WJI's Daily Reads for June 10, 2022

Reuters: Nomination of John Lee for Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals heads to full Senate.

Reuters: U.S. Supreme Court allows counting of undated mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

The Intercept: Immigration and Customs Enforcement searching personal-information database on massive scale.

The Intercept first reported last year that ICE had purchased access to LexisNexis Risk Solutions databases for $16.8 million, unlocking an oceanic volume of personal information on American citizens and noncitizens alike that spans hundreds of millions of individuals, totaling billions of records drawn from 10,000 different sources. Becoming a LexisNexis customer not only provides law enforcement with instant, easy access to a wealth of easily searchable data points on hundreds of millions of people, but also lets them essentially purchase data rather than having to formally request it or seek a court order.

Internal documents now show that this unfathomably large quantity of data is being searched with a regularity that is itself vast. LexisNexis usage logs between March and September 2021 totaled 1,211,643 searches and 302,431 “reports,” information packages that provide an exhaustive rundown of an individual’s location, work history, family relationships, and many other data points aggregated by LexisNexis, a data broker better known for its legal research resources.

CNN: Federal justice department investigating Louisiana State Police for racial discrimination in policing and use of excessive force.

This is the first pattern-or-practice investigation of a statewide law enforcement agency the Justice Department has opened in more than two decades, (Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke) said.

But it is the fifth the department has launched against any police agency since the start of the Biden administration, she said, including ongoing probes of departments in Minneapolis; Louisville, Kentucky; Phoenix; and Mount Vernon, New York, she said.

Marijuana Moment: Bipartisan talks about marijuana banking and expungements.

Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) had a meeting with (Senate Majority Leader Chuck) Schumer this week to go over possible avenues of interim reform like the SAFE Banking Act or the HOPE Act, which he’s sponsoring alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). That measure would incentivize states and local governments to expunge cannabis records in their jurisdictions.

Reuters: $175 million settlement by Signet Jewelers resolves gender bias claims of 68,000 female employees.