Category: News Feeds

The activists are victims of persecution by prosecution and their ordeal at the hands of the State is clear testimony to the weaponization of the judiciary.

We note with great concern that the State continues to use judicial capture as a weapon to victimize dissenting voices in the country.

Mamombe, Chimbiri and another MDC Alliance activist, Netsai Marova were subjected to torture and sexual abuse by state security agents when they were arrested in May 2020 after protesting against the failure by the State to provide essential services to citizens following the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Following this ordeal, the trio spent 17 days in detention.

Currently, Mamombe and Chimbiri are languishing in remand prison after they were arrested in early March 2021 for addressing journalists at the Harare Magistrates Court.

On April 23, 2021Mamombe was forcibly removed from hospital where she had gone for medical attention. Prison authorities claimed they had been given instructions from above.

The Crisis Coalition Gender Committee is perturbed by the fact that judicial capture has led to violation of citizens’ fundamental rights  enshrined in the country’s constitution.

In the case of Mamombe, the State continues to defy Section 50 of the country’s constitution on the rights of arrested and detained persons.

The State has also used pretrial detention as a weapon to punish dissenting voices and this is evidenced by the fact that in most cases involving bail applications by incarcerated activists, the High Court has often pointed out to a miscarriage of justice on the part of the lower courts.

We implore the State to uphold citizens’ fundamental rights and desist from weaponization of the judiciary to clampdown on opposition activists.

An independent judiciary is a critical component of a democratic society and we condemn the State’s overbearing influence on the judiciary.

We are further concerned that the State continues to use brute force in response to genuine calls for reforms by concerned citizens.

As the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Gender Committee, we will use all appropriate legal means to challenge judicial capture and hold the State to account on rights violations and we call upon progressive Zimbabweans to compliment our efforts.

Post published in: Featured

Pictures posted on social media last weekend showed deep holes near graves in the Dinde area of Zimbabwe’s western Hwange district. Some residents have blamed Chinese-owned Beifa Investments, which is searching for coal.

However Beifa said the accusations against it were false and that its drilling site was “nowhere near” the graves.

“Beifa Investments (Pvt) Ltd categorically denies ever desecrating any graves in the Dinde Community as alleged or at all,” the company said in a statement, adding that it would ask the relevant authorities to investigate.

“If there are any holes on the grave site that would be the work of other people unknown to the company.”

Daniel Molokele, the Member of Parliament for the area, said he would travel to the area next weekend to investigate.

“Desecration of a cemetery has got spiritual effect on the community, it brutalizes people’s souls,” said Farai Maguwu, director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, a Zimbabwean watchdog. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe Editing by Helen Reid and Peter Graff)

Post published in: Featured

The funding is for three years from 2021 to 2023, Mutsvangwa said during a post-cabinet media briefing.

“It should, however, be noted that the government continues to provide resources from its own coffers for the COVID-19 response program, with 11 billion Zimbabwean dollars having been released since the onset of the outbreak,” she said.

Apart from receiving 400,000 vaccine doses that were donated by China, Zimbabwe has also purchased 1.2 million doses of vaccines from the Asian country.

The country launched its vaccination campaign in February, and a total of 353,834 people have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and 57,776 their second as of Monday.

Post published in: Featured

The border post has various departments which include Immigration, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA), Agriculture department, police, military and intelligence.

Out of this, a few workers have been vaccinated.

Authorities said Plumtree District is targeting to vaccinate 8 950 adults and so far, only 900 had been vaccinated.

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!

Which two law schools are tied for schools with the highest first-time bar pass rate in 2020?

Hint: An impressive 98.91 percent of 2020 grads at these school who sat for the bar exam passed on their first try.

See the answer on the next page.

While the government’s proposed modifications to HIPAA primarily aim to make it easier for patients to access their health data, there are may be some unintended consequences.

That’s according to Laura Hoffman, assistant director of federal affairs at the American Medical Association, who spoke on a panel organized by healthcare consultancy Sirona Strategies about the proposed changes to HIPAA Privacy Rule.

One of the changes involves allowing patients to receive their medical information via personal health applications — smartphone apps, for example — which are often developed and operated by third-party technology companies. But these companies are generally not governed by HIPAA, opening up patient health data to potential misuse, Hoffman said.

“The patient isn’t the only one getting the information in that situation, and so you wind up exposing information to tech platforms, app developers and others,” she said.

That exposed information can then be shared with data brokers who create profiles on individuals, which can be used for potentially nefarious purposes. For example, it creates a gating opportunity where some people may get certain opportunities based on those profiles, and others are barred from those same opportunities, Hoffman said.

This has already happened in housing where the government sued Facebook for alleged housing discrimination. The suit claims that the tech giant used data-mining practices to only allow certain users to see housing advertisements based on demographic data, like race, religion and national origin.

“So, individually, we may not care if these kinds of profiles are created, but when you think systemically, and when you think about the opportunities that are afforded certain people based on data versus those that are not, it becomes a bigger conversation,” she said.

To combat this potential issue, there needs to be federal legislation, said Deven McGraw, co-founder and chief regulatory officer of Ciitizen, during the panel discussion. Though companies may put up privacy notices and have patients click through their terms and conditions, it is pretty clear that few, if any, consumers actually read through it.

“The ability to get a consumer to check a box is pretty easy, it’s alarmingly easy,” she said. “You could have essentially…an app that’s merely just a conduit for data that’s really serving a third party’s business interests.”

Another proposed change that could leave private health information exposed is requiring covered entities to respond to oral requests for health information. Currently, patients have to make those requests to providers in writing and signed by the individual, said Peg Schmidt, chief privacy officer at Advocate Aurora Health, during the discussion.

“My concern about oral requests is the potential for them to lead to impermissible disclosures,” she said.

The Milwaukee and Downers Grove, Illinois-based health system uses signatures to verify that a patient is in fact making that request, even if it is being delivered by another person. Without that, it becomes harder for the provider to ensure that the request is legitimate, she said.

Further, there is a higher risk of the request being misunderstood or not recorded accurately.

“I see so many things that could go wrong,” Schmidt said.

It would be preferable to give covered entities the option of responding to oral requests, rather than requiring it, she said.

The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services announced the proposed changes in December, which one healthcare lawyer described as the biggest modifications to HIPAA in the past seven years. The public comment period for the proposals ends May 6.

Photo: Dzmitry Skazau, Getty Images

Colorado’s Gov. Jared Polis is poised, any day now, to sign into law new legislation passed by Colorado’s State Assembly codifying best practices when it comes to surrogacy.

A Major Victory

Colorado’s House and Senate Committees heard emotional and compelling testimony over the past few months, in favor of the passage of surrogacy-supportive legislation. One witness testified to turning to surrogacy to have a child after ten (10!) failed adoptions. She explained that the reality of surrogacy is not the stories of celebrities hoping to preserve their figures but those of regular people who very much want to be parents. (And, by the way, please don’t tell people struggling to have children to “just adopt”!)

Judith Hoechst, a Colorado assisted reproductive technology attorney, was part of the team leading the effort to pass the new law. She testified as to her own story — she almost died in the delivery room with her first child, but knew that her family was not yet complete. She described turning to surrogacy in California, knowing that California law would protect both the surrogate and her family. “Loving families are formed in many ways, among them, surrogacy. Because of my son’s birth it was important to me to work to codify best practices and balanced protections for Colorado parents and surrogates. Denver undoubtedly has some of the best fertility clinics in the country. Now intended parents and surrogates under the care of Colorado fertility clinics can feel safer knowing they are legally protected here”.

What Does It Do? 

In one sense, the new law will change very little. Most fertility clinics already require that surrogates meet certain important requirements. But the bill now puts some of those requirements into state law. These include for a surrogate to:

• be 21 years old or older;
• have previously given birth to a child;
• undergo a medical evaluation and mental health counseling; and
• have independent legal counsel of her choosing, licensed in the state, throughout the arrangement.

So nothing crazy onerous. And intended parents have their own basic requirements, which also include being over 21 years of age or older, undergoing a medical evaluation, and having independent legal counsel of their choosing by an attorney licensed in Colorado through the arrangement.

What It (Importantly) Does Not Include

Colorado’s surrogacy bill does not require that intended parent(s) be married, straight, or genetically related to their child. The bill recognizes that families take many forms, and provides helpful and broad protections. By contrast, some states require intended parents to be married in order to receive parental recognition under state law.

Additionally, the law recognizes that some Coloradans may grow their families with the help of donated sperm, eggs, or embryos. The new law-to-be makes it clear that the intended parents would have the protection of state law regardless of their genetic connection — or lack thereof — to their child. This is especially important in light of the horrific legal situations other parents have faced.

For example, Jay Timmons and Rick Olson went through surrogacy in Wisconsin, and were shocked when their case — which everyone believed to be a routine determination of parentage in a surrogacy arrangement — was assigned to a judge with views hostile to the process. The judge declared that their son, Jacob, was actually a legal orphan. Only after a nightmare of a year, when the judge stepped down to run for office, was their case reassigned and their parental rights swiftly recognized by Wisconsin law. Thanks to Colorado’s new law, a judge with anti-LGBTQ+ views, or other idiosyncratic ideas of who should be permitted to be a family, would not be left to their own devices to make similar extreme and harmful rulings.

Genetic (Traditional) Surrogacy

A vast majority of surrogacy arrangements in the United States and in Colorado occur in the form of “gestational” surrogacy, where the surrogate has no genetic link to the child. By contrast, “genetic surrogacy,” also known as “traditional surrogacy,” is where the surrogate is also genetically related to the child she is carrying and is, in a sense, both an egg donor and a surrogate simultaneously. Despite genetic surrogacy being relative rare, Colorado’s surrogacy bill addresses traditional surrogacy on equal footing as gestational surrogacy, putting in place parallel legal safeguards and procedures for both types.

No Out-Of-State Attorneys

Colorado assisted reproductive technology attorneys, as well as out-of-state attorneys in the field, should take particular note of the sections applying to attorney representation and parentage orders. Sorry, attorneys licenses in other states, but the bill provides that both the surrogate and the intended parents must have Colorado legal representation throughout the arrangement. Under current practices, frequently attorneys — including, at times, non-Colorado-licensed attorneys — only provide representation in the contract phase before the pregnancy and for the parentage legal phase after the pregnancy. Now, Colorado attorneys will need to be clear that their representation is for the length of the surrogacy arrangements.

Further, in a surrogacy arrangement, the parties must generally obtain a court order determining parentage to override the legal presumption that the person giving birth is the parent of the child. Previously, such a court order could have been obtained in another state and provided to a Colorado hospital and Colorado vital records directly. The new legislation requires that an out-of-state parentage order would need to be registered (aka domesticated) in a Colorado court first. Thus, the new law makes it financially and logistically less desirable to obtain a parentage order in a state other than Colorado.

Once Polis signs this bill, a huge congrats will be owed to bill sponsors Rep. Meg Froelich and Sen. Joann Ginal, as well as Colorado for its recognition of the exponentially increasing use of surrogacy in modern family building and for passing laws supportive and protective of surrogates, intended parents, and the children alike.

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Ellen Trachman is the Managing Attorney of Trachman Law Center, LLC, a Denver-based law firm specializing in assisted reproductive technology law, and co-host of the podcast I Want To Put A Baby In You. You can reach her at babies@abovethelaw.com.

Currently, long-term capital gains — the profits made by selling appreciated assets held for more than one year — are taxed at a maximum of 20 percent for higher-income individuals. 

Individuals with a taxable income of between $40,000 and $441,450 pay a more modest 15 percent tax rate on long-term capital gains, and those with an income below $40,000 owe no long-term capital gains tax at all.

Under current tax law, higher-income individuals may also owe an additional 3.8 percent net investment income tax on both long-term and short-term capital gains. As the law stands, income earned through the appreciation of a capital asset is almost always taxed at a lower rate than income earned through employment.

That might soon be changing, at least for certain higher earners. President Joe Biden recently unveiled a new policy that, if it becomes law, would hike the long-term capital gains tax for the highest earners to 43.4 percent (which would include the existing 3.8 percent capital gains surtax). In contrast, the current top marginal tax rate for wage income stands at 37 percent.

For most retail investors, this is hardly reason to panic. The new highest long-term capital gains rate would only apply to those making more than $1 million on an annual basis. Furthermore, tax experts are expecting there to be exemptions to the new highest capital gains rate for some taxpayers, including business owners.

Any major change in tax law calls for a reexamination of potential tax liability for high-earning organizations and individuals. Yet, more broadly, most economists are not expecting a major dent in equities markets if the higher capital gains rate becomes law. Following a one-day swoon in U.S. stocks when the planned capital gains tax increase was first announced, markets rebounded robustly the following day.

A report from UBS Global Wealth Management found that from a historical perspective, there is “no relationship” between the performance of the stock market and changes to the capital gains tax rate. UBS analysts expected equity market volatility based on an increase in the capital gains rate, to the extent there was any at all, to “be very short-lived.” LPL Financial broadly agreed with the conclusions of UBS, citing the state of the broader economy as being far more important to stock index performance in the past than were changes to the capital gains rate.

Additionally, although he had not previously announced plans for a specific top rate, President Biden has hardly been circumspect about his general intention to raise taxes on higher earners and on passive forms of income. Thus, many investors believe any effect of a higher capital gains rate has probably already been priced into the market. Others though, including some high-profile hedge fund managers, believe that the effect on stock market indexes has been minimal because President Biden’s proposed top rate of 43.4 percent does not have a realistic chance at becoming law.

Goldman Sachs economists predict that President Biden’s top 43.4 percent capital gains rate will never become law, and instead foresee a compromise top capital gains rate of 28 percent. Any increase in the capital gains rate would require the backing of all 50 Senate Democrats, because no Republican senator is expected to support any increase to the capital gains rate. An increase to the capital gains rate could be accomplished through reconciliation, meaning it would be immune to a Republican filibuster and would only require a simple Senate majority. Although Democrats could not lose a single Democratic senator in ushering in an increased capital gains rate, it is worth noting that a substantial majority of voters generally favor increasing taxes on the very wealthy, including a modest majority of even Republican voters.

It remains to be seen whether a top tax rate of 43.4 percent will become a reality for investors who make more than $1 million a year. But even a far more modest tax hike would be a significant change for top earners, and even the more optimistic fund managers accept the high probability of some kind of increase from today’s historically low capital gains rate making it into law.

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Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.

Attorneys are spending much more time with a bunch of things at home. There’s not a corresponding decrease in professional responsibilities. That’s a mathematical formula for disaster. You can give people thousands of vacation hours a year. But if you don’t want to decrease billable hours, then nobody will take it.

— Jarrett Green, a wellness consultant and former Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom attorney, commenting on the negative role that billable hour targets play on attorney mental health in the legal industry. As first reported here at Above the Law, some firms, like Orrick, are taking action on this front, and have added 40 billable, bonus-eligible vacation hours to attorneys’ schedules.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.