The appellate group at Latham & Watkins undertook high-stakes, high-profile appeals across a broad swath of law in state and federal courts. "One of the things that has been most satisfying is the diversity in the types of cases and issues we’ve been handling both at the Supreme Court and circuit court levels," said Gregory Garre, a former solicitor general who leads the firm’s appellate practice.
The firm’s core appellate group includes Garre, partners Richard Bress, J. Scott Ballenger and Lori Alvino McGill, and of counsel Maureen Mahoney. Last fall, they helped prep Garre for four U.S. Supreme Court arguments. Two involved the constitutionality of warrantless searches by drug-sniffing dogs (Garre, representing Florida in both, won one, lost the other). The remaining two are pending and include the marquee challenge to the University of Texas’ use of race in its admissions policy (Garre represents the university) and a potentially major employment law case Vance v. Ball State University (Garre’s client is the university) about who is a "supervisor" for vicarious liability purposes under Title VII.
