Clarence Thomas breaks yearlong silence asking question in Supreme Court’s first telephonic argument

It was a historic day for more than one reason. The Supreme Court held its first-ever arguments by phone. And a usually mum Justice Clarence Thomas interrogated lawyers appearing before the court — the third time he’s broken his silence on the bench in a decade. The last time Thomas asked a question was more than a year ago, in a case about whether a white prosecutor in Mississippi violated the Constitution in his efforts to exclude black jurors from the six trials of Curtis Flowers, a black man convicted of murdering four people.

Before that, Thomas last asked a question in 2016, breaking a decadelong silence. The Supreme Court justice did not clarify why he decided to ask a question in the current case about a trademark dispute, but each justice was individually called on by Chief Justice John Roberts to ask their questions. Roberts does not normally single out the justices at in-person arguments. “Could Booking acquire a vanity number, 1-800-BOOKING, for example, that is similar to 1-800-PLUMBING, which is a registered mark?” Thomas asked Justice Department lawyer Erica Ross. He also asked questions of Booking.com lawyer Lisa Blatt.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/clarence-thomas-breaks-yearlong-silence-asking-question-in-supreme-courts-first-telephonic-argument

Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V. Oral Argument

https://www.c-span.org/video/?471417-1/supreme-court-oral-argument-patent-trademark-office-v-bookingcom

Amazon VP Resigns in Protest over Treatment of Workers, Whistleblowers

Tim Bray, a vice president at Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce giant Amazon, has resigned in protest of the company’s treatment of workers who have criticized the company over inadequate protections against the Chinese virus. In a blog post, Bray aired his dismay at the tech company’s treatment of employees who spoke out against the company’s handling of the coronavirus. From Bray’s blog: Stories surfaced of unrest in Amazon warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed, unprotected, and frightened. Official statements claimed every possible safety precaution was being taken. Then a worker organizing for better safety conditions was fired, and brutally insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting notes where the focus was on defending Amazon “talking points”. Warehouse workers reached out to AECJ for support. They responded by internally promoting a petition and organizing a video call for Thursday April 16 featuring warehouse workers from around the world, with guest activist Naomi Klein. An announcement sent to internal mailing lists on Friday April 10th was apparently the flashpoint. Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, two visible AECJ leaders, were fired on the spot that day. The justifications were laughable; it was clear to any reasonable observer that they were turfed for whistleblowing. Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists. At that point I snapped.

Amazon is currently facing multiple inquiries from labor regulators over allegations that it unlawfully retaliated against employees who complained about the company’s failure to protect them from the virus. One of the fired Amazon employees, Chris Smalls, spoke exclusively with Breitbart News last week, on a segment of SirusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with Rebecca Mansour. “At the beginning of March, we were unprotected,” Smalls told Mansour. “We didn’t have any facial masks, we didn’t have any cleaning supplies. We didn’t have the right type of gloves that protect our skin. My associates, my employees that I supervised were falling ill in a domino effect, one by one [with] flu-like symptoms. Some of them were even vomiting at their stations.” After airing his concerns, Smalls was fired before the end of March.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/04/amazon-vp-resigns-in-protest-over-treatment-of-workers-whistleblowers/