Our first runner-up this week is a joint team from the ACLU of Illinois, King & Spalding and Kirkland & Ellis that secured a victory last week on behalf of a certified class of all transgender individuals incarcerated by the Illinois Department of Corrections. After four days of trial testimony earlier this month, U.S. Chief District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel in East St. Louis issued a rare bench ruling enjoining IDOC from continuing to delay medically necessary care to treat the plaintiffs’ gender dysphoria. Rosenstengel followed that up with a written order this week saying that despite a 2019 injunction she issued in the case “there are still serious violations of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights happening every day.” Among the lead lawyers representing more than 100 plaintiffs in the class are John Knight, Ghirlandi Guidetti and Carolyn Wald of the ACLU of Illinois, Brent Ray and Abby Parsons of King & Spalding, and Amelia Bailey and Samantha Rose of Kirkland & Ellis.
Karen Dunn of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Adam Gershenson of Cooley also land a runner-up spot this week. They got an important unfair competition ruling they scored for Uber to stand up at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The appellate court this week affirmed their trial win in a case brought by Boston taxi companies. The appellate court found that Uber hadn’t violated common law or statutory prohibitions on unfair competition “during a period of regulatory uncertainty” when it launched its UberX service in the Boston market. Associates Tim Cook of Cooley and Erica Spevack of Paul, Weiss were both involved in the trial and the appeal. Former Cooley partner Elizabeth Prelogar — the Acting U.S. Solicitor General who this week was tapped by President Biden to more permanently head the SG’s office — also worked on the appeal while at the firm.
