“The Texas Supreme Court overturned a $362,000 disability discrimination judgment awarded to a captain for the City of Houston fire department who was removed from firefighting duties because his fear of entering burning buildings made him a danger to himself and others. City of Houston v. Proler, No. 12-1006 (Tex. June 6, 2014). According to the court, no reasonable jury could have found that his fear of entering burning buildings constituted a disability under the ADA or Texas law.” However, the court based its decision on the state of the law before Congress drastically widened ADA eligibility in 2009, so it’s not clear how such a case might come out if filed today. [Kevin Cox, Kollman & Saucier, P.A.; Eric B. Meyer]
Archive for June, 2014
NYC official impounds car used to transport cancer patients to hospital
The Taxi and Limousine Commission functionary ignored the volunteer driver’s protests that the vehicle was not operating unlawfully for hire but was rather being provided as a free charitable service. After all, as someone might have put it, stealing the car of a volunteer driving cancer patients to the hospital is just another name for the things we do together. [NY Daily News, New York Post, earlier this month]
Banking and finance roundup
- In banking and FCPA cases, targets of DOJ prosecution are disproportionately firms domiciled abroad, and other countries do notice that [Jesse Eisinger, NYT “DealBook”]
- “Los Angeles’ Confused Suit against Mortgage Lenders” [Mark Calabria, Cato] Providence also using disparate impact suits in hopes of making banks pay for its housing failures [Funnell]
- Podcast discussion on Operation Chokepoint with Charles J. Cooper, Iain Murray, and Todd J. Zywicki [Federalist Society, earlier]
- New round of suits against banks based on ATMs’ imperfect wheelchair accessibility [ABA Journal, earlier here]
- Walgreen’s could save billions in taxes if it moved to Switzerland from U.S. Whose fault if anyone’s is that? [Tax Foundation]
- “Left unmentioned: how fed regulation and trial lawyers deter banks from protecting themselves with overdraft fees.” [@tedfrank on NYT report about banks’ use of databases to turn down business from persons with records of overdrawing accounts, a practice that now itself is being targeted for regulation]
- Scheme to seize mortgages through eminent domain stalling as cities decline to come on board [Kevin Funnell]
House blocks funding for HUD local power grab
We’ve tracked (especially by way of the Westchester County, N.Y. controversy) the ambitious efforts of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to grab more control over local governments’ zoning and project building decisions, in part through a proposed new “AFFH” rule (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing). Now the House has voted an appropriations rider cutting off funds for implementation of the new rule. [sponsor Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Paul Mirengoff/PowerLine, Sara Rankin/Legislation Prof (opposed), National Low-Income Housing Coalition, earlier on AFFH and on housing discrimination law generally]
NLRB: law protects employee’s right to curse out boss
In not just one recent case, but two:
* “During a meeting about commissions, minimum wage, and employee breaks [at a Yuma, Ariz. car dealership], an employee lost his temper, angrily calling his supervisors words such as [obscenities omitted]. He also stood up, shoved his chair aside, and told them they would regret it if they fired him. Unsurprisingly, that tirade resulted in the employee’s termination. Astoundingly, in Plaza Auto Center (5/28/14), the NLRB concluded that the termination was an unlawful violation of the employee’s rights to engage in the protected concerted activity.” [Jon Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog; Brennan Bolt, Labor Relations Today]
* “Starbucks cannot fire a union activist employee who cursed at a manager in front of customers, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled for the second time. Joseph Agins was active in trying to unionize four Manhattan Starbucks coffee shops between 2004 and 2007.” His repeated imprecations, sometimes in the presence of customers, included “this is [BS],” “do everything your damn self,” “about damn time” when the manager arrived to help, and “go … yourself”. A protected pattern of behavior under federal labor law, the NLRB ruled. “The board ordered Starbucks to offer Agins his old job or a substantially equivalent position, compensate him for any loss of earnings and other benefits, and remove from its files any references to the unlawful firing.” [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
Compare the separately developed field of “hostile-environment” law, in which the employer may be held liable for years’ worth of back pay if it does not separate from the workplace an employee who repeatedly confronts a co-worker with belligerent and profane abuse (& Scott Greenfield).
The Court’s missed opportunity in securities law
In yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund, the Court unanimously agreed to narrow procedural relief for the corporate defendant, but declined 6-3 to revisit its 1988 mistake in creating from whole cloth the “fraud on the market” theory in Basic, Inc. v. Levinson. I have more at Cato at Liberty. Earlier on Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund here. More: Kevin LaCroix, & welcome Stephen Bainbridge, SCOTUSBlog readers.
More: Alden Abbott and Thom Lambert at Truth on the Market; Bainbridge with roundup of commentary; Beck, Drug & Device Law, on implications for concept of reliance in that area.
SCOTUS: EPA overstepped law in regulating CO2
In a complex decision yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down in part and upheld in part the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to regulate large emitters of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) [McClatchy/Federalist Society]. A key portion of the holding, writes Jonathan Adler at Volokh, is the finding that the EPA
is not permitted to rewrite the applicable statutory emission thresholds. The latter conclusion, in particular, is an important reaffirmation that agencies are not allowed to rewrite the statutes that they administer. But today’s decision was not a total loss for the EPA, however, as the Court also concluded that it was reasonable for the EPA to interpret the Act to allow for the regulation of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from sources already subject to regulation under the PSD and Title V [large stationary source] program. What this means is that large stationary sources (think big power plants and industrial boilers) that are already regulated as major stationary sources under these programs will have to control GHG emissions when they control other emissions. But sources that only emit large amounts of GHGs will not become subject to EPA’s regulatory authority under these provisions.
From my colleague Andrew Grossman at Cato:
At issue was one of the Obama Administration’s earliest efforts to skirt Congress and achieve its major policy goals unilaterally through aggressive executive action….
The Court, in a lead opinion by Justice Scalia, called it “patently unreasonable—not to say outrageous.” EPA, it held, must abide by the statute: “An agency has no power to ‘tailor’ legislation to bureaucratic policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory terms.” And if such tailoring is required to avoid a plainly “absurd result” at odds with congressional intentions, then obviously there is obviously something wrong with the agency’s interpretation of the statute. To hold otherwise, the Court recognized, “would deal a severe blow to the Constitution’s separation of powers” by allowing the executive to revise Congress’s handiwork. …The Court’s decision may be a prelude of more to come. Since the Obama Administration issued its first round of greenhouse gas regulations, it has become even more aggressive in wielding executive power so as to circumvent the need to work with Congress on legislation. That includes recent actions on such issues as immigration, welfare reform, and drug enforcement.
Four liberal justices dissented, while Justices Alito and Thomas argued that the Scalia-led plurality were too accommodating of the EPA’s assertion of power.
That “disfigured girl thrown out of KFC” story…
…may not be all that it seemed, reports a Mississippi newspaper. It’s almost enough to make you rethink the cathartic value of mass Internet shaming. What if the process could be misused by people with agendas?
“We have enough lawyers, although it’s a fine profession”
“I can say that because I’m a lawyer,” President Obama told the Tumblr crowd last week. [American Interest]
“Is Administrative Law Unlawful?”
Columbia lawprof Philip Hamburger is out with a book of high importance on the administrative state and the legality of its actions, and Cato had him in to speak earlier this month, with D.C. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams commenting and Cato’s Roger Pilon moderating (video, podcast links). The event description:
When law in America can be made by executive “pen and phone” alone — indeed, by a White House press release — we’re faced starkly with a fundamental constitutional question: Is administrative law unlawful? Answering in the affirmative in this far-reaching, erudite new treatise, Philip Hamburger traces resistance to rule by administrative edict from the Middle Ages to the present. Far from a novel response to modern society and its complexities, executive prerogative has deep roots. It was beaten back by English constitutional ideas in the 17th century and even more decisively by American constitutions in the 18th century, but it reemerged during the Progressive Era and has grown ever since, regardless of the party in power.
Earlier here, etc.