The Appeals Court of Massachusetts has affirmed a trial court decision holding that students at Harvard University lack standing to challenge the university’s endowment investment policy and force it to divest its investments in fossil fuel companies. (See Nonprofit Issues, 4/15.) The Court has agreed that they have no special personal right affected by the investments, and that they have no standing to represent “future generations.”
The board of directors of a nonprofit homeowners’ association may not bar a fellow director from attending executive sessions of the board because she violated confidentiality requests. An appellate court in Arizona has reversed a trial court decision denying the excluded director’s application for a preliminary injunction to overturn the ban. (McNally v. Sun Lakes Homeowners Association, Ct. of App., AZ, No. 1 CA-CV-15-0744, 10/13/16.)
“The question of who can speak for the animals has long vexed federal judges in animal-welfare cases,” a judge in the federal District Court for the District of Columbia has written recently. “As a general matter, courts have concluded that well-established principles of Article III standing permit human beings to invoke their own injuries in fact to challenge harms done to animals, but it can be exceptionally confusing to apply settled standing doctrine to determine when and under what circumstances an act that is allegedly harmful to animals works a cognizable injury in fact to huma
An employee allegedly told that she was passed over for a promotion because the selected candidate had “a management background” and “you were on maternity leave for a while” has sufficient evidence of sex discrimination to proceed to suit, a federal District Court in Maryland has held.
The Internal Revenue Service and a federal District Court are justified in saying that an non-existent entity is not entitled to federal income tax exemption as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has held. The conclusion was reached in an appeal by a convicted tax evader who was trying to avoid having to personally pay $3.79 million in income taxes owed on money received from his creation and sale of health supplements.
