Latest news with #Gaiser
NZ Herald
13-05-2025
- NZ Herald
Do you want a skinny smartphone with worse battery life?
Polling by YouGov has found that what people want most from their smartphones is better battery life. So why are Apple and Samsung pitching you skinnier but potentially battery-compromised phones? I want to hold these skinnier phones in my hand and see if I'm bowled over by the difference, especially once you add a phone case. It could dent your enthusiasm, though, knowing that these new designs may be motivated most by Samsung and Apple's desperation to sell you something new – anything. Can you tell the difference? Samsung acknowledged it really doesn't know if you want a skinnier phone. Blake Gaiser, head of smartphone product management at Samsung Electronics America, says the company is making a limited number of S25 Edge devices and they won't be sold everywhere. He said it's a test of whether you want what he called a 'Goldilocks device' – not as fancy as Samsung's top-tier model at $1300, but jazzier than other high-end Samsung phones. Samsung says the S25 Edge is 5.8mm thick, not including the protruding camera lenses on the back of the phone, and assuming you don't use a case. For comparison, Samsung's new S25 (non-thin) phone is 7.2mm and the iPhone 16 is 7.8mm. Eyeballing my ruler, I can barely see the difference between 6mm and 7mm. Gaiser said the new model's size and weight 'makes a huge difference in your hand' – and some early reviewers said the same. But the trade-off of slimness is a lower capacity battery than that of comparable new Galaxy devices, which typically means shorter battery life. That could be too big of a compromise for some of you. Apple's rumoured new 5.5mm deep iPhone Air will also reportedly have drawbacks, including wimpier battery life. To compensate, Apple will sell a case with a backup battery built in, the Information reported. Gaiser said Samsung made the phone more efficient to go easy on the battery. Apple plans to do the same with its new models, Bloomberg News reported. Skinny phones are born of desperation Ultimately, the motivation behind slimmer phones is jolting smartphone sales, which are lower today than they were in 2017, according to figures from research firm IDC. You know why. Smartphones don't change much from year to year, and they're good enough now to hold on to them for a long time. Advertisement Advertise with NZME. That makes a smartphone like a car and a fridge – products we rely on but don't upgrade often. That's not great for Samsung and Apple, so they'll try anything to get you excited about something new. Trying out skinny phones, even if you don't embrace them, could also give Apple and Samsung a chance to test wild technologies that you might like, like phones that fold open to reveal more screen real estate. The concept hasn't yet caught on widely because the devices cost a fortune and most of us aren't sure why we'd want one. (Apple is aiming for its first folding smartphone by 2027, Bloomberg News reported.) Myriam Joire, a technology journalist and podcaster, says skinny phones could catch on, as lighter, slimmer laptops did following Apple's introduction of its MacBook Air in 2008. But she said Samsung and Apple didn't need to make so many trade-offs. She said Chinese phone brands like Xiaomi and OnePlus, which are hard to buy in the United States, use novel battery technology created for electric cars to make slim phones with great battery life, and at significantly lower prices than higher-end phones from Samsung and Apple. Apple and Samsung, Joire said, 'are not innovating anymore because they have no competition' in North America.
New York Times
02-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump to Pick Ohio's Solicitor General for Top Justice Department Legal Post
President Trump intends to nominate T. Elliot Gaiser, the conservative solicitor general of Ohio, to be the assistant attorney general leading the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, according to a Justice Department official. That position has traditionally often had the final say on legal debates within the executive branch. The Office of Legal Counsel issues authoritative interpretations of the law for the executive branch through courtlike opinions. Its view of what the law permits is binding on other agencies and officials unless the attorney general overrides the office or the president opts not to take its advice. The office was at the center of many legal and policy fights during Mr. Trump's first administration. Led by the Trump appointee Steven Engel, it signed off on the ordering of the targeted killing of a top Iranian official and the Treasury Department's withholding of Mr. Trump's tax returns from Congress. Mr. Gaiser, whose selection as the forthcoming nominee was provided by the official on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that has not yet been announced, has a strong conservative legal résumé. He clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. during the Supreme Court's 2021-22 term, when Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion overruling the Roe v. Wade abortion rights precedent. Mr. Gaiser had previously served two clerkship years with prominent conservative appellate court judges, Judge Neomi Rao of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Edith H. Jones of the Fifth Circuit, while alternating with short stints at law firms. He did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment late on Tuesday. A native of Ohio, Mr. Gaiser attended Hillsdale College, a Christian liberal arts college in Michigan, and graduated in 2012 with a degree in political economy and speech studies. He spent a year at Ohio State University's law school before transferring to the University of Chicago to finish his degree, according to his LinkedIn profile. After his Supreme Court clerkship, Mr. Gaiser spent a year as an associate at the law firm Jones Day before the Ohio attorney general, Dave Yost, appointed him as the state's solicitor general, representing the state government in appellate matters. Mr. Gaiser had clerked in that office after his second year in law school. In announcing the appointment in October 2023, Mr. Yost called Mr. Gaiser 'a master craftsman of ironclad legal arguments rooted in originalist principles and constitutional restraint.' He argued before the Supreme Court in February, defending a state agency in a discrimination case brought by a heterosexual woman who twice lost positions to gay colleagues. His arguments attracted puzzlement from the justices because he disavowed lower-court rulings in favor of the state that had turned on the idea that a member of a majority group must provide extra evidence of discrimination, compared to a member of a minority. Mr. Gaiser told the Supreme Court that the plaintiff could not establish that she was discriminated against based on her sexual orientation so should lose the case — but also that the state agreed with her that 'it is wrong to hold some litigants to a higher standard because of their protected characteristics.' That prompted Justice Elena Kagan to ask whether the appeals court — which had ruled for Ohio — was wrong. Mr. Gaiser said it was. 'The idea that you hold people to different standards because of their protected characteristics is wrong,' he said. The website for the Federalist Society, the conservative legal network, shows that Mr. Gaiser has participated in numerous events sponsored by the group in recent years. And the Heritage Foundation, where he was an intern in the summer of 2013, honored him last December as a distinguished alumnus. He told a Heritage Foundation-linked online publication in December that Ohio was suing the Biden administration in 44 cases, while expressing conservative views on issues like environmental regulations, illegal immigration and transgender rights.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ohio AG's office lays out argument in appeal that avoids fighting the six-week abortion ban
Photo by Getty Images. The Ohio Attorney General's Office does not plan to fight a court ruling overturning the six-week abortion ban, but he wants an appellate court to roll back rulings that overturned other parts of the same law. In a brief submitted to the First District Court of Appeals, Ohio's solicitor general, T. Elliot Gaiser, reiterated that the appeal before the court didn't have anything to do with attempting to roll back a Hamilton County judge's ruling that a ban on abortions at six weeks gestation, included in 2019's Senate Bill 23, was unconstitutional. 'The state has long conceded the obvious: The state's 'Heartbeat Ban' – which banned abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected – was overridden by the new Abortion Amendment,' Gaiser wrote, referring to the 2023 constitutional amendment passed by 57% of Ohio voters to enshrine reproductive rights including abortion into the state document. 'Thus, the state is not defending that Heartbeat Ban. Nor is the state even trying, in this appeal, to defend the merits of any of the ancillary abortion regulations that were amended or enacted in the same bill as the Heartbeat Ban.' Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins cited the constitutional amendment as part of his October 2024 ruling, saying the Ohio Constitution now protects 'the right to pre-viability abortion,' and to 'give meaning to the voice of Ohio's voters, the Amendment must be given full effect, and laws such as those enacted by (Senate Bill) 23 must be enjoined.' The state is appealing decisions it says came alongside the six-week abortion ban ruling, that were made by the judge without a request from the groups suing to see the abortion ban struck down. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The solicitor general claimed the trial court decision 'broke all the rules,' and the plaintiffs in the case 'filed a vague, unclear motion for judgment.' Gaiser said the trial court should have asked whether the provisions of the law could 'stand alone' without the six-week abortion ban attached to them. 'Many provisions here plainly can, as they were law for years before S.B. 23 was enacted,' the brief stated. Those provisions included what Gaiser called a 'Check and Tell' provision, a requirement that doctors check for fetal cardiac activity and offer to allow the pregnant individual to hear it. The main reason supporters called the law the 'Heartbeat Act' was because they claimed a fetal heartbeat was present at six weeks of pregnancy. Scientist say fetal cardiac activity at that stage isn't a fully formed heart, but instead indicates cardiac tissue development. Some of the provisions brought up in the brief have been temporarily paused by a different court case, one in Franklin County in August 2024. In that case, a judge in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas pumped the brakes on a 24-hour waiting period required before an abortion and the provision requiring doctors to check fetal activity. Judge David C. Young cited the constitutional amendment as reason to stop enforcement of the requirements in that case for now. Gaiser said the Hamilton County court that took up the S.B. 23 case 'relied on the analysis' from the Franklin County case in issuing its decision, even though 'plaintiffs did not even identify the challenged statutes' in the initial lawsuit 'and did not offer any substantive challenge to them.' Provisions such as definition sections, Ohio Department of Health reporting requirements, and others 'can all work on their own without a Heartbeat Ban,' according to the brief. 'True, some (of the other provisions) might not seem to achieve much – such as the express protection of contraception – but they also do not harm Plaintiffs by staying in place, and even if they merely state the General Assembly's intent as to contraception and the like, that is no small thing,' Gaiser wrote. 'One critical representative function of any legislature is to codify the moral judgments of the community, including moral approval – here, of contraceptives.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Fox News
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Straight woman's job discrimination claim likely to prevail with SCOTUS rebuke of lower court: expert
The Supreme Court appears poised to rule in favor of a straight woman's discrimination claim in a case that could overturn a line of precedent that has made "the Civil Rights Act apply unequally," according to a legal scholar familiar with civil rights litigation. Petitioner Marlean Ames claims that she was demoted and passed over for a position in the Ohio youth corrections system in favor of two less-qualified gay employees who had neither applied for nor interviewed for the roles. At issue in her case is a higher burden of proof some lower courts have required for those considered to be in "majority groups" – in this case heterosexuals – to prove discrimination occurred under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. During Wednesday's oral arguments, the justices – and the lawyers on both sides of the dispute – all agreed that the appeals court erred in Ames' case, which required her to provide additional "background circumstances" to "support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority." Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Wednesday all the court really needs to do is issue "a really short opinion that says discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, whether it's because you're gay or because you're straight, is prohibited, and the rules are the same." At one point during the arguments, Ohio Solicitor General Elliot Gaiser – arguing on behalf of the Ohio Department of Youth Services – perplexed liberal Justice Elena Kagan when he agreed that "the idea that you hold people to different standards because of their protected characteristics is wrong." "I mean, it's a little bit of a peculiar situation, isn't it, because this is what the court said," Kagan said. "And you're up here, and I don't know exactly what to make of this." Gaiser said he agreed with Ames "on that major premise point," but "we don't think Ms. Ames proved enough evidence to showcase a discrimination claim." "I think we had six depositions under oath, if you can't show any evidence that the employer was motivated by a protected characteristic when they took the adverse action, and certainly, if you can't show an adverse action at all, that's not enough to create any burden of production for the employer," Gaiser said. "And that sample pattern approved the four elements that McDonnell Douglas lays out, courts have adapted that under this court's guidance." The governing precedent in question is McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, a 1973 case where the high court established a four-step process for handling discrimination cases based on indirect evidence. Gaiser told the justices that Ames has not met the criteria set by those tests, even as the appeals court's application of the precedent was wrong. The "higher burden of proof" at the center of the case, which several circuit courts choose to apply, "is not supported by the text of Title VII," GianCarlo Canaparo, senior legal expert at Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "There was, and to some extent still is, an ideological movement which says the text of the Civil Rights Act, not just Title VII, all of it applies to everybody equally, but really it's only meant to give special protection to certain groups, and its protection doesn't apply to other groups," Canaparo said. "And that sort of logic is what underpinned the rule in the Sixth Circuit and others, that says if you're a majority group, you're presumptively entitled to less protection, and so you have this disparate standard." Canaparo said that during oral arguments "pretty much everybody, except maybe Justice Jackson, said, 'Look, the text is what it is. It's really clear.'" He also said Ohio's goal in the case is to raise the standard for everyone, making it more difficult to file discrimination claims. Under the current McDonnell Douglas framework, plaintiffs only need to present minimal preliminary evidence to suggest discrimination, after which the employer must prove a legitimate reason for firing the employee, Canaparo said. "Now that sounds good in theory, but how it actually works out is that the evidentiary burden that a lot of plaintiffs have to put up in the first instance is so low that what functionally happens in a lot of cases is that the defendant, the employer, has to prove its own innocence," he said. Gaiser's proposal, according to Canaparo, is to raise the initial burden on plaintiffs so that they must present a stronger case before the employer is required to defend itself, while maintaining an equal standard for all. "I think Ames will win, but that means a couple things. Number one, it means that traditionally created doctrines that make the Civil Rights Act apply unequally are on the way out," he said. This approach is expected to have significant implications in a second Trump term, especially as the president issued executive actions weeding out discriminatory DEI policies, he added. "I think it'll have a pretty powerful effect in continuing to shape the country toward the colorblind understanding of the law," he said. Meanwhile, Andrea Lucas, acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, wrote in a post on X that the "neutral standard that SCOTUS likely will land on in Ames" already applies "and has for decades." "@USEEOC unanimously signed @TheJusticeDept's brief in Ames. Don't wait for SCOTUS's opinion—comply with Title VII now," she wrote. Lucas told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Thursday that "the EOC has never held that position" of requiring a heightened background circumstances test for a "majority" plaintiff or group. "The EOC position is that this background circumstances test conflicts with the McDonnell Douglas standard. It conflicts with Supreme Court precedent," Lucas said. "We already had policy and enforcement positions that we've taken for decades." Ames started working at the Ohio Department of Youth Services in 2004 as an executive secretary, which oversees the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. Since 2009, she was promoted several times, and by 2014, she was promoted to program administrator, according to the Supreme Court filing. In 2017, Ames began reporting to a new supervisor, Ginine Trim, who is openly gay. During her 2018 performance review, Trim rated Ames as meeting expectations in most areas and exceeding them in one. However, in 2019, after Ames applied for a bureau chief position and did not get it, she was removed from her program administrator role, the court filing states. The department's assistant director and HR head, both of whom are straight, offered her the choice to return to her previous job with a pay cut. Ames chose to remain with the department and was later promoted to a different program administrator position. The department then hired a gay woman for the bureau chief role Ames had wanted, and a gay man for the program administrator position she previously held. In a sign of apparent bipartisan agreement on the underlying controversy, Elizabeth Prelogar, the U.S. solicitor general under the Biden administration, filed an amicus brief in December urging the Supreme Court to vacate the appeals court's ruling. The Supreme Court is expected to release its ruling by the end of June.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supreme Court appears likely to side with straight woman in `reverse discrimination' case
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed ready to rule − possibly unanimously − that members of a majority group do not face an extra hurdle when alleging 'reverse discrimination' in the workplace. 'We're in radical agreement today on that, it seems to me,' Justice Neil Gorsuch said. The case was being argued amid a raging battle in the country over diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But the justices steered clear of that larger debate and focused solely on the appeal of an Ohio civil servant, a heterosexual, who said she lost two jobs to gay co-workers she felt were less qualified. When Marlean Ames tried to sue the Ohio Department of Youth Services, lower courts said she'd failed to provide 'background circumstances' showing the department was 'that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.' That's a test created in 1981 by a federal appeals court that is used by some, but not most, of the federal courts when assessing claims brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in 1981 that while white people are covered by the Civil Rights Act, it defied common sense 'to suggest that the promotion of a black employee justifies an inference of prejudice against white co-workers in our present society.' But the law itself, which bans discrimination based on 'race, color, religion, sex or national origin,' doesn't set different thresholds for members of minority and majority groups. Ames' lawyers told the justices her suit would not have been dismissed at this stage of the litigation if she had been gay and the employees who got the jobs she wanted were not. 'At bottom, all Ms. Ames is asking for is equal justice under law,' Xiao Wang, one of her lawyers, told the court in referring to the phrase that appears above the main entrance to the Supreme Court. 'Not more justice, but certainly not less. And certainly not less because of the color of her skin or because of her sex or because of her religion.' T. Elliot Gaiser, Ohio's solicitor general, agreed that Ames shouldn't face an extra hurdle. 'But that is not what happened in this case,' Gaiser said. Instead, he contended, Ames failed to show enough evidence that her sexual orientation played any role in the hiring decisions. Gaiser said the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was correct to say her suit could not move forward to a jury trial, even if the court's explanation for the dismissal implied Ames was held to a higher standard. 'We're not defending the exact language there,' he said. But Justice Elena Kagan called that language 'absolutely critical' and pointed out it was the reason the court took the case. Gaiser said that the court should still make clear that the burden can't solely be on the employer to show why an act wasn't discriminatory. Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Ames' attorney whether there's a legitimate concern that siding with her would make it too easy for workers to sue. Wang said that wouldn't happen because the federal courts that don't use the "background circumstances" test haven't seen a 'flood of litigation.' Still, Jonathan Segal, a labor law expert at Duane Morris, predicted a ruling for Ames will boost the already increasing number of reverse discrimination suits. 'On a broader level, the ruling will reinforce to the public that the law prohibits discrimination equally against majority and minority groups alike,' he said in a statement after listening to the oral arguments. Ashley Robertson, an attorney for the Department of Justice who was given time to make the federal government's case for why the lower courts got the law wrong, said it would be helpful for the Supreme Court to clarify that evidentiary standards are the same for members of majority and minority groups. But Robertson emphasized that doesn't mean the cases should always go to trial. Employers are usually able to give an alternative explanation for a challenged action and that can be difficult for the worker to rebut, she said. In Ames' case, the Ohio Department of Youth Services said she was passed over for a promotion because she lacked the necessary vision and leadership skills. Officials said she was then demoted from her administrator position because she wouldn't bring a proactive approach to the department's increased emphasis on combatting sexual violence in the juvenile corrections system. A decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services is expected by summer. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court likely to side with woman in reverse discrimination case
