- After being slapped down by courts, EEOC concentrates on filing fewer but bigger cases [Sue Reisinger, Corporate Counsel] EEOC scores in Cintas, UPS cases [Legal Times]
- SCOTUS grants certiorari in retaliation mixed motives case [University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, SCOTUSBlog via Marcia McCormick, Workplace Prof]
- False Claims Act could be potent weapon for discrimination plaintiffs [Texas Law Review student note by Ralph Mayrell, PDF via Bagenstos]
- Religious liberty compatible with gay rights so long as ambitions of anti-discrimination law aren’t allowed to run wild [Eugene Volokh as part of UCLA conference on Roe’s 40th and Lawrence’s 10th anniversary] Case of Ocean Grove, N.J. pavilion is still regularly cited as infringement on church autonomy, but it’s not that simple, since it hinges on untypical “public use” covenant of property in question [Box Turtle Bulletin]
- For a more genuine menace to religious liberty, however, watch out for the notion of taking the Bob Jones University precedent — in which courts upheld the stripping of an educational institution’s tax exemption due to its backward racial views — and extending it into a weapon for denying tax exemption to the much broader class of institutions said to contravene “fundamental public policy” [Caroline Maia Corbin, Concurring Opinions]
- More on the deaf lifeguard case [Jon Hyman, earlier]
- New York Gov. Cuomo seeks one-way fee awards in state bias cases [Reuters]
Archive for January, 2013
Can treaties confer on Congress powers otherwise not conferred by the Constitution?
Profs. Rick Pildes and Nicholas Rosenkranz have been debating the topic at Volokh Conspiracy [Pildes first, second; Rosenkranz first, second; more] The pending case of Bond v. U.S. will give the U.S. Supreme Court the chance to revisit Missouri v. Holland, the main precedent on the point [Julian Ku, Ilya Somin, Gerard Magliocca/Concur Op, Michael Greve, earlier here and here] More: Curtis Bradley, Lawfare.
Report: marker for concussion brain damage found in living NFL veterans
As I’ve said before, if subjected to the same injury liability rules that American courts apply to other businesses, organized football is unlikely to survive. The development of a workable diagnostic test for living players would hasten this process along. [PBS] Similarly: Ta-Nehisi Coates, said before, if subjected to the same injury liability rules that American courts apply to other businesses, organized football is unlikely to survive. The development of a workable diagnostic test for living players would hasten this process along. [PBS] Similarly: Coyote.
Nice raisin crop you’ve grown there. Now hand over 47% of it to the state.
Max Boot, who has written a new book on the history of guerrilla movements, tells how Shamil, firebrand leader of a celebrated 19th-century Muslim insurgency in Chechnya and Dagestan, began to lose the allegiance of “many ordinary villagers who balked at his demands for annual tax payments amounting to 12 percent of their harvest.” Instead, they switched their allegiance to the rival Russian czar, whose demands were more modest.
Compare the pending case of Horne v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, where, as my Cato colleague Ilya Shapiro explains,
the USDA imposed on the Hornes (long-time California raisin farmers Marvin and Laura Horne) a “marketing order” demanding that they turn over 47% of their crop without compensation. The order — a much-criticized New Deal relic — forces raisin “handlers” to reserve a certain percentage of their crop “for the account” of the government-backed Raisin Administrative Committee, enabling the government to control the supply and price of raisins on the market. The RAC then either sells the raisins or simply gives them away to noncompetitive markets—such as federal agencies, charities, and foreign governments—with the proceeds going toward the RAC’s administration costs.
The U.S. government denies that it owes anything to the Hornes under the Takings Clause, and also says that to contest the legality of what has been done to them, the Hornes are obliged to pay the USDA what it demands — $438,000 for the raisins not handed over, plus $200,000 or so in penalties — and then sue in the Court of Federal Claims to get it back. The Supreme Court has granted certiorari and will hear oral argument March 20.
Law schools: “a remorseless, above-the-law attitude that enables it all”
My colleague Neal McCluskey on last week’s Cato panel:
When it comes to taking on higher education, I thought I was as hard bitten as any Law and Order cop. I thought I’d seen all the worst things that went on in the ivory tower. Until, that is, I started investigating the very schools that produce the prosecutorial side of the justice biz: law schools.
…[A]ll the major carnage of higher education, only worse. Worse tuition hyper-inflation. Deceptive advertising that rivals the most odious of any openly for-profit university.
Read the whole thing here at SeeThruEdu.com.
Labor and employment roundup
- Seventh Circuit upholds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector labor law reform [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- In theory, California workers fired for cause aren’t entitled to unemployment compensation. In practice… [Coyote]
- Comstockery meets occupational licensure: how New York’s Cabaret Law tripped up Billie Holiday [Bryan Caplan]
- New Jersey lawmakers move to cut nonunion workers out of Hurricane Sandy recovery jobs [Jersey Journal]
- Cheer up, plaintiff’s bar, you’re doing very well these days out of FLSA wage-and-hour actions [Max Kennerly]
- Back to “spiking”: “CalPERS planning to gut a key cost-control provision of new pension law” [Daniel Borenstein, Contra Costa Times] When government negotiates with public sector unions over pay, the process should be transparent to taxpayers and the public [Nick Dranias, Goldwater Institute]
- Sacre bleu! Labor law reform reaches France [NYT]
“One side pretends to more sophistication and the other to fewer funds…”
Andrew Trask notices an article in The Economist on the economics of bargaining between shipowners and Somali pirates, and realizes that the insights carry over to the economics of bargaining between defendants and class action lawyers. No prizes for guessing which side in the negotiation parallels that of the lawyers [Class Strategist]
Big federal push for electronic medical records
According to Mickey Kaus, it may not be having the intended results. More: Hans Bader.
Torts roundup
- “City to pay $22.5 million to bipolar woman released in high-crime area” [Chicago Sun-Times, Greenfield]
- On Medicaid settlement clawback evasion, Obama acts in line with wishes of both plaintiff’s and defense sides, though against interests of federal Treasury [Ted Frank] Michael Greve on Delia v. EMA, the Medicaid recoupment case before SCOTUS [Law and Liberty]
- From Sasha Volokh, a Glee-ful Torts exam [Volokh]
- Congrats to Abnormal Use, repeat winner in Torts category of ABA Journal Blawg 100;
- UK: personal injury firms say they’ll need to lay off workers if government carries through on reform of civil suits [Law Gazette]
- “How the First Amendment affects tort law” [Beck, Drug and Device Law]
- Bummer: after involuntary pot brownie incident, lawsuit names club where incident took place [NJLRA]
“Gun control’s Potemkin village”
“The agenda includes mostly measures that will have little or no effect on the problems they are supposed to address. They are Potemkin remedies—presentable facades with empty space behind them. … The assault weapons ban was irrelevant to fighting crime before, which is no reason it can’t be irrelevant again.” [Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune/syndicated] The Washington Post interviews Bob Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute and a key mover of the Heller v. D.C. individual-rights litigation, on what types of gun controls he sees as consistent with the Second Amendment as explicated in Heller. And don’t assume the gun debate breaks down along lines of urban vs. rural, liberal vs. conservative, or individualist vs. communitarian; it often doesn’t [David Kopel, NYT “Room for Debate”]
More from Cato: Tim Lynch on what happened to gun crime in D.C. after Heller, and on the civil rights history of “Deacons for Defense”; Trevor Burrus on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move to toughen the state’s already widely evaded gun laws; video with Tim Lynch and Caleb Brown on the Obama gun agenda. And from Damon Root, commenting on an Akhil Amar article, some surprising (and at times Cato-mediated) connections between gun rights and gay rights [Reason]