Reckless Ben Goes To Federal Court

Reckless Ben is headed to federal court, finally, and he's agreed to mediate with Bricks and Minifigs corporate.Things are starting to look up for our quixotic YouTuber.But he's not out of the woods yet.Far from it, in fact.Despite the parties stipulating to remove most of the temporary restraining order limiting Ben's speech, which ordered him to take down videos and to not publish his forthcoming part three expose, the original state court judge rejected the joint request.And that is just the half of it.

Because as you may know, on May 28th, 2026, a Utah judge signed an order forbidding YouTuber Reckless Ben from posting any false, misleading, harassing, interfering, defamatory, or unlawful content about bricks and minifigs the chain of Lego resale stores that Ben claims stole $200 ,000 of Lego collections from an elderly man.The order also required him to remove his existing videos from, quote, any online streaming platform.This all happened ex parte.The judge signed the restraining order without hearing a word from Ben or his lawyers and required the plaintiffs to post no bond because he concluded that Ben, quote, will suffer no legitimate harm from being silenced.But as many legal commentators pointed out at the time, Ben stood to suffer quite a bit of legitimate harm because large portions of that order were in most estimations, flatly unconstitutional.But here's a twist.

After defendants hired counsel, the parties themselves went back to the drawing board.They jointly asked the court to replace the original order with a dramatically narrower injunction that restores Ben's ability to report on the case while they go to mediation.And then, just days later, Ben removed the entire lawsuit to federal court.Now that is good news if you're on Team Reckless Bend, but it's maybe not quite as good news as what some people have made it out to be, and they're drawing conclusions that they probably shouldn't.So let's talk about what happened, why the original TRO was so legally problematic, and why even the plaintiffs now appear to agree that it went too far, and what happens now that they're in federal court.Mansell consigned his father Ed's Star Wars collection

to the Salem, Oregon store, which was then operated by Crystal Law and Benjamin Gorman.When the Gormans announced they were leaving the country, Bam repossessed the store and Mansell's unsold Legos disappeared.And as you probably also know, YouTuber Reckless Ben Schneider started working with Mansell and the Gormans to find out what happened.He made videos, investigated leads, interviewed ex -employees, filed small claim lawsuits, and traveled to Utah to confront the people who were involved.And on May 21st, 2026, he published a video titled, I tracked down the thief who stole $200 ,000 of Lego, allegedly branding Bricks and Minifigs the thief and accusing the police of quote, actively working with the thieves to cover it up.Now Bricks and Minifigs ownership, Amin and Matt McNeff did not appreciate any of this.

And on May 26th, they decided to throw the kitchen sink at the problem by filing a lawsuit alleging that Ben and his associates engaged in trespass, stalking, impersonation, interference with customers and franchises and harassment of employees and their family members.Bricks and Minifigs even threw in a civil RICO claim theorizing that Ben was a real -life Tony Soprano colluding with a pack of foot soldiers to extort BAM out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and damage the company's business and reputation.And the same day that plaintiffs filed their complaint, they moved for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, and the court granted the TRO without hearing from the defendants.This is what's known as an ex parte order.It means the court was asked to act on an emergency basis, and it did.But an ex parte TRO, especially one that deals with free speech, is a serious remedy that courts are supposed to disfavor.

in Utah State Court, those courts are still bound by the Constitution and the First Amendment.Now, courts can only grant ex parte relief when a plaintiff presents evidence of immediate and irreparable harm.Typically, this happens when there's an emergency, like an allegation of domestic violence or a threat to expose a trade secret or a neighbor cutting down a tree on your property.And admittedly, when you're talking about intellectual property, that is a circumstance where courts can find irreparable harm.But the nature of the proceeding means the judge hears only one side of the story until a later hearing can be held, and they are extremely disfavored when the thing being restrained is speech.The Supreme Court has long cautioned that when government actions restrain speech,

procedural safeguards are critically important, especially when where an order is entered without a full adversarial hearing.For example, in Carol versus Princess Anne, the court vacated an ex parte injunction restraining a white supremacist group from holding a rally, emphasizing the prior restraints on expression require strict procedural protections.Ex parte relief is not forbidden altogether, but it should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances where notice is impossible or would defeat the purpose of the injunction.

Now, as you probably know, tens of millions of people around the world are following the story on YouTube, and it's fascinating to see how legacy news outlets are handling this Lego case.Or in this case, of any meaningful coverage at all.When the story first broke, only internet -facing blogs like Kotaku and Know Your Meme picked it up.But when Bricks and Minifigs sued Reckless Ben and the story blew up on YouTube, the few news outlets that picked it up were almost exclusively from the center and right -leaning sources, mostly focusing on regional Bricks and Minifigs locations closing as a result of the fallout or the First Amendment implications of the case.In fact, the most covered Lego crime story of the past few months on Legacy Media was about a guy who stole $34 ,000 worth of Lego from Target by stuffing boxes with pasta.outlets equally balanced along political bias lines.

This bird's eye view of the media explains why you get different answers when you ask people if they've heard about the big Lego story, and that's why we've been using Ground News, the sponsor of this portion of the video, for years.Ground News is an app and website that aggregates news from thousands of sources around the world in one place.It even aggregates from podcasts, like when Reckless Ben appeared on the H3 podcast.And for every story in the news, Ground News breaks down the bias, factuality, and ownership and allows you to compare how different sources cover the same story.react to the headlines, you understand the structure behind them.That's critical for anyone who values truth over political bias.

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the First Amendment problems with this TRO.

But let's start with paragraph 5J, which enjoined Ben from quote, as the speech restriction comes from a court order.And the order itself is a government action.And the Supreme Court has repeatedly described prior restraints as quote, the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.The court outlined this principle in Near v. Minnesota.There, a Minnesota court permanently enjoined a newspaper from publishing future issues after it accused local officials of corruption.And the court struck down the injunction holding that the First Amendment generally forbids courts from suppressing future speech, even if earlier publications were allegedly defamatory or otherwise unlawful.

And the remedy for unprotected speech is ordinarily a lawsuit after publication, not a judicial order forbidding publication in advance.And there are a few narrow circumstances where a prior restraint may be permissible.For example, in the Pentagon Papers case, the federal government sought an injunction But even though the materials were classified and implicated in national security, the Supreme Court refused to grant the injunction because the government failed to meet the heavy burden of justifying censorship before publication.And that case illustrates just how demanding the constitutional standard is.If the government generally cannot prevent publication of classified national securitydocuments, it's very hard to suppress speech merely because a private plaintiff alleges it's false, misleading, or defamatory.

Generally, the idea in a business dispute is that if you can give someone money as a remedy for their damages, then there's no irreparable harm.And a case that's pretty analogous to Ben's is Organization for Better Austin vs. Keefe.

Their community activists distributed leaflets criticizing a real estate broker's alleged blockbusting practices and urged members of the public to pressure him.Blockbusting was a practice where developers and brokers encouraged white families to sell their houses at a low price by provoking racial hysteria.

The brokers would then sell the house at a substantially higher price to black families.And Keefe got an injunction prohibiting the activists from distributing flyers about him or his business.The Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that the injunction constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.Even if the leaflets caused economic harm or invaded Keefe's privacy, those concerns did not justify suppressing speech in advance.

And paragraph J suffers from the same constitutional defect.

Rather than prohibiting specific unlawful conduct, it broadly forbids Ben from creating or publishing any, quote, false, misleading, harassing, interfering, defamatory, or unlawful content about the plaintiffs.And of course, whether Ben's speech is actually misleading, harassing, or interfering is heavily disputed.And remember, even allegedly defamatory speech ordinarily cannot be enjoined before a final adjudication that it is, in fact, defamatory.And by requiring Ben to obtain judicial permission before speaking, or else risk contempt if a court later disagrees with his characterization, The order imposes the kind of prior restraint that the Supreme Court has consistently held to be presumptively unconstitutional.Now, that being said, like I mentioned before, courts do find irreparable harm more often in an IP intellectual property context.So for example, some of Bricks and Minifigs claims relate to the use of their trademark.

Sometimes courts find irreparable harm in trademark cases because trademark law is designed to protect interests that are difficult or impossible to quantify in monetary damages.And that's because courts reason that sometimes when a trademark is infringed, the injury often affects reputation, goodwill, and consumer perception.in ways that cannot be reconstructed after the fact, and cannot be properly compensated with monetary damages.But still, this TRO went way, way further than the use of Bricks and Minifigs trademark.And the injunction is even more troubling because it bans future speech about matters of public concern.Criticizing a business, alleging consumer fraud, and reporting on litigation are at the heart of the First Amendment.

And courts can't, or at least they shouldn't, silence speech first and ask whether it was protected later.Paragraph K goes even further than Paragraph J. It orders Ben to remove his existing videos and prohibits him from maintaining not only the publications identified in the complaint, but also, quote, any other video, audio, or other form of publication posted, quote, on any online streaming platform that in any way relates to the dispute.And the judge made a preliminary factual finding that Briggs and Minifig was likely to succeed on the merits, meaning that Ben's videos would likely be deemed defaming of the company and its officers.

But American courts generally do not order speech removed as defamatory until the plaintiff has actually proven that the statements are false.And here, of course, there's been no trial, no discovery, no cross -examination, and no finding that any statement is false.

And they haven't even heard from Ben's side yet.And that's especially significant because the facts remain hotly disputed.And because everyone thinks they're smarter than lawyers, They've been going online and granting interviews and muddling up all of the facts.

If you watched our video about the McNeff's interview with Coffeezilla, you know that the company already walked back some of its claims that Ben and Brian fabricated some aspects of the story.And of course, the judge in this case, Judge Graff, heard only the plaintiff's version of events before concluding that they were substantially likely to prevail.That's not untoward, that is what happens in an ex parte hearing, but it highlights why a judge should be very careful in these circumstances.

We can contrast this with what happened in the E. Jean Carroll litigation, Even after two juries found Donald Trump liable for defamation, the court did not broadly prohibit him from discussing Carroll.Instead, when Trump continued making allegedly defamatory statements, those statements became the basis for additional claims and additional damages.And the few courts that have upheld injunctions against defamatory speech have done so only after a final adjudication on the merits and only as to these specific statements found to be false.So for example, in a case called Balboa Island Village Inn vs. Lehman, the California Supreme Court upheld a narrowly tailored injunction entered only after the trial and and limited to statements that had actually been adjudicated defamatory.That's in contrast to paragraph 5K, which was entered ex parte before any finding of liability and sweeps far beyond any particular statement.And rather than identifying any specific statements found to be unlawful or putatively unlawful, paragraph 5K reaches quote, any publication on any streaming platform that in any way relates to the underlying dispute.

That language encompasses everything Ben has posted about this controversy on all platforms.Additionally, there are a whole bunch of other issues.Paragraph 5A barred the defendants from making, transmitting, soliciting, encouraging, or facilitating death threats, bomb threats, or other threats against the plaintiffs and related individuals.Now, prohibiting Ben from making or transmitting true threats is uncontroversial.

True threats are not protected by the First Amendment, and arguably, an intentional death threat or bomb threat would probably fall outside of constitutional protection.

The problem is the rest of the language soliciting, encouraging or facilitating.The complaint argues that Ben is responsible for anonymous threats sent by third parties, including emails like this quote.I will be mailing you guys some explosive Lego sets, super hot items so hot they're about to go boom.Your CEO has two days to step down before random stores are going to get fun packages.You've been warned.

That is a bomb threat, but there's no evidence in the complaint that Ben wrote it or directed anyone else to send it.

Instead, the injunction appears to assume that criticizing a company can make someone legally responsible for the independent actions of their anonymous viewers.But there's simply no indication that these threats originated from Ben or other defendants.And the court should not hold Ben responsible for other people's threats unless the plaintiff can prove incitement, and that's a very high bar.Ben's videos have undoubtedly convinced some people not to do business with bricks and minifigs, but that's protected by the First Amendment.And the fact that anonymous viewers allegedlyresponded by sending threats doesn't automatically make Ben legally responsible for what other people chose to do, even if the criticism was especially harsh.

And the rest of the TRO has similar problems.No one has a right to trespass, so paragraph 5C, which bars Ben from entering the plaintiff's property, is unobjectionable in principle.But it goes much further.It prohibits Ben from coming within not less than 1 ,000 yards of any Bricks and Minifigs store, office, warehouse, franchise location, parking lot, employee home, home or franchisee home, and 1 ,000 yards is more than half a mile.So what we have here is a Utah judge drawing a half a mile bubble around every Bricks and Minifigs location in the country, then barring Ben from public sidewalks, public streets, and other stores within those zones.And Ben obviously can't film within those zones either.

And that creates two legal issues.First, Utah rule of civil procedure 65A requires injunctions to describe the prohibited conduct with reasonable detail, yet the order never identifies the locations covered by these exclusion zones.Second, the restriction is dramatically overbroad.Instead of simply prohibiting trespass, it sweeps in a substantial amount of lawful activity, including filming from public places and traveling or visiting nearby businesses.Section 65D also sweeps too broadly.It bars defendants from, quote, impersonating plaintiffs or any franchisee, law enforcement, a court officer, a delivery service, a customer, a government entity, or any third party to obtain signatures, access statements, employee information, customer information, or business disruption.

Now, it is, of course, illegal to impersonate a police officer.But as Mark explained in his video about Ben's arrest, it's not necessarily legal to assume a persona for the purposes of serving legal documents.This happens all the time.Someone pretends to be delivering flowers when their real purpose is to serve legal process on a party who's been dodging service.And this part of the TRO also prohibits Ben from impersonating the plaintiffs, the McNephs, Brandon Best, and Josh Johnson.Now, impersonating someone is not inherently illegal, and in some cases, it's protected by satire and parody.

Remember those Afro -Man videos where he mocked and impersonated the police?A jury eventually concluded that Afro -Man did not defame the officer.with his videos and public statements.Though, of course, impersonation can become unlawful if it's used to commit fraud, deceive someone into surrendering money or property, or obtain some other illegal benefit.But this TRO doesn't draw those distinctions.Instead, it broadly bans impersonation even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized False statements standing alone are not categorically excluded from First Amendment protection.

Paragraph E bans touching, altering, covering, defacing, or placing signage or any other form of communication, i .e.electronic, social media, et cetera, affecting plaintiff's property, including signs falsely stating or implying the plaintiff's stole from elderly persons, stole life savings, lost in court, or closed to avoid paying a judgment.Now, stopping Ben from physically defacing the plaintiff's or their franchisee's property is obviously fine, but Paragraph E is again overbroad.It bars placing signage or any other form of communication, electronic or social media in such a way that would affect the plaintiff's property.That's a sneaky way of banning Ben from saying anything that might cast the company in a negative light.

And of course, it also reaches electronic and social media communications and singles out particular messages, accusations of elderly theft and of losing in court for suppression.That is a textbook content -based speech restriction, which You're not supposed to do.And then paragraph F bans defendants from, quote, blocking, deterring or interfering with customers, employees, vendors or delivery personnel doing business with plaintiffs in any way, including entering or leaving any of plaintiff's locations.Now, a court can legally enjoin Ben from physically blocking customers, employees and vendors from entering stores.But the soft spot is the word deterring people.from doing business with bricks and minifigs.

Taken literally, that could reach peaceful persuasion, like encouraging a consumer boycott.Again, that is protected expression under the Claiborne hardware case.And paragraph 5G is essentially bricks and minifigs saying, quote, stay away from our employees.But the First Amendment doesn't allow a court to prohibit lawful conversations.Under Utah law, if Ben were inducing employees to breach confidentiality agreements, steal trade secrets, or commit some other independent legal wrong, that could potentially be enjoined.But instead, the order broadly prohibits communication itself.

Bricks and Minifigs employees are free to refuse to speak with Ben, but they don't lose their First Amendment rights because they work for Bricks and Minifigs and Ben doesn't lose his right to ask for an interview.And paragraph 5h is just as problematic.It prohibits Ben from using fake documents.contracts, raffles, lotteries, court papers, awards, and other devices to deceive people, manufacture evidence, or stage confrontations.Forging court documents or using fake contracts to commit fraud is certainly unlawful, but the order basically outlaws Ben's filmmaking style.Stage confrontations and parody words are what he does, and some of those techniques are legally risky.

He's called Reckless Ben for a reason.but they're not inherently illegal.And by lumping protected expression together with potential fraud, the provision is both vague and overbroad.And this TRO illustrates precisely why anti -slap statutes exist.A TRO this broad creates an obvious chilling effect, and Utah recognizes concern when it upgraded its anti -slap law in 2023.

The statute allows defendants sued over speech on matters of public concern to seek early dismissal, stays discovery while the motion is pending, and authorizes an award of attorney's fees to a prevailing movement.And since Ben's videos concern allegations of consumer fraud, treatment of an elderly collector and alleged misconduct connected to the dispute, they arguably involve matters of public concern.But the extraordinary breadth of paragraphs J and K is exactly the type of chilling effect that the act was enacted to address.

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So here's where the story finally takes a turn.

Once Snyder and Mansell actually lawyered up, Spencer Fane for the Reckless Bend defendants, Snell and Wilmer and Miller Nash for Mansell, the parties went back to the drawing board.

And on June 24, 2026, they filed a joint motion asking the court to convert the TRO into a stipulated and agreed preliminary injunction in a heavily renegotiated form so they could go to mediation.

This new version eliminates paragraph 5J and K, so there are no prior restraints and Ben doesn't have to take anything down.It shrinks the buffer zone from 1000 yards to 100, which fixes a lot of the problems that we discussed.And it limits the defacing clause to BAM's physical property only and drops the content -based restrictions on what Ben can say.knowingly and intentionally mental state to conduct prohibitions.And most importantly, it adds an express savings clause, quote, nothing in this order shall prohibit defendants from discussing plaintiffs, commenting on this litigation, publishing court filings, engaging in investigative journalism, expressing opinions, criticism, satire, and or commentary on any platform they choose.And that alone was a huge victory for Ben because it takes the muzzle off.

And ironically, after uncritically adopting the plaintiff's unconstitutional TRO, Judge Graft finally decided to give the joint injunction a close read.June 23rd.

he raised concerns about the scope of the stipulated injunction, and he found that it wasn't specific enough because it did not identify all of the bricks and minifigs locations that it applied to.Thanks, Judge.Nice of you to notice.

And so he denied the joint motion.So that means as of right now, the original TRO, which was written by the plaintiffs and adopted by the court, is still in effect, which is much worse than the stipulated injunction.So on June 25th, the parties filed a joint response clarification to answer the court's questions.to allow a quote, full and free discussion of the subject of this litigation.And anyway, in the joint motion, the parties told the court that they had quote, agreed to mediate this case and asked to vacate the hearing on the preliminary injunction so they could do it.Now the fact that the parties mutually agreed to talk is a positive sign.

It doesn't mean that they can't talk publicly, nor does it force them to negotiate a settlement.It's just that the parties are choosing to sit down with a neutral mediator instead of litigating a TRO to the bitter end.Now the mediator will be a neutral third party that all of the parties agree to, But the mediator's findings or their personal feelings on the case will have no binding effect.If a settlement comes out of the mediation, it will be because the parties both agreed to that negotiation.But mediation also gives everyone an opportunity to reset.Bricks and Minifigs made a bunch of party admissions in their public statements, some of them retreating from their most extreme claims.

And of course, Bricks and Minifigs has to decide whether it's in the company's best interest to litigate against Ben Schneider and Brian Mansell.And of course, what would winning look like in this case for each of the people involved?

Because even if Reckless Ben and Mansell did absolutely everything that Bricks and Minifigs is accusing them of having done, they might not be happy with the resolution

this litigation.Even if they won in court, they might have lost so much value as a result of the actions that they've taken, including the litigation, that it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best.So a mediator can often be helpful in clarifying the party's goals and evidence.even if it doesn't lead to a settlement.And often it helps facilitate a confidential settlement so the public doesn't actually know what the terms are.So if bricks and minifigs wanted to walk away, which at this point they probably should, but not publicly admit that that's what they're doing, they could do so in a private confidential settlement where they're not admitting that they're just giving up.

Now the timing of the mediation is really interesting in light of Bricks and Minifigs newest blog post.CEO Amin McNeff repeatedly praises Ed Mansell's collection and says the company remains committed to finding an amicable solution through mediation.The company also highlights operational changes that it says will prevent this from ever happening to somebody else.

Now I'm not going to go into the details but it's interesting that they're releasing this publicly since this is often what happens during the mediation process.Each side makes concessions and identifies its deal breakers.From a PR perspective, sure this makes sense, but obviously I think most people would think it's too little too late.And the overall problem remains.They accused Mansell of crimes, death threats, extortion, and sued him, but now they want to kiss and make up.These narratives are obviously hard to reconcile.

But to be fair, this is not unusual in litigation where lawyers draw up aggressive pleadings while executives and individuals adopt a more conciliatory posture.Pleadings are intended to preserve every potential legal claim, whereas public statements like this one are intended to restore trust, but from the outside looking in, it still looks like a mess.

And additionally, in another twist, Ben Schneider and his new lawyers filed a notice of removal, which automatically transferred the case from the Utah State Court to the United States District Court for the District of Utah.

Now that is a smart move, and it's definitely what I would have done.And it's one of the reasons why you need a smart lawyer to help you in these things, even if you think you're 100 % right, because there are all kinds of procedural quirks that you need to know about.And in particular, a notice of removal is a procedural filing under 2018.SS .C.

1446, which allows a defendant to remove a case to federal court when there's a valid basis for federal jurisdiction, most commonly what's called diversity jurisdiction or a federal question jurisdiction.And in this case, the federal hook is diversity jurisdiction.Here, the plaintiffs and defendants are citizens of different states, and the amount in controversy clears the $75 ,000 floor because the plaintiffs themselves pleaded damages in excess of $300 ,000.Basically, the idea is you don't want defendants to get home towned by state court judges.So when there's what's called diversity of citizenship, when the plaintiffs and defendants are citizens of different states, it allows the defendants to remove the case, which is just a lawyer way of saying transferring it from state court to federal court.And the notice here was filed within the 30 day window after service as the statute requires.

Now, if it were me, I certainly would have wanted to remove the case to federal court.Federal judges are all appointed by the president.They tend to have the best legal educations and tend to have more staffing and more resources than state court judges.And in my experience, they tend to think about constitutional issues more than the state court judges do.

And there are practical advantages to federal court as well.Instead of litigating the underlying tort claims in state court while separately litigating constitutional issues in federal court, removal allows one federal judge to manage the entire case.Discovery may be managed more aggressively in federal courts.Summary judgment practice is more common.And because federal judges often carry substantial caseloads, they often get even more aggressive with parties to narrow down the issues that actually require trial.That would probably be a positive thing for Ben because his team will want the constitutional issues decided first.

Now, none of this guarantees that Ben will have a favorable outcome, but it explains why experienced litigators often prefer federal judges.But filing the notice automatically shifts control of the case to federal court, but it doesn't wipe out the state case.

Under 28 U .S .C.1450, the orders entered in state court, in this case including the injunctions, quote, remain in full force and effect until dissolved or modified by the federal judge.

Now, one big misconception that I'm seeing is that the TRO has beenor dissolved.When a case is removed, all existing state court orders remain in effect until the federal court changes them.Congress wrote this rule into 28 U .S .C.

1450, so parties couldn't simply erase injunctions by removing the cases to federal court.However, now that the federal court has control of the TRO, that's probably better for the defendants.From this point forward, federal procedural law governs, and that will put time limits on the TRO.Foods vs. Teamsters, the TRO remains effective only for the period it would have remained in effect under state law, and in no event longer than the time permitted by federal Rule 65B, measured from the date of removal.65B generally limits a TRO to 14 days, with one additional 14 -day extension for good cause, or a longer extension with the restrained party's consent.

And if the plaintiff wants relief beyond that period, it ordinarily must seek a preliminary injunction in federal court.Otherwise, the TRO may simply expire without a federal judge ever entering an order dissolving it.Now, when a case first starts in federal court, things kind of move slowly, so it's entirely possible that the TRO will just simply evaporate based on the 14 -day rule.And I would say it's virtually impossible that a federal judge would ever grant an injunction as broad as the one that Judge Graff did in state court.So on that basis alone, removal gives Ben an advantage there.

Now, the new judge, at least temporarily, is Cecilia Romero, who is the chief magistrate judge for the District of Utah.Now, she is not an Article III district judge, the kind of federal judge appointed for life by the president and confirmed by the Senate.Instead, magistrate judges are appointed by the district judges for renewable eight -year terms and handle a huge portion of the federal court's workload.In a newly removed civil case like this one, it's common for a magistrate judge to be assigned initially.A magistrate judge can handle scheduling, discovery disputes, settlement conferences, and many pretrial matters automatically.But if the case is going to be tried before a magistrate judge and enter a final judgment, all the parties generally have to consent.

And if either side declines, the case will be reassigned to a real Article 3 district judge for dispositive motions in trial.

Although Magistrate Judge Romerostill handle many pre -trial matters by referral and probably a lot of discovery matters.Her mother is an enrolled member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe, and she's also Mexican -American.Before joining the federal bench in 2019, Romero was a partner at the law firm of Holland and Hart, where she practiced employment and commercial litigation in both state and federal court, representing primarily business clients.And I wouldn't say based on her CV that she's She is expected to favor either side in this case.No word on whether she's ever played with Legos.

But you can imagine that some of the first filings in the federal case are going to be bricks and minifigs trying to fight the removal to federal court or probably a joint stipulation seeking to put in place the joint preliminary injunction that they tried to do in state court.

So until next time, I will see you in federal court.