to what Robinson, an African American, called a “procedural lynching.” She had sought a delay in any action on expulsion until after the Senator’s formal sentencing on March 3.

Attorney Laurenzi was quoted as saying, “At this time we are considering every option we have to try to get those last two counts removed or dismissed. And we will continue doing that up until March 3.” As of press time, however, no such option had yet been acted on.

But meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney’s office, in a motion filed Friday by acting U.S. Attorney Joseph C. Murphy Jr., is appealing Judge Lipman’s acquittal action on the two jury convictions that were removed.

Given the political context of the situation, it is relevant that Murphy’s ascension to his temporary position was a civil service matter, absent any identifiable political affiliation on his part. Former U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant, who resigned last year, had been appointed by President Donald Trump on the basis of recommendations from the state’s two Republican senators. Dunavant’s permanent replacement will be made by President Joe Biden, who will lean strongly on advice from Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen, the state’s ranking Democratic federal official. That’s how the federal appointments process works.

In his motion, Murphy objected to Robinson’s “defiant refusal to accept responsibility” and her “extended campaign … to paint herself as the victim [of] racial animus on the part of anyone who dares call her to account.”

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Judge Lipman Acquits Senator Robinson on 15 Charges

State Senator Katrina Robinson


Federal Judge Sheryl Lipman has acquitted state Senator Katrina Robinson of 15 of the 20 fraud charges alleged against her for purported misuse of government funds intended for the use of her nursing school.

The ruling, a response to a defense request for summary dismissal,  was made public late on Sunday, with an oral explanation scheduled for a hearing on Monday morning. The trial will presumably continue on Tuesday for the remaining five charges.

In essence, Robinson’s indictment is for theft and embezzlement of funds disbursed through federal support programs and the misuse of those funds for wholly personal purposes.

More to come as it becomes available.

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Cost, Complexity At Heart of Judge’s Ruling on Shelby Mask Mandate

One reason a federal judge struck down Gov. Bill Lee’s mask opt-out order in Shelby County is that students wearing face masks in school is more efficient, easier, and cheaper than Lee’s plan to protect disabled students.

U.S. District Court Judge Sheryl Lipman’s Friday ruling says that Shelby County’s mask mandate for students is legal. The ruling strikes down Lee’s order that allowed parents to opt their children out of the mandate. This means that all students will have to wear a mask at school in Shelby County starting Monday. 

Lee’s opt-out order was delivered in mid-August. Legal challenges to it rose later from Shelby County and private attorneys working for disabled school children at greater risk of Covid’s effects than most. Attorneys said those student could not safely return to school with other maskless students. On these complaints, Lipman had temporarily halted Lee’s order earlier this month, but the order was set to expire Friday. 

The new order states plainly, “schools cannot implement adequate health measures to ensure Plaintiffs’ access to school with the executive order in place.” The “unmasked presence” of other students “creates the danger to these plaintiffs.” 

The order reads that local school boards won’t be able to give these disabled students reasonable accommodation to keep them from harm. Lee’s order, it says, eliminated Shelby County’s mask mandate “to create more costly and complex measures to protect every child with a disability.”

Lipman said Lee and members of his adminstration have said publicly that masks reduce the transmission of Covid-19. Mask requirements were already in place in Shelby County with set-ups for classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, school buses, libraries, and P.E. classes — none of which would need to be changed with the existing mandate. 

To do it Lee’s way and individualize processes and supports for disabled students could possibly come with new facilities like larger gyms or outdoor seating areas. It could also call for more teachers to monitor masked and unmasked students, as well as complex policies and schedules for moving between classes or to school buses. All of these could change, too, if parents change their minds on masking their children.

”The accumulation of costs, alternative schedules, and other changes stands in stark contrast to the cost-effective, minimally burdensome requirement for children to wear masks when at school,” Lipman’s order reads.     

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The Virus and the Vote

Tennessee has come in for criticism for its responses to the coronavirus pandemic, but at least one organization, having surveyed 50 states, rates the Volunteer State as not having done all that shabby. The personal finance website WalletHub ranks Tennessee fourth-best overall in how well its health infrastructure was prepared going into the pandemic.

In specific areas, WalletHub rates Tennessee as follows:

• 20th – Public Healthcare Spending per Capita

• 14th – Number of Hospital Beds per Capita

• 30th – Epidemiology Workforce per Capita

• 11th – Emergency Centers and Services per Capita

• 2nd – Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Beds per Capita

That’s the (relatively) good news. A pair of ongoing lawsuits, each of which was scheduled for a key moment in court this week, suggests that other issues are not nearly so salutary.

A preliminary hearing was set for this Wednesday in the courtroom of federal District Judge Sheryl Lipman on a new suit filed against the office of the Shelby County sheriff, seeking emergency action on behalf of inmates currently infected or under threat of “severe injury or death” as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Filed last week jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee; the American Civil Liberties Union; Just City; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind; Wharton & Garrison LLP; and attorneys Brice Timmons and Steve Mulroy, the suit is a federal class action that seeks the release of those prisoners deemed non-dangerous.

The suit “asks for identification of medically vulnerable individuals held at the jail and the immediate release of vulnerable people, most immediately those who are detained solely on the basis of their inability to satisfy a financial condition of pretrial release, or solely on the basis of a technical violation of probation or parole unless the county demonstrates that an individual poses a flight or safety risk.”

The suit alleges that, “as of April 30, 192 people at the jail had tested positive for COVID-19, and one jail employee had died.” It further notes that “[s]tatewide, the greatest number of deaths from the virus have occurred in Shelby County” and that, according to the latest reports, “86 percent of inmates at the Shelby County Jail were there pretrial.”

Alleging that the sheriff’s office is violating the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, the suit cautions that “an outbreak at the jail would spread widely in the community, draining the Memphis area of limited resources to fight the pandemic.” 

G.A. Hardaway

See Viewpoint at memphisflyer.com by State Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), chair of the Tennessee Caucus of Black Legislators, for more perspective on the jail as a “petri dish” for the COVID virus.

• The coronavirus outbreak is the main reason also for another suit, due for a hearing Thursday in the court of Chancellor Ellen Lyle in Nashville. This one, filed recently by Memphis lawyers Steve Mulroy and Jake Brown for the ad hoc group Up the Vote 901, cites the pandemic as a reason to extend the right of absentee voting to all registered Tennessee voters — a request so far denied by state officials. A parallel suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee may, at Judge Lyle’s discretion, be folded into the original suit, and yet a third suit to the same end has been filed by the NAACP in another jurisdiction.

In a brief presented to the Court, State Attorney General Herb Slatery made several arguments against the proposed action, citing “numerous barriers” to rapid implementation of statewide absentee voting, including alleged costs of millions of dollars and “opportunities for error” indicated in the experiences of other states.

Tennessee is not the only arena where the right to vote by mail is at stake. After Michigan and Nevada sent applications for absentee voting to all registered voters, President Trump threatened those states with the loss of federal funding. The president claims the process of widespread voting by mail invites open fraud, though he himself recently voted absentee in Florida, and Republican states like Ohio have conducted elections by mail without incident. In any case, evidence of such fraud through absentee voting has proved hard to come by.

In the face of the pandemic, 11 of the 16 states that limit who can vote by absentee ballot have eased their election rules this year to permit expanded absentee voting in upcoming elections.