August 19th: The Climate Litigation Swindle: A Conversation with Heather Mac Donald

 Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal, is the author of numerous books on policing, higher education, and the progressive left—including the New York Times bestseller The War on Cops and, most recently, When Race Trumps Merit (2023). A nonpracticing attorney and Stanford Law graduate who once clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, Mac Donald brings both legal training and relentless empirical rigor to the issues she covers.

In this lunchtime program hosted by the Orange County Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, Mac Donald will discuss her sweeping Spring 2026 City Journal essay, "The Climate Litigation Swindle," which examines the wave of lawsuits filed by cities and states against American fossil-fuel companies for alleged climate harms. From the causal fictions underlying attribution science to the consumer-fraud theory now carrying these cases past federal preemption challenges, Mac Donald dismantles the legal and philosophical foundations of climate litigation—and explains why the Supreme Court's forthcoming review of Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County may be the last line of defense before a litigation juggernaut reaches trial.

Please join us as Mac Donald explores what happens when the Western tradition of impersonal causation gives way to redistribution dressed as tort law—and what the legal profession stands to lose if it does.

When: Wednesday, 19, 2026 at 11:45 a.m. (registration), 12:00 Noon (lunch)

Where: 1st Floor, 2040 Main Street, Irvine, CA

Cost: $30/members, $35/non-members, $20/students, for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE credit (the Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, please visit the Federalist Society event page (link coming soon).

To pay by cash or check at the door, please send an RSVP to Tim Kowal at OCFedSocPresident@gmail.com and make checks payable to "The Federalist Society."

Please email us if you have any dietary concerns.

About the Speaker:

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. A nonpracticing attorney, she graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, and received a Mellon Fellowship to Clare College, Cambridge, where she earned an M.A. in English. She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, after which she clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She subsequently served as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has testified frequently before U.S. House and Senate committees.

Mac Donald is the author of When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives (2023); The Diversity Delusion (2018); The War on Cops (2016), a New York Times bestseller; Are Cops Racist? (2010); and The Burden of Bad Ideas (2001). Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Criterion, among many others. She is the recipient of the 2025 Edmund Burke Award from The New Criterion and the 2005 Bradley Prize. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called her "the greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today."

June 8th "Fireside Chat" on the BigLaw EOs with Abhishek Kambli and John Shu

Fresh off his D.C. Circuit oral argument defending the Trump Administration's BigLaw Executive Orders opposite Paul Clement, Deputy Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice Abhishek Kambli will share about the Executive Orders, and the other Trump Administration cases he has argued. Drawing on this experience in public law and research into the limits of executive authority, Mr. Kambli brings a thoughtful, originalist perspective to questions at the core of our constitutional order.

In this special "fireside chat" format, Bush Administration attorney and Orange County Federalist Society board member John Shu will sit down with Mr. Kambli to explore the evolving scope of presidential power through the lens of the Trump Administration's executive orders. From immigration and regulatory reform to border enforcement and administrative restructuring, these actions have reshaped debates over the reach of Article II authority and Congress's role in checking it.

Please join us as Mr. Kambli and Mr. Shu examine how recent executive orders test the boundaries of the Constitution's separation of powers, what litigation and public reactions reveal about modern governance, and how future administrations might navigate these shifting constitutional and political constraints.

    

When: Monday, June 8th, 2026 at 11:45 a.m. (registration), 12:00 Noon (lunch)

Where: 1st Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, 1st Floor, Irvine, CA.

Cost: $40/members, $50/non-members, $20/students, for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE credit (the Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, please visit the Federalist Society event page here. 

To pay by cash or check at the door, please send an RSVP to Tim Kowal at OCFedSocPresident@gmail.com and make checks payable to “The Federalist Society.”

Please email us if you have any dietary concerns.

About the Speaker:

Abhishek Kambli is the outgoing Deputy Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, for which he has argued some of the Trump Administration's most important cases, such as J.G.G. v. Trump (Alien Enemies Act) and Perkins Coie, et al. v. U.S. Dep't of Justice (executive orders assessing risks of certain law firms). Mr. Kambli's last day at D.O.J. will be May 31, 2026.

Mr. Kambli previously served as Deputy Attorney General at the Kansas Attorney General's Office where he led the Special Litigation and Constitutional Issues Division. There, he litigated the Kansas A.G. office's most high impact cases, such as Kansas v. Biden (later renamed Alaska v. Dep't of Education), where he won a preliminary injunction against the Biden Administration's SAVE plan that would have provided $475 billion in student loan forgiveness. He also was lead counsel on Kansas v. Dep't of Education, which enjoined the Biden Administration's 2024 Title IX rule that expanded the definition of "sex" to include gender identity; Kansas v. Dep't of Labor, where he won a preliminary injunction on a Biden Administration Department of Labor rule that would have provided federal collective bargaining rights to H-2A temporary agricultural workers; and counsel of record on a 26-state amicus brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, where the Court allowed the Commonwealth of Virginia to remove non-citizens from its voter rolls prior to the 2024 election.

Before serving the State of Kansas, Mr. Kambli served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Indiana, and as a J.A.G. officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he still serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S.A.F. Reserves. He holds a J.D. from Notre Dame Law School and a B.F.A. from the University of the Arts.

About the Moderator:

John Shu is an attorney and legal commentator, and long-time board member for the Federalist Society's Orange County Lawyers Chapter. His focus areas include constitutional law, administrative law, antitrust law, securities & corporate law, politics, international affairs, the U.S. Supreme Court, and confirmations. Mr. Shu has lectured and published on these and many other issues.

Mr. Shu served President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush in the White House. He also served Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was Director of Enforcement at the Securities & Exchange Commission and General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency; and Judge Paul Roney, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who also was Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Mr. Shu was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary. He is a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a member of the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Foreign Policy Association. He received his B.A. from the University of the Pennsylvania, G.C. from Peking University, and J.D. from Pepperdine University School of Law.

May 26 Lunch with Judge Bumatay

The Orange County Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society is honored to host the Honorable Patrick J. Bumatay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Judge Bumatay, confirmed to the Ninth Circuit in 2019, has emerged as one of the federal judiciary's most distinctive voices on textualism, originalism, and the proper role of courts in our constitutional system. We hope you will join us.

When: Tuesday, May 26, 2026 at 11:45 a.m. (registration), 12:00 Noon (lunch)

Where: 2nd Floor Conference Room, 2040 Main Street, Irvine, CA.

Cost: $40/members, $50/non-members, $20/students, for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE credit (the Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, please visit the Federalist Society event page here. 

To pay by cash or check at the door, send an RSVP to Tim Kowal at OCFedSocPresident@gmail.com identifying your lunch selection from the link above. Make checks payable to “The Federalist Society.”

About the Speaker:

Patrick J. Bumatay was confirmed as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in December 2019. He is based in San Diego, California.

Prior to his appointment, Judge Bumatay served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, where he was a member of the Appellate and Narcotics Sections. He also served as a Counselor to the Attorney General on criminal law issues, including on national opioid strategy and combating transnational organized crime. Judge Bumatay has also worked in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office of the Associate Attorney General, and the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Judge Bumatay has twice received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.

Judge Bumatay previously worked as an associate at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, and Bohrer in New York, New York. Judge Bumatay clerked for the Honorable Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable Sandra L. Townes of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Judge Bumatay earned his B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.