Remarkable story of official malfeasance in Albemarle County (Charlottesville), Virginia: though now released from prison, “Mark Weiner has lost more than two years with his young son and with his wife, he’s lost his job, he’s lost his family home, and he’s lost every penny he ever had in savings or retirement accounts.” [Dahlia Lithwick, Slate]
Archive for July, 2015
“Liberal justices have 10 Ivy League honorary degrees between them. Conservatives have zero.”
Aside from Sandra Day O’Connor, “the swing justice of her day” and the first woman to sit on the Court, every Justice in recent times to be awarded an honorary Ivy degree has been from the Court’s left-liberal side. [John McGinnis, Law and Liberty; headline via @adamliptak]
“More than 3/4 of the civil cases filed in Tucson’s federal court last year…
“…originated with one person: a state prisoner upset about his health care behind bars.” Dale Maisano, whose 3,000 lawsuits last year were mostly handwritten, has served much of a 15-year sentence for aggravated assault. “He alone is responsible for a nearly fourfold increase in civil cases since 2012.” [Curt Prendergast, Arizona Daily Star]
“Quit snooping into trash, city of Seattle told in privacy lawsuit”
A group of privacy advocates is suing the city of Seattle, arguing that having garbage collectors look through people’s trash — to make sure food scraps aren’t going into the garbage — “violates privacy rights on a massive scale.”
“A person has a legitimate expectation that the contents of his or her garbage cans will remain private and free from government inspection,” argues the lawsuit filed [last] Thursday in King County Superior Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation.
More: Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Earlier on the city’s ban on food waste in trash, and severe limits on other types of material, here.
Labor roundup
- “6 charts that debunk the ‘gig’ economy” [R.J. Lehmann, R Street Institute]
- DOL memo: as far as we’re concerned most of those independent contractors you’re paying are actually employees, see you in court [Shar Bahmani, Squire Patton Boggs; Daniel Schwartz] “Is Your Company On The Independent Contractor Hit List?” [Richard Reibstein, Forbes]
- One big if unstated aim of Obama overtime regs: with more people punching clocks at work, there’ll be fewer with the politically unproductive “management mentality” of salaried types [earlier; related, Coyote]
- Comply with DoL’s new mandate for government contractors to disclose labor law violations, and walk right into a defamation suit [Jason Carey and Brandon Myers, Covington & Burling] “House GOP leaders call for withdrawal of ‘blacklisting rule'” [The Hill]
- Some unionists rally behind Philly ironworkers boss convicted in huge arson/extortion scheme [Philadelphia Daily News, more, earlier]
- SEIU pushing California bill to tie franchisors’ hands in dealings with franchisees, and no its goal isn’t to help the franchisees [Labor Pains]
- “Is the NLRB Planning an End Run Around the State Right to Work Laws?” [Irving Geslewitz, Much Shelist]
Pan Am Games: link to us and we’ll sue
“The organizers of the Pan American Games in Toronto…[saw fit to] require that people seek formal permission to link to its website at toronto2015.org.” [The Register] We’ve been here before, and before that, and so on. After only a little press attention, as The Register notes in an update, the organizers quietly changed the website’s terms and conditions to remove the ban.
Stop selling guns in suburbs, you’re having disparate impact
A Chicago gun-control group sues suburbs claiming that firearm sales in shops there display “disparate impact” in violation of discrimination law. [The Trace, WTTW]
July 22 roundup
- Can Uber survive California law? [Brian Doherty on ruling by state administrative law judge over shortcomings in accessibility; Kristian Stout/Truth on the Market on employee classification and compensation class action] The California Labor Commission’s worker-classification ruling has already killed cleaning-services startup Homejoy [Re/Code via @andrewmgrossman] Plus: Uber communicates satirically with its NYC customers in its battle with Mayor Bill de Blasio [Issie Lapowsky, Wired; related, Josh Greenman; and a new study of Los Angeles users finds Uber X twice as fast and half as expensive as taxis (Mark Kleiman)]
- Needed: RFRA for the prepared-foods aisle? “The Trans-Fat Ban Deals A Blow To Kosher Keepers” [Bethany Mandel, Federalist] Consumption of trans fats has already dropped by 85 percent, and “government doesn’t always know best” [me, Arizona PBS]
- “The U.S. Attorney’s Office might has well have a macro that generates gag orders” [Ken at Popehat on Reason subpoena, earlier here, etc.]
- SCOTUS struck down Ohio’s law banning false campaign speech, Massachusetts’s should fall next [Ilya Shapiro and Gabriel Latner, Cato]
- Roger Pilon on church, gays, and “simple idea that people are free to associate or not as they wish” [now un-gated, Cato/WSJ; related, Ilya Shapiro/Washington Times] More on EEOC’s ENDA-by-fiat attempt [Kent Hoover/Business Journals, Nicandro Iannacci, National Constitution Center/Yahoo (thanks for quoting in both cases); Laura Maechtlen and Sam Schwartz-Fenwick, Seyfarth Shaw; and a Washington Blade interview with EEOC member Chai Feldblum, who supported the ruling]
- More reactions to HUD’s ambitious local-neighborhood-diversity scheme, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” [Hans Bader, Michael Barone, earlier]
- “Star Of Viral Catcalling Video Is Reportedly Suing For Compensation” [Emma Whitford, Gothamist]
“Silence feature… will not extinguish a fire”
Bob Dorigo Jones has announced the finalists in the 18th and latest of his series of annual Wacky Warning contests, which document such phenomena as a “Harmful if Swallowed” warning on a hook-laden brass fishing lure. This year’s entries range from the depressing (at a bowling alley: “Bowl at your own risk. Risk of bodily injury is associated with this game.”) to the bizarre (on a small ceiling-mounted smoke alarm: “Silence feature is intended to temporarily silence the horn while you identify and correct the problem. It will not extinguish a fire.”) John Stossel’s studio audience will pick the winner on Friday, July 24. More: Washington Times, and our wacky warnings tag which includes earlier coverage of the series.
Higher education roundup
- “Virtually a model of how to regulate badly”: law professor Carl Schneider discusses his new book on institutional review boards, The Censor’s Hand: The Misregulation of Human-Subject Research [Inside Higher Ed via Zachary Schrag]
- Does Title IX require colleges to police off-campus behavior? [University of Kansas; Greg Piper, The College Fix] “No Due Process, Please; This is a Campus” [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus]
- Fourth Circuit: no insurer duty to defend Liberty U. in Miller-Jenkins kidnapping suit [WSET, Virginia Lawyers Weekly, earlier here and many other posts]
- Ex-Arkansas college student wants $75,000 after claiming she broke fingers in musical-chairs game [AP/Daily Journal]
- “Portland State University Will Shut Down Political Activity If It’s ‘Triggering'” [Robby Soave, Reason]
- The Scarlet Transcript: D.C. bill would would flag students who quit college with sex charges pending [Washington Post, more/update (“unconscionable“)]
- Virginia Tech now requires professors to demonstrate work towards diversity/inclusion to receive tenure [Ashley Thorne, National Association of Scholars]