- Highlights from the career of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, newly pardoned by President Trump [Jon Gabriel/USA Today, Phoenix New Times thread on Twitter] Still vividly remembered: the Thomas-Arpaio raids on elected officials, judges, and journalists who’d crossed the sheriff [samples here and here from our coverage; Terry Carter, ABA Journal]
- Fran and Dan Keller, freed from Texas prisons after 21 years in Satanic abuse hysteria, finally getting official declaration of innocence (+ $3.4 million) [AP/CBS, Michael King, Austin Chronicle]
- Cops fired even for outrageous misconduct often win reinstatement, investigation finds [Washington Post] “Police Won’t Say Whether Cops Caught Fabricating Charges Were Disciplined” [Ed Krayewski, Connecticut]
- “A Rogues’ Gallery of Bad Forensics Labs” [C.J. Ciaramella]
- You can come back above ground now: NYC dismisses 644,000 stale arrest warrants for minor offenses [James C. McKinley, Jr., New York Times]
- Deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) turn U.S. Department of Justice into regulator without accountability [James Copland and Rafael Mangual, Manhattan Institute]
Posts Tagged ‘Arizona’
Podcast: states can rein in ADA lawsuit mills
In Arizona, where ADA filing mills have been running wild suing small businesses, Attorney General Mark Brnovich led an effort to bring one operation to account. He explains how in this Federalist Society podcast. I have a question near the end.
Inside an ADA mass filing operation
An investigation by Arizona’s ABC 15 “confirmed through attorneys, sources and internal documents that Litigation Management and Financial Services is comprised of the same people behind the Valley group, Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities, or AID.” The news organization also lays its hands on contracts used by the resulting ADA mass filing operation; it seems disabled plaintiffs in whose names the suits were filed got paid $50 a pop.
Public employment roundup
- From 2014, missed earlier, and relevant to bounty-hunting and public sector incentive systems: George Leef reviews Nicholas Parrillo’s Against the Profit Motive: The Salary Revolution in American Government [Regulation]
- “Los Angeles’ Pension Problem Is Sinking The City” [Scott Beyer]
- Firefighter unions throw their weight around in Arizona local politics [Jessica Boehm, Arizona Republic]
- Public employee pay studies: “In this instance, I’d argue that casual intuition has a higher signal-to-noise ratio than does formal empiricism.” [Arnold Kling]
- Public sector employees aren’t sicker than comparable private employees but do take more illness/injury days off [Steven Malanga, City Journal]
- Mayor concedes there’s no “rational justification” for California city’s six-figure pensions, but that’s what the union got in its contract [Eric Boehm, Reason]
Arizona Gov. Ducey signs bill curtailing ADA shakedowns
“Arizona Governor Doug Ducey just signed into law an amendment to the Arizonans with Disabilities Act (AzDA) designed to make it more difficult to bring lawsuits against businesses based on claims that they are not accessible to individuals with disabilities. The amendment requires potential plaintiffs to give business owners notice of alleged access violations and allows businesses 30-90 days to correct the issues before a lawsuit can be filed. It also excludes websites from the AzDA’s requirements and authorizes courts to impose sanctions on plaintiffs and their attorneys if the court finds that a lawsuit was brought for the primary purpose of obtaining a payment from the defendant business.” [Caroline Larsen, Ogletree Deakins; Maria Polletta, Arizona Republic; ICSC]
A similar bill is needed at the national level.
Workplace roundup
- Occupational licensure reforms advance in Mississippi and Arizona [Eric Boehm, Reason, first and second posts]
- I should live so long: “Will the New York Times’ Labor Reporting Ever Get the Facts Straight?” [Jim Epstein; coverage here of the NYT’s 2015 nail salon reporting embarrassment]
- Silliest claim about proposed salary-history-inquiry bans is that they would advance “transparency” in hiring [Seth Barron]
- Many states complicate offender re-entry after incarceration with needless licensing barriers and fingerprint checks [Eli Lehrer, Inside Sources]
- H.R. 1180 (“Working Families Flexibility Act of 2017”), introduced by Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), would curb some overtime litigation by allowing private sector comp time under some conditions [Evil HR Lady]
- Layers of irony: “Disability Services Company to Pay $100,000 to Settle EEOC Disability Discrimination Lawsuit” [commission press release in EEOC v. ValleyLife (Arizona), h/t Roger Clegg]
March 29 roundup
- “SEAT Act: Top Senators Sponsoring Bill to Outlaw Low Cost Carriers, Raise Airfares” [Gary Leff, View from the Wing]
- “Trump’s Safe and Sane ‘Regulatory Reform’ Idea” [Cass Sunstein/Bloomberg, earlier Sunstein on Trump regulatory initiatives]
- Changing law and economics shape street protest [Tyler Cowen] Arizona’s bad idea on protestors involves racketeering charges, forfeiture, and more [Coyote]
- “Rights And Reality: Georgia Cop Jails Ex-Wife For Facebook Gripe” [Ken White, Popehat]
- “Opponents of same-sex marriage cynically…manufacture[d] a baseless controversy in the Texas Supreme Court” to attack City of Houston’s spousal benefits, but as the Hon. Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit had already stated in persuasive guidance, Obergefell “is the law of the land.” [Mark Pulliam, Law and Liberty; a second view from Josh Blackman]
- Idea making some headway: adapting use of class action and similar aggregate litigation procedures to administrative adjudication [Sergio Campos, Jotwell]
Campus climate roundup
- Hundreds of colleges now have bias response teams, with many deeply involved in regulating speech [Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE survey]
- Trump’s tweet made old idea new: in 1991, Rep. Henry Hyde filed unsuccessful bill to cut off federal funding of colleges that punished students for speech otherwise protected by First Amendment [The American Interest, earlier] A new cadre of federally mandated administrators, modeled on Title IX coordinators and backed by the threat of funding cutoffs, to ride herd within universities? Uh-oh [Michael Rappaport, ambivalent]
- Arizona lawmakers quickly kill bill to cut state support from classes and activities that “promote division, resentment or social justice toward a race, gender, religion, political affiliation, social class or other class,” which would have extended earlier curb on Mexican and other ethnic studies [Tucson Star, Arizona Republic, Christian Science Monitor; background Melinda Anderson, Atlantic]
- 47 Boston College faculty members ask “zero-tolerance” policy on hate speech. That’s different from the speech that Arizona was looking at that “promote[s] division, resentment” along ethnic lines, right? [Washington Times]
- At the University of Minnesota, you might lose a student-advisor job for not demonstrating “a commitment to social justice growth and promotion to residents.” [David Blondin, Minnesota Republic/Campus Reform]
- View that speech is violence, and thus properly countered by violence in response, is popular at UC Berkeley student paper [screencap by Ashley Rae on Twitter] More: The new religious establishment: Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion has $20 million a year, 150 staff [Heather Mac Donald]
Weakening the power to serve
“After minimum-wage hike, hundreds of Arizona companies serving people with disabilities to face a funding crisis” [Arizona Republic]
Disabled rights roundup
- Wall Street Journal covers surge in web accessibility suits [Sara Randazzo, WSJ] State and local governments comment on federal proposals for public sector web accessibility;
- “Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title III lawsuits are up 63 percent over 2015, according to law firm Seyfarth Shaw.” [Insurance Journal]
- “Drive-by” ADA suits in Austin, Tex.: “Lawyer sanctioned $175,000 for phony email, offensive comments” [Ryan Autullo, Austin American-Statesman] Arizona mass-filing attorney responds to professional conduct complaint [East Valley Tribune, earlier]
- “Airlines seek to limit types of therapy animals allowed on planes” [L.A. Times]
- “Fired for being (twice) intoxicated on the job, a mechanic for the D.C.-area transit authority undergoes treatment, applies for his job back. But his bosses refuse, allegedly because of his alcoholism. An ADA violation? Indeed, says the D.C. Circuit.” [Alexander v. WMATA as summarized on John Ross, Short Circuits]
- Department of Justice unveils ADA regulation requiring movie theaters to offer captioning and audio description [Federal Register]