Who Knew Biting Other Lawyers Was Frowned Upon?

Episode Notes

Transcript

Joe Patrice:

So what’s going on with my boys and in some cases, gals out there?

Kathryn Rubino:

Hi.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, this is Joe Patrice from Above the Law. Kathryn Rubino spoke up as in some cases gals, I guess we’re also joined by Chris Williams. This is the show where every week where Above the Law we talk about the big stories in legal from the week. That was, if you’re not familiar with the gag that we were just working on, Donald, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to say, what’s going on with my boys in quotation marks, and in some cases, gals also, it’s his long diatribe about why he thinks that we need to stop talking about the Epstein files, which he claims were written by I think Obama and Hillary and James Comey now is his new logic.

Kathryn Rubino:

Just throwing names out there that will get people back on his side, I think is actually what’s going on there.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. So Epstein stuff, I mean, well, hold on. I guess we can get started. I’ll have some small talk. Yeah, some small talk, which we can continue talking about this. This is not one of our topics, but it is some fun. So the Epstein files, so I don’t understand where the idea came from, that there is some sort of a client list and maybe there is isn’t. I always kind of assumed there. I thought this guy seemed like he was just a sex trafficker for his own purposes, and he hung out with a few people, but it didn’t seem like he was engaged in some sort of grand conspiracy. But somewhere along the line, it became a kind of right-wing talking point that there was some client list that was going to bring down the deep state, and that got hyped and hyped and hyped up to the point where our Attorney General said that she had the list on her desk and now she says the list doesn’t exist and people are mad.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, lying will do that, but it’s not really the lying that seems to even be the thing that’s sticking in cross, but just this is what happens when you have a conspiracy theory that you can’t hold onto it. Right. People who, if you’re trying to use a conspiracy theory to accumulate power, you don’t always have control over what people who will believe A conspiracy theory belief.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. You kind of painted yourself into a corner

Kathryn Rubino:

At a certain point. It’s a boulder it, it’s going down a hill. You can’t always reign that back in.

Chris Williams:

The thing I don’t get is even if there is no list, the government lies all the time. Just make one.

Joe Patrice:

Just make up a list. Yeah, no, it was just really a ridiculous, well, they also released the video of Epstein’s last day to dispel rumors that he was murdered and then they forgot that metadata exists, and it’s obvious that from the metadata that they access the file and cut parts out, which I mean, just again, in

Chris Williams:

Adobe Pro.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah,

Chris Williams:

Probably shout out to Johns Johnson. You’re the government. Y’all should have better editing software than something that civilians can access.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. It’s also probably not, probably actually nefarious, but if you’re trying to get conspiracy theorists to leave you alone, you don’t put out doctorate stuff. What’s crazy about this is, and it’s also from the Trump tweet or a Truth or whatever the hell we call those, where he’s talking about boys and gals, he waxes philosophic for a bit about the JFK assassination. That’s a good example here where there probably isn’t anything, but if you only release stuff that seems,

Chris Williams:

Yeah, I feel like you’re doing a lot of work here with these probably. Where are these? Where’s that coming from? Fair enough. There probably wasn’t a list. There probably wasn’t anything in

Joe Patrice:

Incoming your files. That’s fair. I mean, I’m trying to be very lawyerly about it. I should be more direct. Lee Harvey Oswald Acted alone, and we all kind of know that. But to the extent there are conspiracy theorists out there, if you only release stuff that seems shady, people are just going to believe the conspiracy theory more, which, and the JFK side, the Trump folks did release a bunch of JFK files as part of their attempt at transparency, and they have been reviewed and the result is, huh. They kind of say what the official Warren Report said all along. Huh. Again, I can go ahead and keep saying probably just to the extent that who knows maybe other things, but it certainly seems unlikely anyway. Yeah. So this Epstein thing is continuing to be a problem. It is. We had an issue where at least as of going into the weekend, it sounded as though either the FBI’s leadership or the Attorney general would leave or be fired. It seems like that has died down. That said, if the first Trump administration is any indication, whenever he says he has the utmost confidence in somebody,

Kathryn Rubino:

That’s the final straw.

Joe Patrice:

It’s usually the precursor to them being fired. So we don’t know. So by the time this episode comes out, hey, maybe somebody’s been fired, but yeah, it’s been a week. All right. Is that good? We talked about that. It’s not small, but Okay. Very much was. So

Chris Williams:

Just a quick personal note. Comedy show, Josh Johnson. It’s great.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Chris Williams:

Support the

Joe Patrice:

Arts. He’s really good. Yeah.

Chris Williams:

Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

So the first story we have this week is something that we can really sink our teeth into.

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay. Okay. Yeah, there are going to be quite a few

Chris Williams:

Biting

Kathryn Rubino:

Remarks bite. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you haven’t yet seen the story on Above the Law, we got some tips. A bunch of them from a few different sources started coming in about maybe a few days before we published the story.

Joe Patrice:

So it’s a big law story. It’s a

Kathryn Rubino:

Big law

Joe Patrice:

Story and a big law story. Obviously sometimes big law has a lot of screamers. This is a story about somebody being chewed out. You said,

Kathryn Rubino:

Okay. Okay. Listen, you all didn’t get a chance to write the story, so I’ll let you have your fun. With all the puns you can add,

Joe Patrice:

You already sunk your teeth into it. Yeah, right. So go for it. Alright.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah. The big law vampire has struck, this is a story about a summer associate that was actually fired from their job because they bit people. That’s it. That’s the story. That’s really the entirety of the story and it still is baffling.

Joe Patrice:

You said people. There it is. There it is. I was going to say it’s not the entirety story. You used a plural word.

Kathryn Rubino:

I sure did. I sure did. Yes. This person, the big law, biter apparently bit double digits, number of people about 15 is the number that we’ve heard though cannot confirm with each of the individual victims, but I have seen a photograph of the mark that was left on one person after this big law summer associate bit them the big law biter is what I’m calling them.

Joe Patrice:

So we can compare dental records if anything.

Kathryn Rubino:

I mean you probably could. It was definitely a mark. It was a bruise for sure. I do not think that the skin in that particular instance was broken, but you should not have physical marks post an interaction with a coworker

Joe Patrice:

At work emotional only. Sure,

Kathryn Rubino:

Sure, sure. There’s a lot that is just sort of low key baffling about this story versus why, how and why really. I think of the repeated questions and from what I’ve been able to gather from insiders at the firm, this person wasn’t sort of a, I’m mad at you now I’m going to bite you or rather than punch you, I’ll bite you. It wasn’t like

Joe Patrice:

That. Right. That would be insane.

Kathryn Rubino:

Maybe less insane to be fair, but sort of a pseudo cutesy. I’m just going to bite you for funsies. Kind of imagine if somebody was punching you on the shoulder in a good nature, joshing sort of way like that, but with teeth, which is wild. Although personally I will say I have heard of something similar. My sister had an experience when she was in college of a girl who would get drunk and playfully bite people, friends, and it was wild and people made a big deal about it when they were in college as opposed to after college in a professional setting, which magnifies what the hell is going on here of the entire situation. I think the other sort of how is the number of victims not so much, listen, if you have a proclivity to bite, the fact that you would continue to bite probably checks out in its own way. But how did it happen for so long?

Joe Patrice:

Well, that’s what gets me too, because I

Chris Williams:

Have something to blame here that I feel like not enough people are talking about.

Kathryn Rubino:

It’s

Chris Williams:

Because we got rid of remote work. If nobody was in the office, if nobody was in that damn office, this would’ve never happened. What happened to COVID consciousness people? Six feet.

Kathryn Rubino:

There you go. Six again, this was a summer associate. So those are the folks that are first of all most likely to want to be in the office because they want to kind of understand what the firm is like before they accept their full-time offer. So there’s there to thatAspect, that side.But from what I’ve heard from people at the firm is that this was an otherwise nice person. No one. There was a kind of hesitance to raise the issue firm management for a while because they seemed otherwise fine and normal. So there was a lot of, I’m not going to be the snitch kind of vibe going around the sly office,

Chris Williams:

Biting people. Seems to be a big otherwise. Yeah, that’s fair. Fair. I’ll get some skin in the game. In this story. I also bit somebody, I was in high school, I was sitting at my desk and I felt like my English teacher was invading my personal space. She had her hand on my shoulder. I said, if you do not remove your hand, I will bite you. So then she looked at me like, I know the hell you won’t. So then I bit her and then she was like

Joe Patrice:

Took her hand away. We had to,

Chris Williams:

I think that’s fair game. I think quite frankly, it might be some self-defense teachers shouldn’t be touching students, and if a student wants to establish some no-no zone area you’re not touching, that’s completely fine. So as a person that’s done some biting, this is still a crazy story.

Kathryn Rubino:

And again, going back to the earlier, I think it’s less crazy if it’s this defensive move or if someone who was in a fight,

Joe Patrice:

But I think it does speak to why there wasn’t earlier action

Kathryn Rubino:

Taken

Joe Patrice:

Because if you’re just confused by what’s happening, you might not take action. Somebody did that really just

Kathryn Rubino:

Happen? Did that happen? I mean, I know I have a mark on my body,

Joe Patrice:

But maybe they didn’t mean to do it that hard. I could see how all of that sort of confusion happens

Kathryn Rubino:

Like I nip versus a gnaw.

Chris Williams:

So maybe y’all are getting casually bitten by coworkers more than I am, but

Kathryn Rubino:

After can’t say that has ever happened to me. To be fair,

Chris Williams:

Listen, once I see the canine get a little too close to my flesh, I’m pushing.

Kathryn Rubino:

But you obviously, I don’t care

Chris Williams:

How nice you are.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think a lot of people have that reaction, Chris, but let’s not put too far a point on it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 people let it go.

Chris Williams:

Yeah,

Kathryn Rubino:

Right. Or something slightly south of there.

Chris Williams:

Unless she was Mr. Rogers reincarnated, I don’t think you could be that nice. I just want that to be said and on the record.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, and I think it’s also fair that that was the amount of victims that happened before management was called in and this person was eventually let go from the firm. But there are I think informal consequences that probably did happen. I think that the reason why we had so many tips there on this particular story is because people were talking about it before they were even let go. People were talking about it. I think internally at the firm, summer associates also have groups, not just of the people they’re working with, but from their schools, those kind of cohorts. So this was really getting around.

Joe Patrice:

Our first tip was actually from outside of the firm, so maybe I just heard this happen and then we were able to get people in on the ends. So here’s the thing. I feel like if somebody’s doing this sort of biting in a good natured, what they believe is good natured way, it seems to me as though the HR intervention is, we know you didn’t mean to do all this sort of thing, but it is bad and inappropriate. You need to stop. And so the fact that they lost their position suggests that that question might’ve been asked and the response was, I have to follow my heart and keep biting.

Kathryn Rubino:

Well, or I think it’s entirely likely that there were other questionable moments of judgment perhaps, that this person displayed and that also played a part in it as well. I imagine if somebody is going around biting folks, they probably are making other sorts of poor judgment calls.

Joe Patrice:

I mean, perhaps

Chris Williams:

Comparative question, which is worse, A nice well-mannered coworker giving you a massage unprompted right back of the shoulders or a nice coworker unprompted biting you.

Kathryn Rubino:

I think biting is definitely worse.

Chris Williams:

Definitely worse. They’re

Joe Patrice:

Both bad.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yeah, I think that is also true. I think they’re definitely both bad, but you’re less likely to have to use a bandaid after massage.

Chris Williams:

I’m thinking if we got a tip of a serial massager story in big law, I think if it was above 10, we’d have been like, why didn’t somebody say this earlier? I am wondering why it took up to 15 people. I agree. I think biting is worse than massage.

Kathryn Rubino:

And I mean, listen, there are lots of bad, underlying, often misogynistic things that people are become indoctrinated to over time. There are plenty of bringing you back to your earlier example, Chris. I’m sure plenty of people have had that experience in high school where a teacher was doing these things and that kind of builds up the, I guess it’s not that bad, even though I think it is and whatever. But that probably would play into our hypothetical why someone might not be so quick to point out that, Hey, hr, they gave me an unprompted back rub. That might be why somebody might be more hesitant to bring that up, but biting is lot less common and certainly seems a lot more aggressive as a default. Yeah.

Joe Patrice:

Alright, well let’s take a break and leave you to two on that while we

Kathryn Rubino:

Move on. I masticate on it maybe. Okay,

Joe Patrice:

That doesn’t make sense. Masticate doesn’t have an alternative meaning like chew on does. That’s the whole point. It’s the play on the words of masticate doesn,

Kathryn Rubino:

But the reason why you use it in that phrase is the same thing. And Masticate is actually a longer process, which is

Chris Williams:

Why, anyway, we’ll be back after this break.

Joe Patrice:

I am still dumbfounded by the fact that I had to have that conversation. All right, so the next thing that we had that was big this week was a, Hey, cease and desist letters are always annoying and they’re not really repercussions for them, right? It’s

Kathryn Rubino:

Like the no skin in the game version

Joe Patrice:

Of Yeah. I mean it can be the prelude to action, but it can also be, but a lot of times it isn’t and it can also be the least you can do because rule 11 is not going to attach to your cease and desist letter. And for that reason, sometimes people make very dumb requests in cease and desist letters and sometimes we just kind of let that go and other people don’t let that go. This is the latter story. So this begins with a date gone wrong situation. There was date that got kind of cut off because of some text. What goes on in the text exchange, the guy puts the text exchange on social media. Some people laugh about it. That’s kind of the end of it. Theoretically, however, the woman decided to escalate and got a lawyer involved and here we are. So at this point, the lawyer writes a letter saying, take these things down.

We will explore legal options if we need to. As it turns out, the guy has hired Mark Doza who has actually been on this show years and years ago, an episode that I wasn’t on and an episode, well, I on. I had to record a disclaimer at the beginning to apologize for everything that was about to be said in that conversation. So to give you a sense of where this is going. But no, he is a First Amendment lawyer who is very, very fun and creative with the way in which he writes these things is not the way lawyers often write. And to that extent, well, let’s just say he says in this letter, I sense by the tenor of your demand that you don’t entirely believe in it yourself. I suspect that your conversation with Julia when something like Julia, there’s not a thing you can do about this.

Are you out of your fucking mind? Then something other than conviction and the ideas expressed convinced you to say, fine, I’ll send this stupid demand. I’m sorry bro, I get it. Sometimes you just get stuck in a situation is from the letter. So that’s what we’re talking about here, this kind of a letter. I’m going to take your threats literally that if my client does not remove the content from his social media, you are going to consider further legal remedies. You will consider them, then realize that every one of them is fucking stupid. Then that will be the end of this. Or you could escalate this and we could make you look even dumber your move. Okay, so this letter ticked off kind of a social media divide. I saw a lot of people that I follow in the legal space talking about how bad this was, that this is bad decor,

Kathryn Rubino:

Whatever. Sure, it’s a little raunchy. It’s a little disrespectful. But I think that, and probably why there’s another side to this and what I think probably plenty of lawyers also realize too is having to defend against these demands. Letters that are, we said earlier, there’s no skin in the game. You have somebody who has a demanding client who just wants it done. So you put out there, even though there’s no legal actual recourse here, but they put out a bunch of threatening language. And if you can imagine that lawyers are annoyed by this process, they are not always sent, usually even sent to somebody’s attorney, sent to you. That individual

Joe Patrice:

Personally don’t know. So they haven’t attorney yet. Course

Kathryn Rubino:

They don’t necessarily even have a lawyer at this point in the case. And a lot of people just react to it scared of, Ooh, there’s a bunch of legalese in here, and people react and it’s sort of using the sort of law and of the legal profession and what lawyers do in order to do something that is not backed by law.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, I think that was my take on it too. I think a lot of the lawyers who were offended by it are forgetting the plight of the client. As a lawyer, you can all be nice and play good, but for the person who’s getting a threatening letter, it’s unfortunate because not only you’re feeling threatened, but now you have to spend a bunch of money just to get a lawyer to explain to you that you aren’t actually in any Trouble And that sucks. Lawyers are expensive and that’s a problem. And when cease and desist letters have no real downside attached to them, that means that it can happen and people can get almost like the word extorted is loaded and has real legal meaning. So we don’t mean it in that context, but low key extorted where you feel like, oh, I’m bullied. Yeah, I’m going to take this down. I don’t understand this threat and that’s bad. And so to that extent, there’s nothing you can really do about it other than publicly shame lawyers for going along with it. And to that extent, I get it. I would not have written this letter that said, I’m happy someone out there wrote a letter like this.

Chris Williams:

So I imagine the woman’s lawyer had to have mentioned to her it was that case where there was a bunch of women that had a Facebook group and they would post information about men in the area. And I think a guy found out, Hey, you’re defaming me in this private Facebook group. It’s tried to sue, went nowhere. Whatever that was happening in that group feels like it’s similar to but more extreme than what the fact pattern this is. Based on knowing that, why would he even take her on and be like, listen, this isn’t going anywhere.

Kathryn Rubino:

The reason why I had to take that on as a client is that this low downside, right? The fact that this letter has become viral and we’re talking about it now is unusual. And the overwhelming majority of cases like this, you’re going to take the client who wants you to send a demand letter. You may not ever say, I don’t think this is worth taking to court, but I will send a demand letter. You charge them, you collect your fee for writing the letter, and that’s it. That’s why.

Joe Patrice:

And low stakes. And if the person you send it to doesn’t hire a lawyer themselves and is worried by it, you might get a result for the client. But there’s no downside, only a possibility of some quick upside and you can get Paid. And frankly, even if they do hire a lawyer, that lawyer might say, you absolutely are right and you don’t have to do this. But also if you

Kathryn Rubino:

Take it down, do you want to go to court?

Joe Patrice:

If you take it down, then we don’t have to worry about it anymore. And sometimes

Kathryn Rubino:

That happens. How boring is this to you? And there’s low downside. And I think that what’s interesting about this particular matter is that this is creating a downside for an attorney is there’s kind of public shaming.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. I think it’s the only possible deterrent to a cease a desist letter. Obviously the beginning of the ER text of this is the 1974 Cleveland Browns letter, which I don’t know if everybody remembers that, but in 1974, a lawyer sent a demand to the Cleveland Browns about some sort of, I don’t even remember what it was, ticket issue or something like that. And the response from the general counsel of the Cleveland Browns football organization was attached as a letter we received on November 19th. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters. Very truly yours, Cleveland Browns. And so that is kind of the model for this and people have been chasing that ever since. Obviously we talked about Tom Goldstein, who is a founder of the SCOTUS blog, Supreme Court litigator, also a poker player as it turns out. And so that’s why we’ve talked about him recently, since there’s a federal indictment about that. But he wrote one several years ago about in response to a demand letter that related to throwing a porn star off a roof. So that was an interesting one too. But again, a cheeky response with a definite attempt to create public shaming. Yeah. That’s about the only way you can do that.

Chris Williams:

Yep.

Joe Patrice:

Quick

Chris Williams:

Aside, is there a word for throwing someone off a roof? I know to fenestrated to throw them out the window?

Joe Patrice:

Yeah. No, there isn’t. I remember writing that story and trying to find one because I had the same thought you did. That needs to be, it needs to be.

Kathryn Rubino:

Maybe we just don’t put people from roofs

Joe Patrice:

Now who’s being naive. What if the roof, the roof, the roof is on

Chris Williams:

Fire? Oh yeah, no, we don’t need

Kathryn Rubino:

No water.

Chris Williams:

We don’t need no water. Throw ’em off.

Joe Patrice:

All right, so the final is story of the week is not properly like a legal thing that happened. It’s more insane things happening in people’s minds. The Superman movie came out, it has pretty much, it had a big, I mean it’s not earth shattering or anything, but it had a huge domestic box office opening. It’s made back most of its budget. Would you

Chris Williams:

Describe it as super?

Joe Patrice:

No, no. It was a little under soup. It was good. It was very good. He made back all this money. We’re not talking Avengers kind of opening, but

Kathryn Rubino:

You in a post COVID world, those things,

Joe Patrice:

That’s also true.

Kathryn Rubino:

Those numbers are different now.

Joe Patrice:

Anyway, made a bunch of money. It’s successful. And that has prompted a downright meltdown in some sections of the right-wing ecosphere. Fox News has run several stories on it. Their social media people are freaking out and all of these folks complaint is, they’re upset that the movie draws upon themes of kind of an immigrant story because Superman’s an immigrant, unaccompanied, undocumented migrant to this country and world. And so they are really pushing back. They don’t want, they’re mad that there’s a movie that suggests that he’s an immigrant, that immigrants could be good and they’re very upset about that. And a lot of it took legal form in that. There were some people going on these things and trying to explain why the law wouldn’t cover Superman. I’m here to say I’ve done the research and that is not true. There’s not really any good argument for that.

Kathryn Rubino:

Yes, that is correct. And it’s kind of wild that this is something that they’re pouring any time and effort into because it seems like it’s pretty obviously a story about an immigrant. This is not like a new spin on the Superman story. This is the same Superman story that we’ve been telling over and over and over again.

Chris Williams:

I think the walkaway lesson here is that Textualism and originalism go out the window when it doesn’t conform to right wing talking points.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah.

Chris Williams:

We are like two weeks off of somebody saying that the X-Men is trying to force wokeness down our throats because Professor Xavier’s in a wheelchair. I mean

Joe Patrice:

There’s a lot of reasons why X-Men is, there’s a lot of reasons X-Men is for Yes,

Chris Williams:

Because the mutants are black people. That’s

Joe Patrice:

Point more so than any other comic. It pretty, the subtext is text.

Chris Williams:

And another thing is, do you think most people know that subtext soup man is Jewish?

Joe Patrice:

I mean that’s definitely part because the writers part of it.

Chris Williams:

I think there were two Jewish men. They may have been brothers.

Joe Patrice:

No,

Chris Williams:

They weren’t. It was like a Jewish allegory.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, well, so they’re both the children, their first generation, their parents were both, were all Jewish immigrants to the country. Well one of them through Canada and Point is immigrants from Jewish immigrants from Europe. And it’s very not particularly subtle, the way in which it’s focusing on the conditions that were happening at the time in the thirties where there were a lot of Jewish people in Europe trying to leave and the US and several other countries had an uptick in xenophobic actions to prevent people from getting in, which signed their death warrants in a lot of cases, which is a large part of why in the late thirties these guys felt like putting together a superhero comic like this. So it

Kathryn Rubino:

Is, they could teach the younger generation what not to do.

Joe Patrice:

So it is pretty straightforward. But I mean, I saw one where they were like, well, he’s not an immigrant because he’s an orphan. I’m not even sure what that is supposed to mean. I think, as I said, I think it would be news to the three-year-olds who have to defend themselves in immigration court. And that is real though. Our government believes three year olds are competent to defend themselves. So there you go. Yeah. So there’s that. There was, I saw Clay Travis tried to make the, or more accurately, clay Travis, his wife was making the argument that Superman would qualify for the extraordinary, the EB one A visa, which maybe he would qualify at this point, but he as

Kathryn Rubino:

A baby, they didn’t know that,

Joe Patrice:

Certainly didn’t have those skills as a baby, nor would he qualify as a journalist because I don’t think Lois is the one who gets Pulitzers. And that is how that particular visa works. So one of the conditions that the DHS looks for is do you have a Pulitzer or something like that or an Oscar or something like that, all things he would not have had as a baby. So you can kind of reverse justify keeping him in, but you can’t really ex or say that there was something, which brings us to the overarching immigrant issue, which is all of these people like to point to people and say, oh, well that’s a good immigrant story. But almost all of those stories are by taking somebody after they’ve been here and made good and then trying to use that when they would never have let them in the first place because they don’t, don’t see that sort of potential for good, which that’s the problem. And it shows how they’re twisting themselves into knots trying to mess with this law, this body of law that they don’t understand because they can’t grapple with the way in which they don’t get to have hindsight when they make those decisions.

Kathryn Rubino:

And obviously this is supercharged pun intended, because at the same time, all the birthright citizenship stuff is also happening. The right wing is also trying to simultaneously rewrite the constitution and say that if you’re born here but we don’t like who your parents are, then you actually aren’t.

Joe Patrice:

So speaking of that, good point. Speaking of rewriting things, I did not know this before I got into this story. There’s apparently a retcon that was done at one point, and I think it’s been retconned back since, but there’s ACON that happened in the superhero comics, the Superman comics that suggested he really wasn’t put in a spaceship and sent to earth. The spaceship itself was a birthing matrix. So he was actually born when he landed in Kansas, which now there he might theoretically have birthright citizenship, but for as you point out, they have changed the tried to change the birthright citizenship situation.

Chris Williams:

The thing that I find interesting is I saw the argument being that he’s not an immigrant because he’s an orphan. Why don’t immigrants just have a child here abandon the child and then all abandon children become citizens if you want to get rid of birthright citizenship.

Joe Patrice:

So the weight

Chris Williams:

Being an orphan here is what grounds his citizenship.

Joe Patrice:

Right? Well, it’s just made up though there, that’s

Kathryn Rubino:

Not in the law.

Joe Patrice:

That is not how the law works and it makes no sense. In fact, to the extent somebody, and just, this isn’t the superman situation, but just for legal to explain the law, if people who are not citizens have a kid here under the normal operating procedure, that child is a citizen. But that doesn’t mean that they all get to stay. The parents have to leave the kid theoretically could stay, but we don’t let people stay when they’re minors and can’t take care of themselves. So unless they have family members already here who can take care of them, they go home with the parents. Now they have the capacity to come back and be a full citizen when they’re 18. But that’s how the normal operation of that law works. And so you don’t get to kind of have these anchor baby situations that the right likes to pretend. It just isn’t how it operates most of the time. Speaking of chain migration though, I mean wait until they find out about Supergirl. Yeah.

Chris Williams:

I do appreciate the angle you took on this issue, but I think what would’ve been the funner read was like, let’s see what the right wing responses when a bunch of Wakandans start abandoning children in New York or California.

Joe Patrice:

Yeah, well, and that’s the thing, you can’t do that legally. So that just wouldn’t happen because they would have to go back and they would be citizens later. But yeah. Okay, cool. Well, so thanks everybody for listening. You should subscribe to the show to get new episodes when they come out, leave reviews, all that sort of stuff. You should be listening to the OT Kathryn’s other podcast. I’m guests on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Roundtable. Listen to other shows on the Legal Talk network. You should be following Above the Law dot com. So you read these and other stories before we get to them above law.com. On Blue Sky, I’m at Joe Patrice. She’s at Kathryn one. Chris is at Rights for Rent. And with that, we will talk to you later. Bye. Peace.

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