Posts Tagged ‘New York’

New York’s very broad cyberbullying bill 2.0

An earlier cyberbullying bill in New York was struck down by the state’s highest court as in violation of the First Amendment, and now a new version… well, let’s just say that it has free speech problems too, which don’t get conjured away just because a person named in and distressed by speech is a minor [Eugene Volokh, Eric Turkewitz first post with explanatory followup, Scott Greenfield first and second posts, earlier]

Crime and punishment roundup

  • “Lawmakers must act now to close New York’s double jeopardy loophole,” claims New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood. Its what? [Kenneth Lovett/New York Daily News, Jacob Sullum/Reason, Jed Shugerman/Slate (defending closing of “loophole”), Jonathan Blanks on Twitter, earlier]
  • Speaking of pardon powers, Debra Saunders quotes me in column on Presidential pardons, Martha Stewart, Rod Blagojevich, Marc Rich, etc. [Las Vegas Review Journal/syndicated]
  • “California Town Hired Private Law Firm to Sue Citizens, Then Tried to Conceal Massive Costs” [Scott Shackford, earlier on Indio, Coachella, etc.] Bill passed by California assembly “would put an end to a practice in which several cities have been contracting with private prosecutors to handle nuisance abatement cases, then billing the impacted citizens thousands in lawyers’ fees.” [same]
  • “In light of the [Aaron] Persky recall, here are some studies on the impact of elections on judicial behavior. The story is consistent: elections make judges harsher, and there may be other costs as well (like lower-skilled people becoming judges).” [John Pfaff Twitter thread, earlier here, here, and here]
  • “CBP Sued For Seizing $41,000 From Airline Passenger, Then Refusing To Give It Back Unless She Promised Not To Sue” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
  • Even when suspects are in fact guilty, lies told to justify searches “corrupt the law in order to enforce it. That’s not how policing is supposed to work.” [Jonathan Blanks on Joseph Goldstein, New York Times investigation of police perjury (“testilying”)]

NY court: public accommodations law restricts rights of group seeking to boycott Israel

Both ironic and disturbing: rejecting a First Amendment defense, a New York court says city and state public accommodation law may forbid the left-wing National Lawyers Guild from turning down (in line with its position favoring an Israel boycott) an attempt from a group based in West Bank Israeli settlements to buy an ad in its awards banquet program [Eugene Volokh]

Liability roundup

Schools and childhood roundup

Liability for abetting workplace bias

“Like the non-discrimination laws in a number of other states, including California, New Jersey, and Illinois, New York State’s Human Rights Law (‘NYSHRL’) contains a provision extending liability to those who aid and abet discrimination or retaliation.” The kicker is that New York’s law can impose extraterritorial liability on actors outside the state — such as a national moving and relocation firm that required by contract that its local contractor exclude from employment persons with certain categories of criminal convictions, and is now facing ban-the-box-related liability over that to New York plaintiffs that it did not itself employ. [Jodi Frankel, DLA Piper Labor Dish]

When prosecutors team up, and when they don’t

I’m in today’s New York Post. Excerpt:

“Mueller teams up with New York attorney general in Manafort probe,” Politico reported Wednesday. Commentators went wild.

What could be more exciting than for the special counsel investigating the Russian matter to team up with noted Trump foe Eric Schneiderman? Neither the president nor Congress can lay a glove on him; some of the legal weapons he wields go beyond what Mueller has at his disposal; and if Schneiderman obtains convictions in state court, Trump will have no pardon power. It’s like two superheroes with coordinating capes and powers!

Around liberal Twitter, it was a total game changer. “THIS IS BIG!!!!!!” typed Amy Siskind of New Agenda, hailing the sort of news for which four or five exclamation points won’t do. “What’s Russian for ‘Trump’s goose is cooked?’” crowed Harvard’s Laurence Tribe.

In the opposite camp, the Trumpian claque at Breitbart argued that with the combative New York AG on board — Schneiderman has long feuded with Trump, and is widely disliked by Republicans — the whole Russian probe can be dismissed as tainted. The connection “undermin[es] the integrity and impartiality of Mueller’s inquiry,” wrote Joel Pollak. “There could not be a more inappropriate person to be seen working with Mueller.”

Both sides should calm down….Federal and state prosecutors are supposed to cooperate when investigations overlap. That’s what they do.

I go on to discuss sharing of grand jury information, the ripples of dismay sent by Trump’s Joe Arpaio pardon (on which more from Josh Blackman here, see also and earlier), and New York’s Martin Act. Whole thing here.