- “This One Simple Trick — Used by Colin Kaepernick — Will Make It Harder To Fire You” [Coyote] And on the topic of retaliation, Obama administration appointeees have been revising doctrine in a direction sharply unfavorable to employers both at the EEOC and at OSHA, the latter of which has legal authority to enforce the retaliation provisions of many laws like Dodd-Frank unrelated to conventional occupational hazard [Jon Hyman on EEOC and OSHA]
- In $5 million award, Texas jury finds SEIU playbook on janitors’ campaign encouraged lawbreaking disruption of target business and its clients [Jon Cassidy and Charles Blain, WSJ]
- Obama administration’s new blacklisting rule on labor violations gives unions a whip hand in negotiations with federal contractors, as if by design [Marc Freedman, U.S. Chamber]
- Finally, a state appellate court pokes a hole in the bizarre California Rule under which public employers may not reduce future pension benefits even when based on work not yet performed [Dan Walters/Sacramento Bee, Scott Shackford, Reason]
- Hearing over expanding employment-law damages in Colorado highlights shift in EEO law toward goal of money extraction [Merrily Archer]
- Post-Friedrichs, the future of mandatory union dues in public employment [Federalist Society podcast with Scott Kronland and William Messenger] “Big Labor Tries To Eliminate Right-To-Work By Lawsuit” [George Leef]
September 14 roundup
- “Conviction Overturned In Case Of Rutgers Student Whose Roommate Committed Suicide After Being Secretly Filmed” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; earlier on Dharun Ravi and the Tyler Clementi case generally]
- Report from Denver: “Threat of Lawsuits Crimps Condo Developments” [Chris Kirkham, WSJ]
- “California bans Civil War painting from county fair because it shows Confederate flag. Artist now suing the state.” [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog; Ken White, Popehat]
- Don’t make housing discrimination law a money tree for municipal government plaintiffs [Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Supreme Court case of Bank of America v. City of Miami; earlier on municipal suits against banks here, here, here, etc.]
- Federal court: bus company not responsible for what happened to its passenger after she alit in D.C.’s Union Station [Reyen v. Jones Lang Lasalle and Megabus]
- Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and eight GOP colleagues co-sponsor bill to transfer $490 million to United Mine Workers pension fund [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, WSJ]
Campus climate roundup
- Will the University of Chicago’s new policy on free expression chill professors’ freedom to run their classes in their own way, as some claim? [Alex Morey/FIRE, Howard Wasserman/Prawfs] Jonathan Chait on how the safe spaces debate really isn’t about things like church groups or gay bars; and a judicious Ken White at Popehat on how safe space idea can make sense in private/chosen settings, but not as academic mandate.
- As federal Title IX enforcement percolates downward: e-mail from administrator at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, discusses expelling “perp” before investigation has begun [K.C. Johnson on Twitter] USC administrator: do they know who I am? [same] Wasn’t Columbia U. just serving up what its customers want? [Scott Greenfield] “OCR to Frostburg State University: Common Sense, ‘Reasonable Person’ Standard Violate Title IX” [Robby Soave]
- UW-Milwaukee poster campaign warns students against using terms like “lame,” “crazy,” and — inevitably? — “politically correct” [Jillian Kay Melchior/Heat Street, Robby Soave/Reason]
- The future of American higher education: fewer historians, more chief diversity officers [David Frum]
- “More on the sex panic at Yale” [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus]
- Capitol Hill Republicans keep shoveling cash at power-mad campus regulators, while tying hands of dissenters at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights [John Fund, NR]
Environment roundup
- Didn’t realize former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld had written a novel sympathetic to the persons displaced by one of the great eminent domain binges, the 1930s creation of Quabbin Reservoir (“Stillwater,” background) And down in Virginia: “Sixty years ago they were evicted from the Blue Ridge to make way for Shenandoah National Park. But the refugees haven’t forgotten their lost mountain homes.” [Eddie Dean, Washington City Paper]
- Tokyo’s wide-open policy on development is one reason its house prices have not skyrocketed despite rising population [Alex Tabarrok, more, contrast with cities like Delhi and Mumbai]
- “Chevron Paves The Way For Corporations To Fight ‘Shakedown Lawsuits'” [John Shu, Investors Business Daily, related editorial drawing FedEx and SEIU parallels] More: Roger Parloff and Michael Krauss on Canadian enforcement action in ongoing Ecuador dispute;
- “The Environmental Lightning Rod Known as Fracking” [Ned Mamula, Cato]
- Massachusetts voters in November will face ballot measure sharply restricting methods of handling a host of livestock animals [Baylen Linnekin]
- Do woodpiles attract termites? Chamber backs Flower Mound, Tex. man facing billions in fines for storing wood [Dallas News, earlier]
Podcast: Richard Epstein on New York’s Martin Act
Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein discusses New York’s Martin Act, the elastic securities fraud law whose powers have been wielded by Eric Schneiderman, Eliot Spitzer, and Andrew Cuomo, among others. [Troy Senik, Ricochet podcast] Earlier here.
Lester Brickman retires
A giant in legal ethics and torts scholarship, Lester Brickman is retiring after 51 years teaching [Cardozo School of Law, his Wikipedia entry and tag here]
After Louisiana made cops a protected group in hate-crime law
That was fast: it looks as if the first charge under Louisiana’s new “Blue Lives Matter” law was made to hang a felony rap on a man who shouted slurs at police as they escorted him to the station. Hours later, a spokesman for the New Orleans Police Department acknowledged that a sergeant at the scene had applied the hate crime law incorrectly and that the charge would be reviewed before proceeding with prosecution. [New Orleans Times-Picayune, and followup; Scott Shackford, Reason (“The release bond for Delatoba’s ‘hate crime’ charge of yelling bad words ($10,000) is actually higher than the amount for the vandalism ($5,000) that drew the police in the first place”); earlier and more]
Litigation roundup
- Settlement insurance, a new litigation-finance mechanism, can have the unintended result of casting light on just how little benefit some class actions provide to consumers [Ted Frank, CEI] Yet another new litigation finance mechanism: trial-expense insurance purchased by lawyers [Bloomberg/Insurance Journal]
- South Carolina law firm sues 185 different defendants in the average asbestos case it files, and it’s still far from tops in that department [Palmetto Business Daily]
- “Those terms and conditions (that nobody reads) could cost New Jersey retailers” [Tim Darragh, NJ.com on class actions under pre-Internet-era state consumer protection law]
- Some federal courts, while paying lip service to the important Rule 26 discovery reforms that took effect Dec. 1, continue in their old ways, “effectively applying the old standard” [James Beck]
- “Can Pokémon Go and Product Liability Coexist?” [Julie Steinberg, BNA/Product Safety & Liability Reporter, earlier]
- “How does privatization affect liability?” [Sasha Volokh]
Before phone banking for Trump…
“If you want to make phone calls on behalf of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, you will have to agree to the terms of this contract…It’s a very peculiar document.” [David Post, Volokh] “The forms are extraordinarily broad, virtually prohibiting any volunteers from criticizing Trump or his family for the rest of their lifetimes, according to Rachel Sklar, a lawyer and CNN contributor.” [Jeff Stein, Vox] It also includes an “obligation to prevent your employees from demeaning or disparaging a Trump asset… That is surely not only absurd and unenforceable, it may well constitute abetting a violation of US labor law.” [Post] More on Trump and over-lawyering from Lawrence Cunningham (more), and generally. More on the recent Texas case in which a judge tossed a suit based on a nondisparagement clause proffered by a pet-sitting company, which then invoked it after a customer left a one-star Yelp review, from David Kravets at ArsTechnica.
Frosted, yet again
By 2016, all social divisions had begun to play out as conflicts over cake decoration: “Louisiana Baker Apologizes After Refusing To Make Teen’s Trump 2016 Cake” [Daily Caller]