Juridicare, LLC
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At Juridicare, LLC, we support small firm lawyers and solo practitioners who are facing the paper onslaught of large firm opponents—especially in high-stakes civil rights, employment law, and personal injury cases. Our consultants are former litigators and seasoned law professors who understand the courtroom, the caselaw, and the pressure of trial deadlines. We write with precision, speed, and clarity—so you can focus on winning in court.
Whether it’s a dispositive motion, a key memo, or an appellate brief that needs ironclad analysis and compelling narrative, we’re here to lift the research burden from your shoulders. Our mission is simple: we write so you can litigate.
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Juridicare, LLC was founded by veteran legal educators and litigators who saw a common struggle: trial lawyers drowning in paperwork, often up against firms with bigger budgets and deeper benches. We created Juridicare to provide the kind of help that keeps good lawyers in the fight—high-level legal writing that doesn’t break your client’s bank.
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THOUGHTS ABOUT THE LAW IN 2025
Law is a narrative art
Law is a narrative art. This means the story behind the dispute, as established by the evidence, is always important, and always important to tell well. That is true for both the lawyers’ contributions to the case in briefs and the judges’ contributions in the written opinions explaining their decisions. Surprisingly, though, many briefs attorneys write seem not to take the statement of facts section seriously, treating the record in a cursory fashion. Others make a different but equally serious mistake, failing to treat the record honestly, spinning the facts like a merry-go-round.
Playing games with the facts is always a strong temptation. We always want to make the story look good for our side. There is no question fudging the facts (or more simply put, lying) has become a major factor in our political and legal world. Many have observed that being fast and loose with the record has been the hallmark of some recent high-visibility judicial decisions, such as the Supreme Court’s decision a couple of years ago in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S.507 (2022). In that decision, the Court ruled that a football coach consistently holding public prayer sessions at the fifty-yard line right after a game surrounded by students did not show school district support and favoritism toward that brand of religion, in large part by simply ignoring the facts in the record and pretending this was a purely private act.
Attorneys should remember, though, that judges may be able to get away with fudging the facts, but litigants cannot. Putting aside the clear ethical issues involved, from a purely pragmatic point of view never forget that there are always at least two other players in the mix, both of whom have some incentive to catch any gamesmanship with the record. Obviously, the attorneys representing opposing parties of course will never let the chance to expose any inaccuracies and exaggerations which an attorney is tempted to use. Never forget, too, that the judge too has an interest in getting the record straight and an incentive to catch any factual mistakes any attorney might make.
Tell the story honestly and clearly. Of course, we all put our spin on it—but remember, the other side will leap on that spin. One of the most valuable skills any lawyer can develop is writing the story in a way that highlights the strengths of one’s own case but doing so honestly and without distortion.
Never forget, practicing law is not a cold list of rules but real, living human stories. Be a good storyteller.
The Last Waltz: Does Ames v. Ohio State Youth Services Spell the Beginning of the End of McDonnell Douglas?
Late in the 2024-2025 term the Supreme Court decided an employment discrimination dispute arising under Title VII, Ames v. Ohio State Youth Services, that is likely to have significant future impact. In these times anything to do with defining what counts as discrimination and who can be discriminated against is a very politically charged matter, and the Supreme Court is obviously politically divided. Therefore, it was surprising that Ames was a unanimous decision. In fact, it was written by the newest justice, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, most definitely a member of the three-justice progressive minority on the Court. Even though one of the liberal justices wrote the majority opinion, it may contain a poison pill for Title VII plaintiffs.
The plaintiff in Ames was a straight woman who applied for a new management position, but the successful applicant was another woman, who was gay. Ames claimed she was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation. The Sixth Circuit held that, as a member of the historically advantaged majority group (heterosexuals), before defendant could be required to provide a justification for its hiring decision she must show “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” The Supreme Court reversed.
The legal backdrop for the Ames decision is the fifty-two-year-old McDonnell Douglas three-step framework for Title VII cases (and adopted for other similar kinds of discrimination cases). Employment discrimination attorneys often refer to this as the “McDonnell Douglas waltz.” A close examination of the Ames decision suggests that the music for this waltz may be winding down.
The first step in the waltz is the plaintiff’s prima facie case, which Justice Jackson quite accurately noted is “not onerous.” That first step for a case where the plaintiff applied for a position but did not receive it is to produce enough evidence to support an inference of discriminatory motive for hiring someone else. Doing so shifts the burden to the employer to articulate a legitimate reason for the action. This gives the plaintiff a target at which to aim. At that point, the burden shifts back to the plaintiff to show that this justification is pretextual.
Decades of decisions have held that this first step can be met simply by having the plaintiff show she suffered an adverse employment action and that she was a member of a historically marginalized class, such as a woman, a person of color, or an adherent to a minority religion. Justice Jackson’s opinion elides that recognition of historical, sociological fact by describing the first step in it most general terms as one that requires a plaintiff to show the adverse action occurs under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination. The opinion makes no reference to decades of decisions holding that this inference can be raised by the mere fact that a plaintiff is a member of a historically disadvantaged group.
The Sixth Circuit had established a precedent for members of majority groups—groups that have not, historically, been victims of discrimination—must show “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” The Supreme Court rejected the “background circumstances” test as an additional burden on majority-group plaintiffs not justified by the text of Title VII.
Clearly, though, one could argue that this was not an additional burden at all, but simply a particularized application of the general test the Court endorsed stating that a plaintiff must show circumstances which give rise to an inference of discriminatory intent. In that view, every plaintiff faces the same burden—showing circumstances that suggest discriminatory intent. When one is a member of a historically marginalized group, one faces an adverse action such as not being hired while a member of the majority group is instead given the job, those circumstances suggest discriminatory intent given our social history. When one is a member of a historically advantaged group, and applies for a job, but it goes to someone from a minority group, that fact alone does not support the same inference given the empirical history of life in the United States. The State of Ohio did in fact argue that the “background circumstances” test was not a different evidentiary burden but a particularized application of the same proof requirement all plaintiffs face, but unfortunately for Ohio, the Sixth Circuit explicitly called it an additional evidentiary burden. Still, the Supreme Court was not bound to accept the Sixth Circuit’s description of what it was doing, but it did so. As just noted, this was unfortunate for Ohio and good for Ames, but the jury is still out on whether the decision will prove good for Title VII plaintiffs in general.
The apparent effect of the decision is to simplify the plaintiff’s prima facie case quite a bit. Now, all a plaintiff must show is that she applied for the job, but someone from a different group received it. Moreover, a moment’s reflection shows that in almost all instances this test collapses into one where all the plaintiff needs to show is that she did not get the job. After all, the person who did get the job nearly always is part of some different group. Maybe the person who got the job is of a different sex or has a different sexual orientation. Maybe that person is a different religion. Maybe that person has a different ethnic background. There is almost always some difference.
The reaction of an attorney representing Title VII plaintiffs might be that there is nothing wrong with making the plaintiff’s initial burden easier. The Title VII plaintiff’s attorney’s optimistic reading of Ames now might be that the plaintiff can get past the first step by showing she applied for a job, she did not get the job, and someone from any different group did so, irrespective of which group is the minority with a history of being marginalized. That would be an extraordinarily light burden, but there are two more steps in the waltz. In the second step, employers are quite adept at articulating apparently legitimate alternative rationales for the adverse employment action. HR departments have had more than fifty years since McDonnell Douglas to develop that expertise. Furthermore, they are quite adept at molding internal documentation to support that alternative and make sure there is very little evidence available for the plaintiff to prove this legitimate alternative motivation is a pretext. Title VII cases are hard to win.
There is a much more pessimistic, and in today’s climate more likely, reading of Ames, however. Courts may begin to require more evidence of all plaintiffs to meet their prima facie cases. The Ames decision referred to that prima facie burden in the most general way, as requiring plaintiff to “produc[e] enough evidence to support an inference of discriminatory motive.” As already noted, the Court did not cite or quote any of the many decisions in the last fifty years that made it clear that showing the plaintiff was a member of the historically marginalized group while the winner of the job counted as such evidence. That omission, whether intentional or not, seems ominous. It invites courts to demand more from plaintiffs at the prima facie stage.
The Court could have stated explicitly that evidence that one was a member of a particular group different from the winner of the job was enough evidence to support that inference of discrimination, but it did not do so—surely because the more conservative members of the Court would have balked. A pessimist would say that the long-term goal of these more conservative justices was not just to ease the initial burden of a reverse- discrimination plaintiff like Ames, but also to make the burden of more traditional Title VII plaintiffs harder. To put it in simple terms, courts seem to be invited to say, “Well, you can’t just say the person who got the job happens to be a member of some group of which you are not a member. That is true 99% of the time. That is not enough to support an inference of discriminatory motive. Give us more.”
The concurring opinion of Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, supports this pessimistic view. He starts by writing that “I join the Court’s opinion in full.” Then he spends page after page attacking the very legitimacy of the McDonnell Douglas test. One way to see what Justice Thomas would require courts to do instead would collapse everything into the final step. If there is no prima facie case, the burden is never shifted to the employer to provide any sort of explanation for what it has done. Without that shift, plaintiffs have no target at which to aim. Defendants need never explain themselves.
When the Civil Rights Act was first enacted, many decades ago, finding direct proof of discriminatory intent was easier. Bosses said and wrote egregiously bigoted things; after all, they had been free to do so with consequences for centuries. As stated above, though, HR departments have had many decades to develop techniques that make it harder to prove such bigotry even where it exists. Title VII cases are hard to win. Despite its appeal to Title VII plaintiffs, Ames v. Ohio State Department of Youth Services might make such cases even more difficult for plaintiffs by making the prima facie case harder to prove rather than easier.
Supreme Court Justices demand other judges guess what they mean
Another week, another “emergency” decision from the Supreme Court insulating the Trump Administration from accountability for its apparently obvious illegal actions. This time, notably, two of the Justices not only ruled for the administration but demanded respect from lower courts. But someone who needs to demand respect may well not have earned it.
These emergency or “shadow” docket decisions freeing the administration from legal oversight largely share two key characteristics. First, they are not rulings on the merits of the underlying dispute—even the Court’s extremely conservative majority have gone so far as to hold that what the administration is doing is legally permissible—but instead, they are rulings that in some way or another constrict federal courts’ power to remedy that illegality. Second, these decisions, as befits their supposed “emergency” nature, have little to no analysis accompanying them. Mostly, they are pronouncements without opinion.
The decision the Court announced on August 21, 2025, in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association, 606 U.S. ___ (2025), fits that mold. The Court allowed the administration to continue to refuse to pay nearly $800 million in National Institutes of Health grants, but it also didn’t block a lower court ruling that threw out guidance from the administration that was at the heart of the effort to cut the funding. The grantees, the court said, could still seek the money but would have to do so in a different court. The Court’s decision was heavily fractured. Four justices would have ruled against the administration entirely. Four would have ruled entirely for the administration. Justice Barrett, however, Barrett split the difference – suggesting that the grant recipients are likely to prevail on their challenges to the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives, but that they cannot get their grant money until and unless they bring their claims in a different federal court.
Therefore, this decision was a confusing mess in many ways, even overlooking that lack of much in the way of substantive analysis. Yet two of the Justices, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, felt compelled to warn that,” Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.”
The problem for lower courts, however, is this. Every legal document requires interpretation. The Constitution requires interpretation. Statutes require interpretation. Court decisions interpreting the Constitution, statute, regulation and earlier court decisions in turn require interpretation. The Court’s shadow docket decisions are so devoid of content as to leave the possibilities for interpretation quite wide open. What did the Court even mean?
Proper legal interpretation follows certain norms, including respect for precedent. If the Court intends to upend precedent radically, but fails to be clear in doing so, then good legal analysis will err on the side of respecting that precedent—thus earning the ire of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
Behind all of this looms another set of questions. What if the Court did try to state its legal analysis for these administration-supporting snap decisions? Would the resulting opinions bear any resemblance to what centuries of legal practice have come to recognize as acceptable forms of interpretive practice, or would they simply be the judicial version of the “Trump weave?”