Legal News

Oklahoma made national news in 2010 with an amendment to the state constitution banning its courts from basing rulings on international law. The amendment specifically mentions Islamic law, often known as Shariah law.

Sharia, loosely defined as a set of moral and religious principles in Islam, is woven into the legal systems of many Muslim nations. It covers issues ranging from what to eat and drink to structuring a loan to setting up an inheritance and divorce, among other things.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit wasn’t keen on the measure, ruling this January that it raised First Amendment issues and sending it back down to a lower court for further proceedings.

That hasn’t dampened enthusiasm for similar laws, however. The WSJ reports that 21 states are considering measures that would prohibit judges from applying the laws or legal codes of other nations in a wide variety of cases. Three states — Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona — recently added versions of such laws to the books.

Are they necessary? According to the Journal, proponents of the bills often cite a 1996 custody dispute in which a Maryland state appellate court deferred to a Pakistani court order awarding custody of a 12-year-old girl to her father in Pakistan, rather than her mother in Maryland.

The Maryland court held that the Pakistani court had, in fact, looked to the “best interests of the child,” even though it had also invoked an Islamic notion known as Hazanit, which gives preference to the father in custody cases.

A dissenting judge criticized the six-judge majority for failing to more heavily weigh the Pakistani court’s suggestion that, if custody were given to the mother, the child would live in an “un-Islamic society.”

“It’s very illustrative of the type of decision that would never have happened” with the proposed laws in place, said Stephen Gelé, a New Orleans lawyer and spokesman for the American Public Policy Alliance, which drafted the model law adopted by many states.

While the pending bills don’t mention Sharia or any other system specifically, Muslim groups and others say that fact does little to mask the laws’ true design.

“Removing ‘Sharia’ [from proposed laws] was purely a political move,” said Muneer Awad, the plaintiff in the Oklahoma case and the head of that state’s arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group. “The goals are all the same: to target Islam.”

Libor and Tibor: Investigators in a world-wide probe of how crucial interest rates are set are focusing on a small number of traders suspected of trying to influence other bank employees to manipulate the rates. WSJ

First Amendment: Georgia’s highest court has struck down a state law that made it crime to publicly offer to help people commit suicide, ruling it violated free-speech protections under the Constitution. WSJ

NGOs targeted: Egypt’s judicial ministry named 43 nongovernmental organization employees, including 19 Americans, who will face charges of establishing NGOs without licenses and receiving and spending foreign funds without government permission. If convicted, the workers could face financial penalties and up to five years in prison. WSJ

Mr. President, welcome: The ABA has a new president-elect, and he’s from New York City. And he has interesting hair. ABA Journal

License to sue to drive: A court in Saudi Arabia agreed to hear the first lawsuits by Saudi women challenging the kingdom’s de facto ban on women driving. WSJ

M.I.A’s bird-flipping at her Super Bowl performance could cost Comcast’s Corp.’s NBC a multi-million dollar fine. Or maybe it won’t cost (shhh).

The Supreme Court is considering whether the Federal Communications Commission can fine broadcasters for failing to cut out dirty words or images during live broadcasts. The WSJ’s Jess Bravin, who covered the arguments, wrote that the Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold the government’s regulation of broadcast indecency.

The question before the Supreme Court is whether the FCC indecency rules, which changed in the early 1990s to prohibit unscripted or “fleeting” expletives or images that broadcasters accidentally air, are unconstitutionally vague.

Back to M.I.A. As the WSJ’s Amy Schatz reports, the British singer made the obscene gesture during NBC’s Super Bowl halftime show featuring Madonna. The  bird-flipping came in a song in which M.I.A. was singing a lyric, “I don’t give a (shhh).” She didn’t clearly sing the s-word during the performance.

A spokeswoman for the Parents Television Council, a TV watchdog group, told Schatz the group doesn’t plan to launch an email campaign to encourage its members to file FCC complaints about the incident.

FCC indecency rules prohibit the use of obscenities or lewd images during the hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. If the FCC receives complaints about the broadcast, NBC stations could face fines of as much as $325,000 for airing the show, according to Schatz.

An NBC representative said: “Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers.”

The incident recalled the Super Bowl halftime show in which singer Janet Jackson suffered a breast-revealing “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004.

President Barack Obama has tapped Arnold & Porter’s William Baer to head the justice Department’s Antitrust Division. The White House made the announcement Friday. The BLT and the New York Times haves stories on the nomination here and here.

Baer, who leads A&P’s antitrust group, would replace Sharis Posen, the acting head of the division. Pozen, who is leaving the post in April, took over after Christine Varney left the government in August to join Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Baer has the right pedigree for the job. The former director of the FTC’s Competition Bureau, Baer’s client list includes General Electric, Intel, Cisco, Visa and Monsanto, to name a few.

Baer (Stanford Law, Lawrence) declined to comment.

Law schools have been under a lot of scrutiny lately, with attention paid to their job-placement data, lawsuits over how they report those numbers, and even a suggestion that they pay students to quit school.

Now, one school is offering some students an extra semester — for free — if they agree to postpone taking the bar exam until February, instead of the usual July test. The City University of New York School of Law offered “a handful” of students a grant in the fall if they agree to sit for the bar exam in February 2013 instead of this summer, the New York Post reported.

The school’s pass rates for students sitting for the bar for first time fell to 67% last year, below a statewide average of 86%, the Post noted. Sanctions from the Bar Association could be implemented if schools have consecutive years with pass rates below 75%.

“Ten years of data on CUNY law graduates taking the bar highlight the predictive importance of law-school grade point averages and study in bar-related, doctrinal courses,” said Dean Michelle Anderson in an email, according to the ABA Journal. “Based on these data, we reached out to those students who were most at risk to offer them the option of extending their study and deepening their preparation for the bar.” Anderson’s letter to the law school community can be seen here.

School officials said that the ABA counts both the February and July exams in reviewing schools’ performance, and claim that CUNY has nothing to gain by delaying the test-takers, the Post reported. But students point out that the February 2013 exam results would not be included in this year’s tally, which comes after two disappointing years of results.

CUNY was 15^th out of 15 New York State law schools in each of the last two years, with pass rates of 67% in July 2011 and 73% in July 2010, according to the New York Law Journal. Ninety-nine CUNY students were first-time takers in July 2011, the fewest from any of the New York schools.

A CUNY spokeswoman told NYLJ in December that nine graduates from previous years took the bar exam for the first time last summer “and did not do as well as our 2011 graduates,” and said the 2011 graduates had a pass rate of 73% for the most recent period.

It used to be pretty rare for a big law firm to get slapped with a lawsuit. But claims aimed at lawyers themselves are increasingly common, and law firms are bulking up on insurance to protect themselves from expensive liability claims.

Legal experts say the trend started ramping up in the 1980s. During the Savings & Loans crisis law firms that represented failed financial institutions were targeted for litigation by the FDIC. For more detail on that — and a primer on similar exposure in the most recent financial crisis — see this rather prescient report put out by Wilkie Farr in 2008.

Malpractice claims are up, something insurance and legal experts attribute in large part to the economic downturn. Troubled businesses fail, and bankruptcy trustees seek to recover money from the lawyers who advised the companies. And some lawyers report that clients are even using the threat of litigation to lower their legal bills.

WSJ examined the issue here with a story on how firms are buying deeper levels of coverage and expanding the types of policies they take out to include employee and management insurance. Those come in handy for settling pesky claims from disgruntled partners, as in this 2007 settlement between Sidley Austin and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC said 32 former Sidley partners were covered by federal anti-discrimination laws.

With insurance among the top operational costs for law firms, we’re talking big numbers here.

“We are seeing firms buying higher limits of insurance, and there are some buying up to $400 million or more,” says Dan Knise, president of Ames & Gough Insurance and Risk Management, a specialty insurance brokerage.

The more money at stake in a deal, a lawsuit or a potential patent, the more vulnerable the law firms representing those clients are if things go south, insurance brokers say.

Firms “know you could have a $200 or $300 million dollar loss,” Knise said.

And as the biggest firms take out multi-million dollar policies, they are also increasing what insurers call their “retention” — essentially the deductible that they have to pay before the insurance kicks in.

A higher deductible can lower the overall cost of a policy. But it also means a firm has to shell out more of its own money before insurance takes over to cover litigation and other costs.

Firms with more than 500 or 750 attorneys have retentions that range from $2 million to $4 million, says Anne Marie Davine, U.S law firm practice leader at insurance broker Marsh. “The law firms are taking on a great deal of exposure,” she says.

Goldman Sachs chief  Lloyd C. Blankfein has a new gig: corporate spokesman for same-sex marriage.

The New York Times reports that Blankfein was recruited by the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that promotes equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

“The green visor crowd is not typically associated with socially progressive policies, and this is further proof that a diversity of Americans are coming to the same conclusion,” Fred Sainz, an executive with the Human Rights Campaign, said. We’ve reached out to Blankfein for comment.

Foreign aid, but no foreign groups, allowed: Egyptian prosecutors plan to bring criminal charges against more than 40 employees of nongovernmental organizations, including at least six Americans, escalating an investigation of foreign groups that has ruptured Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. The workers are accused of working for an unregistered organization and distributing foreign funds illegally. WSJ

Mortgage sleuth: Years before the housing bust, Fannie Mae investigated mortgage and foreclosure problems brought to its attention by whistleblower Nye Lavalle, who says the company turned a blind eye. A spokesman for Fannie Mae said in a statement last week that the company quickly addressed several issues that were raised in a 2006 report that corroborated many of Lavalle’s findings. NYT

Struck down: Georgia’s top court on Monday struck down a state law designed to discourage assisted suicides, saying it violated free speech rights. AP

‘Sister Wives’ lawsuit moves forward: A federal judge has ruled there is sufficient evidence to allow a polygamous family made famous by a reality TV show to pursue a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Utah’s bigamy law. AP

Part-time: Flagging employer support, the growing popularity of Master of Business Administration programs, rising tuition and the tough legal job market are among the factors contributing to declining enrollment in part-time law school programs. NLJ

Monday, Feb. 6

• After more than a year in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. –  the operator of A&P, SuperFresh, Pathmark and other grocery stores — will present a reorganization plan for the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y.

• A federal judge is slated at 12:15 p.m. PST to determine whether the suspect in the Tucson shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded several others, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is competent to stand trial. The judge, Larry Burns,  said last week he was inclined to extend Jared Loughner’s stay at a detention facility where he is being forcibly medicated, after a psychologist said the 23-year-old was unfit for trial. The case is in federal district court in Arizona. (2:11-mj-00035)

Tuesday, Feb. 7

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the  Ninth Circuit is expected to rule Tuesday on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California. The court’s decision is scheduled to be released by 10 a.m. PST.

Thursday, Feb. 9

• At 10 a.m. EST, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to mark up S.1945 — a bill to permit the televising of Supreme Court proceedings.

• At 10 a.m. EST, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hear an appeal from Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman trained as a scientist and convicted of trying to kill U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2008. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison in 2010.

• Mississippi’s Supreme Court will hear a bid by the state attorney general to overturn the pardons of four convicted murderers and other inmates. Then-Gov. Haley Barbour issued the pardons last month.

Friday, Feb. 10

• A Pennsylvania judge is slated to hold a hearing on a motion by prosecutors in the Jerry Sandusky case for a jury brought from outside Centre County, where Penn State is located and where the ex-football coach allegedly molested at least 10 boys. The judge is also supposed to rule on Sandusky’s request to modify the conditions of his bail to be able to communicate with his grandchildren.

He is currently under house arrest and forbidden from having contact with anyone under 18. Sandusky, a former Penn State defensive coordinator, denies wrongdoing.

Got something to add? Email us at joe.palazzolo@wsj.com

Though it’s early days, Australia’s Freehills has confirmed it is in merger talks with Herbert Smith, which has practices across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

“Freehills and U.K.- based international firm Herbert Smith have been holding preliminary discussions about a potential link-up. No decision has been made by either firm,” a Freehills spokesman told Deal Journal Australia.

Freehills and Herbert Smith staff were advised that exploratory discussions regarding the potential tie-up were underway, via internal emails Friday.

To keep reading on Deal Journal Australia, click here.

This opinion today from Judge William Fletcher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit backhands the U.S. Forest Service for an environmental impact statement “with more than the usual amount of obfuscating bureaucratese.”

By way of example, he includes in his opinion a passage of the impact statement. It is quite a slog.

The spatial location of strategically placed area treatments (1) under Alternatives S1 [the 2001 Framework]and S2 [the 2004 Framework] are the same, but they are different than previously considered. For example, analysis in the [2001 EIS] was based on the assumption that the area treatments would be placed (2) primarily on the upper two-thirds of slopes, thus minimizing overlap with RCAs (3) associated with perennial, intermittent, and ephemeral streams. However, this assumption is no longer valid. Consequently, under Alternatives S1 and S2, treatments are not limited to any geographic position. (4) As a result, more treatments within RCAs are expected. (5) Alternative S1 requires that portions of treatment areas be left in an untreated condition. (6) It is likely that riparian areas would be priorities for retention to meet this requirement. (7) Alternative S2 does not require retention of untreated areas within treatment units so that fire behavior and fire effects are effectively reduced within the entire unit. (8)

Now, here are footnotes.

(1) There is no definitions section in the 2004 EIS. From usage in the EIS, it is apparent that “treatments” means logging and/or prescribed burns.

(2) In standard English, “placed” means “conducted.”

(3) “RCAs” are Riparian Conservation Areas. See January 2004 Record Of Decision approving the 2004 EIS, at 114 (“riparian conservation area (RCA)”).

In its brief to this court, the Forest Service misstates the meaning of the acronym. It indicates that RCAs are Resource Conservation Areas. See Response Brief at 33 (“Resource Conservation Areas (‘RCAs’)”). In the context of this case, the difference between “riparian” and “resource” is important. “Riparian” is a precise term, meaning something related to the bank of a river, stream, or other body of water. “Resource” is a general term, meaning anything from a natural resource such as trees to a financial resource such as a bank account.

(4) This sentence is misleading. “Treatments” (i.e., logging and burning) under Alternative S1 (the 2001 Framework) are more geographically limited than “treatments” under Alternative S2 (the 2004 Framework).

(5) This sentence translated into standard English: “As a result, more logging and burning close to streams are expected under the 2004 Framework.”

(6) This sentence translated into standard English: “The 2001 Framework requires that certain areas not be logged or burned.”

(7) This sentence translated into standard English: “It is likely that under the 2001 Framework riparian areas would not be logged or burned.”

(8) This sentence translated into standard English: “The 2004 Framework allows logging and burning close to streams in order to eliminate trees everywhere in a given ‘treatment unit’ as a means of reducing the risk of fire.”

We remind the Forest Service: “Environmental impact statements shall be written in plain language . . . so that decisionmakers and the public can readily understand them. Agencies should employ writers of clear prose or editors to write, review, or edit statements[.]” 40 C.F.R. § 1502.8.

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

That old truism ran through our mind today when we read the latest news about private-equity firm Carlyle Group LP. The firm, currently preparing for an initial public offering, has, according to Bloomberg, ditched an idea for which it had taken a fair amount of heat in recent days.

The novel idea: require future stockholders to use arbitration rather than the courts to settle any sort of gripe against the firm.

The backlash against the idea was immediate, largely from shareholder’s rights groups and firms that make livings suing companies for stock fraud. Politicians also voiced opposition.

“The SEC should reject this effort to circumvent shareholder rights because it will be an extraordinary and enduring precedent,” U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal told Bloomberg. “It will open the door to arbitration clauses in all IPOs, and thereby eviscerate shareholder rights.”

Not everyone panned the idea. Susan Beck, writing over at the American Lawyer magazine, described her relative ambivalence to the idea:

. . . Carlyle’s arbitration provision doesn’t bother me that much. That’s because investors are clearly informed about what they’re getting into. If you don’t like waiving your right to sue, then don’t invest in Carlyle.

In any event, according to the Bloomberg story, it sounded like the SEC might not have given its thumbs-up to a prospectus that included such a charge.

“After consultations with the SEC, Carlyle investors and other interested parties, we have decided to withdraw the proposed arbitration provision,” Christopher Ullman, a Carlyle spokesman, told Bloomberg. “We first offered the provision because we believed that arbitrating claims would be more efficient, cost effective and beneficial to our unitholders.”

It’s getting to be tax time again. But filing W2s isn’t what the State of Arizona had in mind when they hit Amazon.com with a $53 million bill for uncollected sales taxes, the latest attempt from a state to get revenue from the online retailer, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

In a filing with the SEC, Amazon disclosed the bill from Arizona — which the company received in November — saying the state “is alleging that we should have collected a transaction tax that is similar to a sales tax on applicable transactions” for the period March 2006 to December 2010. Amazon said the assessment is without merit and plans to defend itself.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer isn’t taking a position on the matter, her spokesman told the Tucson Citizen. The decision to bill Amazon was made by the state’s Revenue Department, he said.

Nevertheless, state Sen. Al Melvin( R., Tucson) introduced a bill last week that would tax online sales of any company with a warehouse, distribution center or similar place of business in the state, Tucson Citizen reported. The bill, which has the support of the Arizona Retailers Association, is being presented as a tax-equity issue.

As we mentioned a few months ago, Amazon is supporting a plan for federal legislation aimed at letting states collect sales taxes from Internet retailers. Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, told a House Judiciary Committee in November that “Amazon strongly supports enactment of a federal bill with appropriate provisions.”

Last year, Texas hit Amazon with a bill for $269 million in uncollected sales taxes covering a four-year period. The company said “Texas did not provide a sufficient basis” for its demand, and closed a warehouse in the Dallas area.

Amazon’s filing on Wednesday also disclosed that the SEC began looking into the company’s dispute with Texas and had completed its inquiry in November. No details were provided on the outcome.

Last summer, during the fight with Texas, Amazon offered to invest $300 million in the state, with warehouses and distribution centers that could employ as many as 6,000 people, according to the New York Times. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was in favor of the deal, but the Texas Retailers Association wasn’t, and lawmakers balked.

Amazon worked out a deal with California last year, under which it would start collecting taxes in September 2012. The no-tax loophole for online retailers is expected to come to an end this year, as we noted.

The New York Times has a front-pager on the SEC’s practice of granting financial giants exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud. The waivers have made it easier for the companies — like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America — to raise money and avoid legal liability if their forecasts are off.

The Times found 350 instances where the SEC gave Wall Street institutions a pass on those or other sanctions.

According to the Times,

JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.

Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010.

By granting those waivers, the S.E.C. allowed Wall Street firms to have powerful advantages, securities experts and former regulators say. The institutions remained protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which makes it easier to avoid class-action shareholder lawsuits.

S.E.C. officials told the Times they grant waivers to companies with legitimate capital-raising needs. Privileges are usually revoked when a cases involves a firm making false or misleading statements about its own business, but not when the commission has charged a firm with lying about, for example, a mortgage security it created and hawked to investors.

“The purpose of taking away this simplified path to capital is to protect investors, not to punish a company,” Meredith B. Cross, the S.E.C.’s corporation finance director, told the Times. “You’re not seeing the times that waivers aren’t being granted, because the companies don’t ask when they know the answer will be no.”

The economy added 243,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.3% (from 8.5% in December), according to the Labor Department.

How did the legal services sector do? It added 1,000 jobs, according to the figures released Friday, after dropping about 1,800 jobs in December.

Conditions at law firms have stabilized since 2009, when the legal industry shed 41,900 positions, according to the Labor Department. Cuts were more moderate last year, with some 2,700 positions eliminated.

Professional and business services, as a whole, accounted for 70,000 new jobs in January, according to the Labor Department.

Insider-trading legislation: After years of delay, the Senate voted overwhelmingly, 96-3, in favor of a ban on lawmakers from trading stocks based on information they pick up in the halls of Capitol Hill — a move aimed in part at helping repair the institution’s low approval ratings. The bill now moves to the House, where Republican leaders said they would vote on it next week. WSJ

Taking it to the bank: U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against Switzerland’s oldest bank, Wegelin & Co., alleging it helped wealthy Americans hide more than $1.2 billion in secret accounts abroad. The move marks the first time U.S. authorities have charged a bank rather than individuals with helping Americans evade taxes. A lawyer for the bank declined to comment. WSJ

Closed circuit: A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a San Francisco judge abused his discretion by ordering the release of a video recording of the trial over California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. NLJ

Frivolous: The Second Circuit on Thursday sanctioned lawyers behind a lawsuit accusing former officials in the Bush administration of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks. Reuters

Tucson shootings case: A judge wrote in a court order Thursday that a psychologist has concluded that Jared Loughner is still not mentally competent to stand trial. Arizona Republic

The Proposition 8 trial has already been done on Broadway. Now it’s headed to Tinseltown with a fresh cast, including George Clooney as David Boies (Boies, Schiller & Flexner) and Martin Sheen as Ted Olson (Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher).

The two will read selections from the 2010 trial over California’s voter-mandated gay marriage ban — at the direction of Rob Reiner, Law Blog Retroactive Director of the Year for 1984 (This is Spinal Tap) — in a play by Dustin Lance Black.

Spoiler: Boies and Olson win. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco declared Prop 8 unconstitutional in 2010. The case is now before in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Check out the flyer for the details and additional cast.

The head of the New York State Bar Association says the organization will study whether nonlawyers should be allowed to own a stake in law firms.

President Vincent E. Doyle III, speaking at an American Bar Association conference in New Orleans, said the idea “is worthy of serious consideration,” according to prepared remarks. But he said NYSBA “remains opposed to nonlawyer ownership of law firms.”

The issue had been settled since a little more than a decade ago, when “Big 5” accounting firms were trying to acquire law firms in the U.S., as they’d done in Europe. An ABA commission, siding with the accounting firms, recommended a change to the model rules to allow for nonlawyer ownership in law firms.

The New York State Bar Association, along with several other state bar associations, rejected the proposal, arguing that it could compromise core values of the profession such as loyalty, independence and confidentiality. When the issue came before the American Bar Association voting body, in 2000, it was defeated.

The ABA is now considering a more limited proposal: Nonlawyers could own stakes in law firms, but lawyers would still have to maintain a controlling financial interest and voting rights in the firm, and nonlawyers couldn’t have their own clients or offer nonlegal services to clients.

Doyle, of Connors & Vilardo in Buffalo, has appointed a task force to study the proposal. It will be headed by Stephen P. Younger of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, the NYSBA said in a statement.

Last week, we told you about the advancement of a bill in New Jersey that would allow same-sex marriage. Governor Chris Christie’s response was a veto threat and a suggestion that the issue be put to a referendum.

Now, three thousand miles away, the Washington state Senate has passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, and Gov. Chris Gregoire is encouraging the state House of Representatives to pass it so she can sign it into law, AP reports.

Washington would be the seventh state to allow gay and lesbian couples to get married, if the House approves the measure, as expected. The Senate passed the bill 28-21, with four Republicans crossing party lines and voting for it, and three Democrats voting against it.

An amendment calling for a referendum clause in the bill was rejected, but opponents have said they will file a challenge to the legislation. Once the bill is signed into law by the governor, opponents will have to present more than 120,000 signatures by June 6 to force a referendum.

Gov. Gregoire discussed Gov. Christie’s suggestion that the issue of same-sex marriage be decided by referendum by saying she is “urging every one of my senators and representatives to stand up, take the vote, do the right thing. Bear the responsibility, do not just send it to the ballot,” Huffington Post reported.

The last time New Jersey put a civil rights issue to a referendum was 1915, when (male) voters defeated a measure that would have granted women the right to vote.

Websites that illegally stream live sporting events are just too tempting for some fans, including NFL quarterbacks.

Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots, said at a pre-Super Bowl press conference this morning that he watched the big game last year while rehabbing in Costa Rica via an “illegal” streaming site. You can view a blog post on it here and view the press conference here.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan hope to take away some of that temptation ahead of this year’s Super Bowl, which is set for Sunday night. (By the way, the NFL will stream the game live online for the first time this year.)

On Thursday, prosecutors announced that they had seized 16 Web sites that provided access to illegal live streams of copyrighted sporting events and brought criminal charges against a Michigan man who allegedly operated nine of those websites.

“Sports fans may be tempted by illegal streaming websites, but in the end, it is they who pay the price,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. “These websites and their operators deprive sports leagues and networks of legitimate revenue, forcing spectators and viewers to bear the cost of this piracy down the line.”

The websites allegedly linked to other sites that broadcasst pirated sporting and pay-per-view events, including National Football League, National Basketball League and National Hockey League games and wrestling matches.

Several of the websites had notices posted on Thursday indicating they had been seized by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, which is conducting the probe. The investigation is ongoing.

Yonjo Quiroa, 28 years old, was arrested Wednesday and charged with one count of criminal infringement of copyright, which carries a term of up to five years in prison.

A lawyer who represented Quiroa at a court hearing in Michigan on Wednesday declined comment.

Prosecutors have alleged that Quiroa registered nine of the Web sites in 2010 and in 2011 and operated them from his home in Comstock Park, Mich., about two hours from where Brady played college football at the University of Michigan.

Quiroa allegedly received profits of at least $13,000 from online merchants who paid him to advertise at least on the websites, prosecutors said.