On June 21, 2021, the Supreme Court declined to hear an important federal-jurisdiction case. This was a setback for WLF, which had argued in its amicus brief that the Ninth Circuit erred by holding that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear a challenge to Hawaii’s consumer-protection statute. The decision ignored the key differences between consumer-protection suits filed by contingency-fee lawyers and state criminal cases, which are generally entitled to abstention. WLF also argued that Bristol-Myers Squibb’s compelled-speech claims were meritorious. The denial of cert will likely lead to more federal courts abstaining from hearing free-speech cases.
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