Lead Stories

A federal District Court in Pennsylvania has ruled that an alumni trustee on the Board of Pennsylvania State University is a “public employee” who can be removed from office by the Board and not a “public official” who cannot be retaliated against for exercising his free speech rights under the Constitution.  It has dismissed former trustee Barry J. Fenchak’s claim that he was “deliberately retaliated against” for his “exercise of speech.”

The Constitution of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People includes a provision providing that a member who sues the Association with respect to internal matters of the Association shall indemnify the Association and its officers and directors against all costs in defending the Association, without regard to the outcome of such litigation.  It provides that the group’s claim shall be brought in Baltimore, MD.

The 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court decision and allowed a black rights nonprofit to sue for violation of the First and 14^th Amendments when Pinellas County revoked an authorized grant and denied a second grant of Covid-relief funds.  It has found that the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (“APEDF”) has alleged sufficient facts to survive a motion to dismiss.

Shane and Victoria McCartney, relative newcomers to the town of Welcome, MN, decided to participate in a program called “Going Hog-Wild in Martin County.” The program distributes dozens of artistically painted cement pigs throughout the county as a promotion of Martin County.  The county is the largest hog producing county in the state and the sixth largest hog producer in the country.

The founder of a Wyoming public radio station cannot collect on a $219,000 start-up loan he said he made to the organization, even though the loan was regularly recognized on the nonprofit’s annual Form 990 tax filing, the Supreme Court of Wyoming has affirmed.  The Court said that the loan was not sufficiently memorialized in writing and was unenforceable under the state’s statute of frauds.

Laurel Lee Pedot was a long-time resident of The Villas at Sunny Acres in Thornton, CO when she executed a will and accompanying trust in 1989.  The trust provided that the residue of her estate would be granted to “Sunny Acres Villa, Inc., Foundation Trust, a Colorado non-profit corporation.”

In 1991, she amended the trust to provide that the residue should go to the Foundation Trust, “to be used exclusively in connection with The Villas at Sunny Acres community and no other community operated by Sunny Acres Villa, Inc.”