legal

By a Biometrica staffer On Wednesday, July 21, a legislator in Wisconsin proposed what's known as "Kayleigh's Law" in the state legislature to help protect certain sexual assault victims from their attackers. The proposed bill would allow those who have been victims...

By Aara Ramesh With the world slowly beginning its journey back to some semblance of normal, after a trying 18 months, climate change is jostling its way back into the limelight. Debates have recently been spurred by the two-front war America was...

By a Biometrica staffer A total of 1,864 suspects in matters involving violations of federal hate crime statutes were investigated by U.S. attorneys during the fiscal years 2005 to 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said in a report published last...

By Charlotte Spencer Plenty of bills are proposed that never become law. This summer, however, several crime and law enforcement bills have made progress in the process of becoming law. Here are the summer’s top movers so far in terms of bills...

By Charlotte Spencer Federal gaming law may be changing soon if any of the several proposed pieces of legislation currently in front of Congress pass this year. In this article, we review a few notable pieces of proposed legislation that touch on...

By Charlotte Spencer Earlier this year we discussed pending legislation in an article titled, “Pending Hate Crime Legislation in Front of Congress,” published April 22, and a February 4 article titled, “More Legal Firepower Proposed in Battle Against Child Abuse.” More has...

By Dmitry Shifrin, Mary Tobin & Lindsay Dailey Polsinelli PC, Chicago, Illinois Biometric information and biometric identifiers are becoming more highly regulated in today’s data privacy and cybersecurity conscious landscape. Like other types of personal data, biometrics have the potential to identify...

By Charlotte Spencer The United States’ DNA database laws, many may be surprised to find, are not uniform across the country. Rather, they are a patchwork of laws that vary in when DNA can be taken, why DNA can be taken, how...

By Charlotte Spencer On Monday May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court issued a ruling further clarifying fourth amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment, and the long history of case law surrounding it, deals with search and seizure, specifically when it is allowed, and...

By Charlotte Spencer Protective orders, also known as protection orders, are designed to protect people or animals from an ongoing threat. They are often used in domestic violence cases, and can vary a lot by jurisdiction. They are not by any stretch...

By Charlotte Spencer As of April, 2021, Congress is considering several different pieces of legislation which address hate crimes. Many of them focus on hate crimes directly. Others have a different focus, but also take on the subject of hate crimes. Here...

By Charlotte Spencer A Mississippi businessman was indicted January 12, 2021 for hoarding and price gouging PPE. Many who heard of such practices have found them distasteful, but did not realize they were actually illegal too. So does that mean there ought...

By Charlotte Spencer There is a form of abuse that is still not illegal in most of the United States, not because anyone decided it should be legal, but because of a lack of awareness. It often accompanies other forms of abuse,...

By Charlotte Spencer On Feb. 4, we published a story on proposed child protection laws in the United States available here. This week, we are reviewing proposed domestic violence laws other than those that focus specifically on child protection. As of Feb....

By Charlotte Spencer Contact Us As of February 2021, the 117th Congress already has seven bills introduced which, if passed, would change background checking requirements in our country. Five of these bills focus specifically on the subject of background checks involving gun...

By Charlotte Spencer Yes, you can, and Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, recently found that out the hard way. Most people are aware of the fact that posting certain content online, such as child sexual abuse imagery, or “true threats” can get...

By Charlotte Spencer The House of Representatives currently has four pieces of legislation before it aimed at better handling child abuse so far in 2021. Of these, one is a reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, two are proposed...

By Charlotte Spencer Graphic by Charlotte Spencer This January, the FTC brought the first cases ever under a new law passed five years ago. The BOTS Act, which passed with bipartisan support in 2016, is designed to protect consumers from people who...