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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Bresso from Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: The Supreme Court's new term began today and there are

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Speaker 1: two high profile cases coming up this week, a case

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Speaker 1: involving a challenge to the regulation of ghost guns tomorrow

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Speaker 1: and a death penalty case on Wednesday. Next week, the

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Speaker 1: Court will take up the first of three environmental law

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Speaker 1: cases on the docket so far. Joining me is an

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Speaker 1: expert in environmental law, Pat Parento, a professor at the

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Speaker 1: Vermont Law and Graduate School. Pat, I want to begin

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Speaker 1: with a case the Supreme Court did not take on Friday.

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Speaker 1: It refused to stop Biden administration crackdown on methane emissions.

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Speaker 1: Were you surprised by that?

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Speaker 2: I wasn't really surprised. The course, we're always holding our

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Speaker 2: breath on whether the Court will issue a stay of

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Speaker 2: these rules that have major impacts even before there's been

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Speaker 2: a court ruling. But the methane rule is so grounded

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Speaker 2: in EPA's traditional authority to regulate pollution from the oil

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Speaker 2: and gas industry that I would have been really depressed

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Speaker 2: had they put a stay on that particular rule. But

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Speaker 2: I wasn't surprised that they.

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Speaker 1: Did, and just explain the rule before we move on.

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Speaker 2: So you know, this is a rule that applies to

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Speaker 2: the extraction primarily of gas, which is methane. About seventy

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Speaker 2: plus percent of quote natural gas is actually methane, and

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Speaker 2: in the process of drilling for it and extracting it

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Speaker 2: and transporting it, of course you get a lot of emission.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes the emissions they actually flare, you know, because gas

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Speaker 2: and oil are oftentimes found in the same deposits. The

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Speaker 2: gas off they just burn it off because they don't

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Speaker 2: want it, can't use it. But in any case, this

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Speaker 2: is a regulation that's designed to reduce the amount of

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Speaker 2: emissions that are coming off oil and gas production and

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Speaker 2: transportation through the use of technology to capture the gas

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Speaker 2: and not allow it to escape. So a pretty traditional

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Speaker 2: technological approach to a pollution problem.

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Speaker 1: The Justices did take up another environmental case on Friday

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Speaker 1: involving a nuclear waste storage site in Texas.

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Speaker 2: So this is an enormous problem. What is happening now

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Speaker 2: is spent fuel rods, you know, once they've reached their

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Speaker 2: useful life, are basically stored on site at all of

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Speaker 2: the nuclear power plants all across the country. There's an

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Speaker 2: estimated get this one hundred million tons well of spent

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Speaker 2: nuclear waste sitting. Sometimes they're in casks, concrete casts. Sometimes

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Speaker 2: they're just in containers underground in water to keep them cool. Right,

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Speaker 2: So this is not a good situation, right, So the

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Speaker 2: idea is to try to move all of this stored

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Speaker 2: waste on the site of these nuclear power plants to

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Speaker 2: what NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls temporary storage facilities. But

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Speaker 2: of course we know that once that waste reaches these

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Speaker 2: so called temporary facilities, that's where they're going to stay.

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Speaker 2: And one of these facilities is located in Texas, that's

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Speaker 2: the subject of the case that the Supreme Court has

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Speaker 2: just taken. There's another one proposed across the border in

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Speaker 2: New Mexico, in a very rural, actually minority community in

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Speaker 2: southeastern New Mexico. So there are two of these proposed

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Speaker 2: interim storage facilities that are involved in this case that

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Speaker 2: the Supreme Court has taken. All of this, by the way,

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Speaker 2: relates to the failure of the proposed Yucca Mountain facility

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Speaker 2: that was going to be built in Nevada that was

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Speaker 2: going to hold all of the nation's nuclear waste, right,

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Speaker 2: and of course that never happened as a result of

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Speaker 2: political opposition in Nevada which could never be overcome in Congress.

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Speaker 2: So the situation we have is we have a lot

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Speaker 2: of nuclear waste and no place to put it. And

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Speaker 2: now the Supreme Court has decided to weigh in on

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Speaker 2: the case in Texas.

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Speaker 1: So I can understand why a state wouldn't want to

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Speaker 1: have a nuclear waste facility there. But what is the

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Speaker 1: argument that Texas used.

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Speaker 2: It's a very complicated argument. There are two parts to it,

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Speaker 2: and the Court has taken review at both of them.

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Speaker 2: One has to do with whether Texas can actually challenge

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Speaker 2: the NRC's approval of the waste disposal facility because Texas

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Speaker 2: didn't participate in the very detailed and lengthy administrative proceeding.

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Speaker 2: It's like a trial. It's a formal adjudication, but it's

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Speaker 2: done by an administrative logidge right instead of a court.

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Speaker 2: Texas didn't become a party to that process, and so

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Speaker 2: the government is arguing Texas doesn't have standing, if you

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Speaker 2: want to put it that way. But in any event,

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Speaker 2: they don't have the right to challenge a decision when

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Speaker 2: they didn't participate in the administrative proceeding. Texas's response, Attorney

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Speaker 2: General packs and responses, Yeah, we didn't because it was

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Speaker 2: real complicated and difficult to do. And in any case,

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Speaker 2: you know, NRC never had the authority to approve this

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Speaker 2: facility anyway. It's what we call an ultra bery's decision,

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Speaker 2: a decision on which they have no authority. And there

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Speaker 2: is at least theoretically an exception to the requirement that

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Speaker 2: you participate in these administrative proceedings if the agency never

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Speaker 2: had the authority to do it in the first place. Right,

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Speaker 2: So that's argument number one. It's under what's called the

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Speaker 2: Hobbs Act, and it's an exception to the requirement of

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Speaker 2: participation in that process. So that's argument number one. Can

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Speaker 2: Texas actually bring this challenge? But argument number two is

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Speaker 2: the big one, and that is that NRC does not

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Speaker 2: have the authority at all to approve these so called

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Speaker 2: temporary or interim storage facilities. The only authoritiesas Texas that

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Speaker 2: NRC has is to authorize storage on site at these

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Speaker 2: individual nuclear power plants. They can do whatever they want

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Speaker 2: with regard to how the waste is stored on site

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Speaker 2: or storage at Yucka Mountain, which, as I've just said,

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Speaker 2: has never been approved and is actually not available. Texas's

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Speaker 2: argument is NRC can't create these sort of satellite you know,

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Speaker 2: nuclear waste facilities all over the country, moving this waste

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Speaker 2: thousands of miles, you know, away from the way it's

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Speaker 2: being generated. And that's their big argument. And guess what,

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Speaker 2: no surprise, the Fifth Circuit agreed with Texas. Now, two

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Speaker 2: other circuit courts have considered this question of whether NRC

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Speaker 2: has this authority and reached the opposite conclusion. One of

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Speaker 2: them was the Tenth Circuit in the West, and one

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Speaker 2: of them was the DC Circuit of course, in Washington,

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Speaker 2: d C. And so what you have is a split

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Speaker 2: in the circuits. Another reason, of course, why the court

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Speaker 2: would take a case like this. But what the Fifth

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Speaker 2: Circuit did in agreeing with Texas is it invoked here

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Speaker 2: it comes the major question doctrine. So is relying on

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Speaker 2: the West Virginia versus EPA decision, the very controversial decision

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Speaker 2: which struck down EPA's clean Power plan for greenhouse gas emissions,

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Speaker 2: of course, and so the oil and gas industry in

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Speaker 2: Texas is jumping on board because where this waste disposal

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Speaker 2: facility would be located is in the Peance basin of

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Speaker 2: Texas where all the oil and gas is and they're

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Speaker 2: afraid that if anything were to go wrong. Of course,

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Speaker 2: what could go wrong with a nuclear waste disposal facility,

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Speaker 2: It would screw up their oil and gas development. So

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Speaker 2: this case has all kinds of layers, but at the

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Speaker 2: core of it legally is is the Supreme Court once

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Speaker 2: again going to strike down an agency's authority under this

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Speaker 2: major question doctrine.

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Speaker 1: Pat though that they took this to overturn the Fifth Circuit.

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Speaker 2: I think so, and in fact, on the merits, I

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Speaker 2: think Texas is overreaching here. I think the Court is

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Speaker 2: going to be persuaded that because NRC has been approving

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Speaker 2: these facilities before, there are some factual distinctions between what

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Speaker 2: NRC has done before. But legally NRC has invoked this authority,

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Speaker 2: two other circuits have upheld it. And the truth is

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Speaker 2: that letting all of this waste remain in all of

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Speaker 2: these locations, many of these plants, like the one here

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Speaker 2: in Vermont, the Vermont Yankee Plant has been closed for

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Speaker 2: eight years now, you know, so many of these plants

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Speaker 2: are closed. Just leaving the waste at these plant locations

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Speaker 2: is not a good idea. So actually, I think on

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Speaker 2: the merits, the Supreme Court may be persuaded. The Fifth

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Speaker 2: Circuit has myth applied our major question doctor. Remember Roberts

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Speaker 2: said it was an extraordinary doctor, meaning the once in

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Speaker 2: a blue moon doctrine, not an everyday doctor. So maybe

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Speaker 2: the Supreme Court is going to put some limit on

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Speaker 2: the major question doctrine. Conversely, the Supreme Court might stay

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Speaker 2: at Texas book. When there's an administrative process and you

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Speaker 2: choose not to participate, you're out of court. So I

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Speaker 2: think Texas has a tough case.

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Speaker 1: Coming up next. More about the Supreme Court's environmental dock

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Speaker 1: at this term. This is Bloomberg. The Supreme Court has

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Speaker 1: three environmental cases on the dock at this term so far.

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Speaker 1: I've been talking to environmental law professor Pat Parento of

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Speaker 1: the Vermont Lawn Graduate School. Let's move from Texas to

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Speaker 1: San Francisco. Now, this is surprising because you think of

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Speaker 1: San Francisco in California as being one of the cities

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Speaker 1: and states that are on the cutting edge of environmental regulations.

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Speaker 1: At least that's the way I think of them anyway.

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Speaker 2: So it's one of the most liberal cities in the country.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So San franci le Go is suing the EPA.

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Speaker 2: So it's a reflection of San Francisco's terrible financial situation

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Speaker 2: because what they're dealing with or what are called combined

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Speaker 2: sewer overflows, and of course these are the combination of

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Speaker 2: sewage and stormwater facilities in a major city like San Francisco,

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Speaker 2: and they were built at a time when they didn't

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Speaker 2: separate the sewage from the storm water, so they were combined.

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Speaker 2: So when it rains really heavily, all of that untreated

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Speaker 2: waste goes into the river or in San Francisco's case,

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Speaker 2: into the ocean. So it's a huge problem. Many different

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Speaker 2: cities have dealt with it in different ways. I was

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Speaker 2: actually involved at one time in a lawsuit against the

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Speaker 2: City of Portland, which didn't have a solution to its

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Speaker 2: combined sewer overflow problems. Now it does, in part, I think,

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Speaker 2: because of our lawsuit. But our lawsuit actually established the

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Speaker 2: precedent that that issue in the San Francisco case, and

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Speaker 2: it has to do with what are called narrative standards

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Speaker 2: that are contained in the wastewater discharge permits under the

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Speaker 2: Clean Water Act. And what it basically says is because

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Speaker 2: combined sewer overflows contain basically a soup of pollutants, a

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Speaker 2: toxic soup of plutiness. If you think about everything on

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Speaker 2: a city's streets, parking lots, if you think about all

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Speaker 2: the industrial sites that might be within an urban boundary,

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Speaker 2: and when it rains really heavily, all of that crap

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Speaker 2: comes off of all of those impervious is that a

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Speaker 2: technical term, that's a technical term, that's legal term, is

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Speaker 2: not defined in the Clean Water Act. But all the

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Speaker 2: junk and crap and yick it comes off a city street,

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Speaker 2: all that goes through these CSOs into the water. Okay,

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Speaker 2: So you can't come up with a single technology, is

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Speaker 2: the point. You can't come up with a numerical standard

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Speaker 2: that says, reduce this pollutant by x part per million

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Speaker 2: or whatever the standard is, right, So what you have

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Speaker 2: to do is say you have to manage that effluent

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Speaker 2: by whatever means you can, best management practices, building detention

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Speaker 2: facilities to hold some of the rain water before it

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Speaker 2: has to be treated so that it doesn't run right

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Speaker 2: off into the ocean and so forth. So you have

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Speaker 2: to come up with a more sophisticated control program, very

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Speaker 2: expensive though you can separate the sewage from the storm water,

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Speaker 2: but that means tearing up the existing system, and that's

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Speaker 2: incredibly disruptive and expensive, and why San Francisco doesn't really

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Speaker 2: want to do it right. But the point is that

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Speaker 2: these narrative standards that you must comply with water quality standards.

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Speaker 2: We can't give you a specific number. We can tell

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Speaker 2: you you're going to have to have a system that

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Speaker 2: maintains and doesn't violate water quality standards, which are based

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Speaker 2: on uses of water, swimming, fishing, drinking fish, and wildlife whatever.

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Speaker 2: There's lots of different beneficial uses of water that we

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Speaker 2: put into these so called water quality standards. Every one

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Speaker 2: of the national permits that are administered by the state,

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Speaker 2: but their EPA derived permits, every one of them has

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Speaker 2: to have a condition requiring compliance with water quality standards.

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Speaker 2: That's what was being enforced by EPA in the San

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Speaker 2: Francisco case. And San Francisco is basically arguing EPA has

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Speaker 2: no authority to require compliance with anything other than numerical

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Speaker 2: standards that are subject to technological controls.

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Speaker 1: Is there Supreme Court precedent in this area?

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Speaker 2: The Supreme Court in two different cases, one of which

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Speaker 2: was written by the late Justice O'Connor in a case

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Speaker 2: in Washington. We call it PUD number one of Jefferson

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Speaker 2: County versus the State of Washington's Environmental Board. And in

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Speaker 2: that case, Justice O'Connor very explicitly said, narrative standards are fine,

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Speaker 2: and you must comply with water quality standards. And that

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Speaker 2: means controlling anything that's going into the water that you

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Speaker 2: can control, whether or not it's through technology or land juice,

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Speaker 2: means whether it means maintaining certain flows of water you

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Speaker 2: know that will dilute some of the pollutants and maintain

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Speaker 2: these uses and so forth. So that was one of

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Speaker 2: the decisions. Then there was a later one, the name

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Speaker 2: of which escaped me at the moment, But there was

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Speaker 2: another case in which the Supreme Court upheld narrative standards

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Speaker 2: under the Clean Water Act. There's a provision in the Act,

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Speaker 2: it's section thirteen eleven that explicitly authorizes EPA to set

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Speaker 2: other limitations, not just technology effluent limitations, but quote other

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Speaker 2: limitations necessary to protect water quality and water quality standards. So, frankly,

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Speaker 2: if the Supreme follows its textualist approach to interpreting the statute,

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Speaker 2: it should uphold the Ninth Circuit. Now, we know the

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Speaker 2: Supreme Court rarely upholds the Ninth Circuit, right, so probably,

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Speaker 2: if you're a betting person, you would have to say

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Speaker 2: EPA is probably going to lose. It seems like EPA,

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Speaker 2: you know, oftentimes loses in this court. So we won't

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Speaker 2: know exactly why or how the Supreme Court might decide

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Speaker 2: this case, but I think it could if it really

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Speaker 2: looks at the language of the statue and the way

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Speaker 2: it's been interpreted by the Court in previous cases, it

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Speaker 2: may in the end uphold the Ninth Circuit.

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Speaker 1: Do you think though, that the Supreme Court's continuing attempt

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Speaker 1: to limit agency power and low or bride, you know,

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Speaker 1: throwing away the Chevron doctrine, do you think that would

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Speaker 1: play in this case?

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Speaker 2: Well, they're not relying in this case. EPA is not

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Speaker 2: relying on Chevron. That would be foolies, wouldn't it. They're

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Speaker 2: basically saying this is the best reading of the statute.

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Speaker 2: In fact, what EBA is arguing is it's the only

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Speaker 2: reading of the statue. Now, if the Supreme Court can

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Speaker 2: find a way around the plain text of the statue,

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Speaker 2: then we know we're in serious trouble, right. But I'm

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Speaker 2: just saying, my course, I have a bias here because

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Speaker 2: I argued this issue many years ago in the Ninth

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Speaker 2: Circuit and won it. But my view is that the

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Speaker 2: text is clear and unmistakable, and the only thing that

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Speaker 2: I thought would be vulnerable is the fact that because

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Speaker 2: these are not specific numerical standards, an argument that we

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Speaker 2: don't know what we have to do to comply might

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Speaker 2: have been a good argument.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: But according to the briefing that I've just read, the

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Speaker 2: United States the Solicitor General is saying San Francisco abandoned

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Speaker 2: that argument. They didn't make that argument in the Supreme Court.

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Speaker 2: They did make that argument in the Ninth Circuit, but

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Speaker 2: they didn't preserve it and maintain it in the Supreme Court.

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Speaker 2: I'll be very interested to listen to the oral argument

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Speaker 2: on this case and see if the court, the Supreme

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Speaker 2: Court agrees that San Francisco has waived that argument, because

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Speaker 2: to me, that would have been a stronger argument.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's move on to a case with a sort

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Speaker 1: of strange name. Seven Court Infrastructure Coalition versus Eagle County,

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Speaker 1: Colorado's say.

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Speaker 2: About well this, Unfortunately, I have to say is another

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Speaker 2: NEPA case, National Environmental Policy that case, and we all

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Speaker 2: know what nipa's track record is in the Supreme Court,

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Speaker 2: which is zero and fifteen, zero and fifteen.

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Speaker 1: I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it

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Speaker 1: was that bad.

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Speaker 2: It's that bad. There have been fifteen different cases petitions

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Speaker 2: for a review involving NEPA, and NEPA has never won

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Speaker 2: in the Supreme Court. So they're going in with a turm.

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Speaker 1: We know where the betting money.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we know where the betting money is on that one.

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Speaker 2: But here's what the issue is. And I also have

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Speaker 2: some history with this thing too. This is the Surface

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Speaker 2: Transportation Board decision. And the STB is the reincarnation of

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Speaker 2: the old Interstate Commerce Commission, and so the law that

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Speaker 2: the STB administers is as old as the ICC, which

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Speaker 2: is the early nineteen hundreds right. Anyway, what the STB

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Speaker 2: does is license new rail line. And the rail line

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Speaker 2: here is I think eighty five miles long in Utah,

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Speaker 2: and it's moving oil, which they call something I'd never

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Speaker 2: heard of before, waxy crude oil. It's oil by any

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Speaker 2: other name from one place to another in the Uinta

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Speaker 2: Basin of Utah. And then from there it gets you know,

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Speaker 2: shipped all over the place. It gets shipped to Louisiana,

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Speaker 2: it gets shipped to Mobile, Alabama, it might even go

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Speaker 2: to the Fugit Sound. It gets into a huge network

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Speaker 2: of rail lines that take oil all over the country

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Speaker 2: to be refined and made into a variety of products,

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Speaker 2: some of which I'm sure would be burned in power plants,

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Speaker 2: some of which burned in homes, whatever, whatever products you

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Speaker 2: make out of this waxy crude oil. This rail line

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Speaker 2: simply puts it into interstate commerce and then it goes

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Speaker 2: wherever it goes. So the question in this case is

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Speaker 2: what responsibility does STB have to consider what we call

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Speaker 2: the upstream effects of this rail line, which means the

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Speaker 2: pumping and extraction of this oil product and all of

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Speaker 2: the intended environmental consequences of that, plus the downstream effects

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Speaker 2: which means where is the oil going, what is it

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Speaker 2: going to be used for? And of course, because oil

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Speaker 2: is a fossil fuel, how much carbon emissions are going

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Speaker 2: to be produced as a result of all of this

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Speaker 2: oil coming out of Utah and so ultimately being burned

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Speaker 2: in one way or another.

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Speaker 1: So where's the law right now on this.

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Speaker 2: The SDB has been subject to earlier lawsuits or refusing

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Speaker 2: to consider these upstream and downstream effects and specifically climate

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Speaker 2: change effects of moving oil, mostly oil, in some cases coal.

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Speaker 2: They also, of course move a hell of a lot

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Speaker 2: of coal by rail, and SDB lost actually a series

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Speaker 2: of cases, one of which I argued years ago, in

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Speaker 2: which you know, the course ruled no, SDB, you do

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Speaker 2: have to consider these upstream downstream effects, and you have

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Speaker 2: to make a reasonable effort to quantify the emissions that

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Speaker 2: would be generated by, you know, the fact that you're

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Speaker 2: allowing this oil to be moved by rail. Here's what's

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Speaker 2: changed in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: Congress actually, for the first time since nineteen seventy amended NIFA,

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Speaker 2: and it did so in a way that required that agencies,

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Speaker 2: in trying to consider these sort of i'll call them

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Speaker 2: indirect effects of their agency actions, could only consider reasonably

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Speaker 2: foreseeable consequences. So the case that the Supreme Court has

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Speaker 2: taken ultimately boils down to that question, what are the

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Speaker 2: reasonably foreseeable consequences of StB's approval of this eighty five

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Speaker 2: mile rail line, and has.

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Speaker 1: The Biden administration.

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Speaker 2: Weighed in here here's where things get interesting. So the government,

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Speaker 2: you know, the Justice Department, a solicitor General has weighed

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Speaker 2: in both in support of STB but also in support

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Speaker 2: of the petitioners in the case and against the respondents,

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Speaker 2: against the environmental groups that brought the case, right, And

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Speaker 2: what the Solicitor General's brief is saying is as a

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Speaker 2: consequence in part of the twenty twenty three Amendment of NEPA,

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Speaker 2: but also arguing even more fundamentally that there has to

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Speaker 2: be a limit on an agency's responsibility to consider effects

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Speaker 2: over which it really has no control. That's what this

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Speaker 2: comes down to. I mean STB can't tell whoever's going

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Speaker 2: to get this oil what to do with it or

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Speaker 2: not do with it, right, so their authority really is

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Speaker 2: quite limited to approving or not this rail line. And

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Speaker 2: STB did actually consider some of the upstream and some

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Speaker 2: of the downstream effects. They didn't go into the detail

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Speaker 2: that the challengers wanted or that the DC Circuit, which

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Speaker 2: is the court that heard this case and the petition

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Speaker 2: for review comes from the DC Circuit. The DC Circuit

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Speaker 2: found a lot of fault with the way SDB did

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Speaker 2: it's analysis. It's a six hundred page environmental impact statement,

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Speaker 2: so it's not a small thing, right, And there's another

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Speaker 2: something like several thousand pages of comments that were delivered.

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Speaker 2: So it's a huge record, is my point. It's a

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Speaker 2: huge administrative record. It's not a case where the agency

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Speaker 2: did nothing. It's a case where the DC Circuit said

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Speaker 2: you didn't do enough. So my bet is the Supreme

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Speaker 2: Court is going to overrule the DC Circuit, uphold the STB,

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Speaker 2: and allow this line to be built.

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Speaker 1: And just for a moment, talk about the Supreme Court's

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Speaker 1: relationship with environmental laws over the last let's say ten

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Speaker 1: or fifteen years.

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Speaker 2: Well, it has not been a healthy relationship. Frankly, my

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Speaker 2: dear friend, my mentor, Oliver Howse, professor now retired Emeritus

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Speaker 2: Professor of Law Tulane University, has just written a book

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Speaker 2: that's just out, in fact, called the Most Dangerous Branch

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Speaker 2: of All. He goes through at least a dozen Supreme

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Speaker 2: Court decisions on the environment and just takes them apart

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Speaker 2: and says, as a matter of law, logic, and certainly consequence,

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Speaker 2: they have been terrible decisions for protection of the natural environment,

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Speaker 2: the human environment, public health across the board. So this

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Speaker 2: is I think the most definitive analysis by a very

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Speaker 2: very well respected scholar. I mean, he is in the

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Speaker 2: pantheon of environmental scholarship, and for someone like him to

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Speaker 2: reach a conclusion like that, it's pretty startling.

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Speaker 1: The Roberts Court certainly has not been a friend of

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Speaker 1: environmental laws or the EPA. Thanks so much, Pat for

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Speaker 1: your insights as professor. Pat Parento of the Vermont Law

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Speaker 1: and Graduate School. Broker Christine O'Reilly has sued City Group

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Speaker 1: along with her employer TPIICAP and a UK based supervisor,

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Speaker 1: alleging i CAAP encouraged her to go along with a

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Speaker 1: City trader's advances in order to keep orders flowing. In

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Speaker 1: court filings last week, both defendants denied O'Reilly's allegations and

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Speaker 1: also contended that legal deficiencies would require dismissal of many

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Speaker 1: of her claims. Citygroup denied it knew of any inappropriate

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Speaker 1: conduct and also said it couldn't be held responsible for

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Speaker 1: the alleged harassment, joining me as Bloomberg Legal reporter AVA

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Speaker 1: Benny Morrison AVA tell us about the lawsuit.

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Speaker 3: Sure, so, Christine O'Reilly was a broker at ICAP, and

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Speaker 3: she alleges that she was forced to put up with

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Speaker 3: harassment by a trader at City Group in return for

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Speaker 3: keeping a lot of flow coming into ICAP. She says

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Speaker 3: that I created a hostile work environment and encouraged her

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Speaker 3: to put up with the trader's unwanted sexual advances relentless

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Speaker 3: harassment over many years. And she says that she was

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Speaker 3: forced to do that because City Group was such a

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Speaker 3: big client for IKAT. She's also suing City for failing

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Speaker 3: to essentially protect her from this trader's behavior. And she's

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Speaker 3: also suing a supervisor at ICAP for telling her to

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Speaker 3: go along with it and to play the game.

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Speaker 1: Why is she suing City Group.

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Speaker 3: She's suing City because the trader worked at City and

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Speaker 3: she says that they failed to stop him. And she

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Speaker 3: alleges that she spoke to one of the trader's supervisors

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Speaker 3: and alerted him to the kind of things that the

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Speaker 3: trader was doing and the messages that he was sending

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Speaker 3: her at all hours of the day and night, the

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Speaker 3: constant FaceTime requests, asking for photographs of her, and just

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Speaker 3: essentially making her feel comfortable. We heard from City last week.

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Speaker 3: They filed their response in court and said, you know,

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Speaker 3: they do their best to create a safe and comfortable environment,

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Speaker 3: particularly the women, but they will be asking the judge

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Speaker 3: to dismiss the broker's claims against the bank, saying that

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Speaker 3: they didn't owe a duty to her because she didn't

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Speaker 3: work the city and they had no idea about some

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Speaker 3: of the behavior that the trader engaged in.

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Speaker 1: And how have the other defendants responded.

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Speaker 3: One of the other defendants is a woman named Janie

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Speaker 3: mccathey who was a supervisor at i CAP. We heard

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Speaker 3: from her lawyers last week and they said they would

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Speaker 3: also seek for dismissal of the claims against mccathy for

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Speaker 3: lack of jurisdiction. They said that mccafy was not Irailey's

437
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 3: supervisor and didn't even work for the same company. So

438
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 3: I think that the latter argument is based on a technicality.

439
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:57,879
Speaker 3: You have ie Cap and then the parent company, but

440
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 3: then you have consideraries, and Janie McAthey is based in

441
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:06,560
Speaker 3: London and the broker, Christine O'Reilly, is based in New York.

442
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 3: In i caaps very detailed response to all of the

443
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 3: broker's allegations. It denied most of them, but it did

444
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:20,160
Speaker 3: admit to some of the allegations that are backed up

445
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 3: by documents. So that includes Jennie mccathey using an expletive

446
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,199
Speaker 3: when she was talking to Christine O'Reilly at work and

447
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:34,360
Speaker 3: in front of others, and using internal messages to essentially

448
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 3: call her useless, among other things. So we expect to

449
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 3: see motions from all three defendants City I, CAP and

450
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 3: Jennie mccafey asking the judge too throughout this case.

451
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:51,920
Speaker 1: And O'Reilly is not suing the trader who allegedly harassed her.

452
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 3: You know, the trader actually alleges subjected her to relentless

453
00:28:56,280 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 3: harassment and unwanted sexual advances is named in her lawsuit,

454
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 3: but isn't identified as a defendant. We understand that he

455
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 3: no longer works at City but he was a trader

456
00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 3: on City groups high profile Delta one desk.

457
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: And this isn't the first time there have been complaints

458
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: about City Group's Equities Trading division.

459
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 3: That's right, This lawsuit and these allegations come at a

460
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 3: pretty interesting time for Citygroup. The Equities Trading Division has

461
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 3: already been targeted by a series of complaints about the

462
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 3: toxic culture there about how women are treated inside that

463
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 3: particular division. Last year, there was a lawsuit filed by

464
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 3: a woman who was a managing director, and we rarely

465
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:47,680
Speaker 3: hear from women who are that senior who are calling

466
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 3: out this kind of behavior, and that managing director said

467
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 3: that she was coerced into an abusive relationship and threatened

468
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 3: by another colleague. So that lawsuit is still ongoing. Bloomberg

469
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 3: has also done some reporting talking to other women who

470
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 3: spent time in that division and got a bit of

471
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 3: an insight into what it's like there, and it seems

472
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 3: like it was a pretty tough environment for women to

473
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 3: work in. They were leader and raise it on their

474
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 3: looks and subject to other kind of gendered harassment. City

475
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:21,400
Speaker 3: says that it's trying to get on top of this,

476
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 3: but this latest law suit by thecap broker Christine O'Reilly

477
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 3: certainly doesn't do anything turk crall concerns around that particular

478
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 3: trading division.

479
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: We'll have to see how the judge rules in those

480
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: expected motions to dismiss. Thanks so much, Ava. That's Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Legal reporter Eva Benny Morrison, and that's it for this

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00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: edition of the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Remember you've can always

483
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 1: get the latest legal news by subscribing and listening to

484
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at bloomberg dot com,

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00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: slash podcast, slash Law. I'm June Grasso, and this is

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00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: Bloomberg