- Mayor de Blasio settles firefighter bias suit on terms sympathetic to plaintiffs [City Journal: Dennis Saffran and Seth Barron]
- One way to dodge some Culture War fights: roll meaning of “public accommodation” back to travel, lodgings, places of public amusement, etc. [Andrew Kloster, Heritage] As original/creative expression goes, florists and cake-bakers sometimes outdo NYT’s Greenhouse [Ann Althouse] From Dixie Chicks to Hobby Lobby, few escape hypocrisy when commerce collides with convictions [Barton Hinkle]
- Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights investigating Florida’s popular Bright Futures college scholarship program [Orlando Sentinel]
- Do EEOC mediators overstate risk of legal action to extract big settlements from employers? [Bloomberg BNA, Merrily Archer on survey] New Colorado expansion of employment liability bad news for large and small employers alike [Archer]
- “Religious exemptions — a guide for the confused” [Eugene Volokh]
- Washington Post columnist repeats myth that Lilly Ledbetter “did not know she was being paid less than male counterparts” until after statute of limitations had run; Hans Bader corrects [letter to editor]
- If helping out local people was one reason your town decided to back public housing, you might have been played for suckers [AP on DoJ suit against Long Island town over local preference]
Posts Tagged ‘churches’
July 27 roundup
- Authorities arrest woman they say obtained $480,000 by falsely claiming injury from Boston Marathon bombing [CNN]
- More on the buddy system by which Louisiana officials pick private-practice pals for contingency contracts [WWL, The Hayride, Melissa Landry/La. Record; earlier on levee district’s new megasuit against oil industry]
- “Why would the President meet with the IRS chief counsel rather than his own counsel at OLC, and without the IRS commissioner present?” [Paul Caron, TaxProf] “The IRS as microcosm”: government lawyers lean left politically [Anderson, Witnesseth]
- California county lead paint recoupment case finally reaches trial, judge jawbones defendants to settle [Mercury-News, Chamber-backed Legal NewsLine]
- The insanity of film production local incentives, Georgia edition [Coyote]
- Questioning NYT’s underexplained “Goldman aluminum warehouse scam” tale [Yglesias, Stoll, Biz Insider]
- Yes, government in the U.S. does do some things to accommodate Islam, now don’t get bent out of shape about it [Volokh]
Should the Bob Jones case trouble liberal pluralists?
Mark Graber at Concurring Opinions, reviewing James Fleming and Linda McClain, Ordered Liberty, a book which lays out a constitutional analysis consistent with the viewpoint Graber calls “Solid Liberalism”:
Another point where Ordered Liberty threatens but pulls back from challenging core Solid Liberal beliefs occurs during the discussion of Bob Jones v. United States. Ordered Liberty suggests that the Supreme Court in that case correctly ruled that religious organizations can be denied tax exemptions if they teach racism and other abhorrent doctrines. I confess to be troubled by the analysis. I suspect that most Jewish schools at the very least encourage students to date and marry other Jews, that these schools teach the doctrine that Jews are a chosen people, and that a great many other religions engage in similarly illiberal teaching. Given the importance of the welfare state in the lives of most citizens, a point Fleming and McClain make elsewhere in the book, I confess to some discomfort with the constitutional rule they eventually endorse that forbids religious coercion but permits religious groups to be denied state benefits that go to other religious groups with more liberally accepted beliefs. I think based on what the authors suggest elsewhere in the book, a case can be made that Bob Jones ought to be rethought.
Great moments in litigation journalism
In the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Ivey DeJesus trumpets the views of a “leading legal expert,” specifically “one of the country’s leading church and state scholars” who says, contrary to a state lawmaker’s assertions, that there’s no constitutional problem with reopening lapsed statutes of limitations so as to enable child-abuse lawsuits by now-grown-up complainants. Prof. Marci Hamilton is indeed a well-known church-state scholar, and there is indeed precedent for the (perhaps strange) idea that courts will not necessarily strike down retroactive legislation as unconstitutional so long as its impacts are civil rather than criminal. But it’s not until paragraph 18 that DeJesus, after introducing the expert at length by way of her academic affiliations, bothers to add a perhaps equally relevant element of her biography: she has “represented scores of victims in the Philadelphia Archdiocese clergy sex abuse case.” Why bring that up?
Update: “slain in the Spirit” church suit settles
Following up on last January’s report: the Disciple Fellowship Christian Church of East St. Louis, Ill. has reportedly settled Cheryl Jones’s suit claiming that ushers were not properly provided to catch falling worshipers during a service in which congregants “received the Spirit”. Jones was injured when others fell on her. We have earlier reported on similar cases from Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee, and Australia. [Christina Stueve Hodges, Madison-St. Clair Record; update ($3K)]
February 14 roundup
- “From Chevron to Arlington: The Court and the Administrative State at Sea” [Michael Greve]
- “Tawana Brawley ordered to pay settlement to man she accused of rape” [ABA Journal] False memories of being assaulted by Tigger, and how that can happen [Lowering the Bar; William Saletan, Slate, debunks a Gawker story, 2010]
- “Portlandia — The Bed and Breakfast Inspector” [Armisen/Brownstein, IFC]
- Writer at National Review Online sees Obama’s “pro-marriage” talk as logically entailing big new entitlement program, and applauds that [W. Bradford Wilcox]
- “What’s Next For The Class Action Plaintiffs’ Bar? Getting Deputized By State Attorneys General” [Kevin Ranlett, Mayer Brown]
- “Christian School’s Lawsuit May Test Supreme Court’s Religious Freedom Ruling in Hosanna-Tabor Case” [Fed Soc Blog]
- “The Slippery Slope (Insurance Fears = No More Sledding)” [Free-Range Kids]
January 20 roundup
- I’m in today’s NYT Book Review reviewing “Foundation,” Peter Ackroyd’s new book on English history up to the Tudors [NYT]
- Stanford Law School launches religious liberty clinic [Karen Sloan, NLJ] AALS panel on “The Freedom of the Church” [Rick Garnett, Prawfs]
- Party in breach, nasssty thief, we hates it forever: lawyer parses Hobbit’s Bilbo-dwarves contract [James Daily, Wired]
- To pay for roads, vehicle-mile fees > gas tax, but either > general sales tax, argues Randal O’Toole [Cato at Liberty]
- Steven Teles on the high cost of opaque, complex and indirect government action [New America via Reihan Salam]
- I’ve given a blurb to Mark White’s forthcoming nudging-back book on behavioral economics, “The Manipulation of Choice: Ethics and Libertarian Paternalism” [Amazon]
- “Internet-Use Disorder: The Newest Disability?” [Jon Hyman]
Bork and his adversaries
I’m in today’s New York Post with an op-ed about how, agree or disagree with Bork’s views, you can’t defend many of the tactics used against him in 1987. Earlier here (& welcome Nick Gillespie/Reason, Andrew Sullivan, Stephen Bainbridge, Reihan Salam, Tom Smith, Pejman Yousefzadeh, Jonathan Adler/Volokh, Memeorandum readers).
More: David Frum recalls a very funny Bork law exam. Ramesh Ponnuru defends Bork’s famous “inkblot” comment as reasonable in its context. Much more on that question from Randy Barnett. Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen casts a vote against. At Secular Right, I add another observation or two about Bork’s religious views. Via Andrew Grossman, a clip on the beard issue.
Yet more: Richard Epstein at Ricochet. Meanwhile, some commentators have taken the line that uncivil or not, the actual charges by Kennedy and others against Bork were accurate enough. Mickey Kaus, who is sympathetic to judicial restraint but less so to Bork, links to a 1989 New Republic review in which he shed light on that:
True, paranoia on Bork’s part is amply justified. There is a liberal legal culture, and it was out to get him. … And it got him, in part, by sleazily misrepresenting some of his views. Most famously, a narrow Bork ruling was falsely characterized as favoring “sterilizing workers.” But there were other nasty distortions, not all by fringe interest groups. Senator Edward Kennedy charged that in “Bork’s America… schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution,” when Bork had never opposed teaching evolution. Senator Paul Simon implied Bork might approve the pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott.
Election roundup
- Dan Mitchell rounds up many of the significant state ballot measures [Cato] California official voter guide is 144 pages long; “As usual, almost all of the proposals being put before voters are bad.” [Josh Barro, Bloomberg; coverage of Prop 37 on genetic labeling here, here, etc.]
- And as some readers will recall, I am hoping voters in Maine, Washington and my own state of Maryland vote to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples, and that voters in Minnesota reject a constitutional amendment to the opposite effect.
- Digging into the Obama-Romney dispute over use-it-or-lose-it oil leases [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
- “The myth of auto bailout jobs” [Andrew M. Grossman, DC Examiner] On Jeeps, Romney takes a leaf from the Obama tactical playbook, and Obama not pleased [Tim Carney, Examiner]
- New Cato e-book “The Libertarian Vote: Swing Voters, Tea Parties, and the Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal Center” by David Boaz, David Kirby, and Emily Ekins, doing well on Amazon Kindle listings. And: which way should a libertarian vote for President this time? [Richard Epstein]
- “Survey of State Supreme Court Races and Retention Elections” [Carrie Severino, NRO, Ashby Jones/WSJ; earlier on Michigan here and here, on Florida here, here, and here]
- Government officials pressure private billboard owner to take down “Voter Fraud Is a Felony” sign [Hans Bader]
- Peaceful transfer of power to opposition party is gold standard of democracy [Steve Chapman]
- “As churches get political, IRS stays quiet” [Reuters, earlier]
- “Editorial: Inslee’s criticism of McKenna points up need for tort reform” [Seattle Times; my take on Washington state’s curious waiver of sovereign immunity a while back]
Maine Question 1, Maryland Question 6, Washington Referendum 74, Minnesota Amendment One
Voters in four states will decide same-sex marriage ballot questions on Nov. 6. As many readers know, I’ve been writing actively on the Maryland question, and those interested in catching up on that can follow the links here to find, among other things, my recent interview on the subject with the Arab news service Al-Jazeera, my thoughts on Judge Dennis Jacobs’s decision striking down Section 3 of DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act), and my reaction to the other side’s “bad for children” contentions.
The Cato Institute has been doing cutting-edge work on the topic for years from a libertarian perspective; some highlights here.
Yet more: Hans Bader on religious liberty and anti-discrimination law [Examiner, CEI] And my letter to the editor in the suburban Maryland Gazette: “Civil society long ago decoupled marriage law from church doctrines.”