- Claw back money spent on unhelpful college tuition after bankruptcy? Not if Connecticut has anything to say about it [The American Interest]
- Incoming civil rights/Title IX enforcement officials tell university lawyers they plan to take less adversarial stance toward colleges than did previous administration [Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed]
- “Maryland becomes first state to outlaw scholarship displacement by public colleges” [Tim Prudente, Baltimore Sun] Note that practice undercuts gratitude-inducing efficacy of state’s custom of “legislative scholarships” [sample explanation]
- Clinton, Obama education bureaucracy couched Title IX dictates as “guidance,” which should make them easier to revisit [Hans Bader, CEI]
- California, other states’ embargo on state-paid travel to “bad” conservative states is putting stress on academic conferences [Nick Roll/Inside Higher Ed, Teresa Watanabe and Rosanna Xia, L.A. Times]
- The ABA is stifling innovation in legal education [Allen
Mendenhall, Law and Liberty]
Posts Tagged ‘Maryland’
July 5 roundup
- Court order (arising from federal demand for information on three accounts) forbids Facebook “from communicating the existence of the warrants to its users” [Paul Alan Levy]
- “The great intellectual property trade-off”: brief guide to IP by economist Tim Harford [BBC]
- Eye-opening if dogmatic history of how federal government and other institutions connived at residential segregation [David Oshinsky in N.Y. Times reviewing Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law]
- About those “do not remove under penalty of law” mattress tags [Now I Know]
- What comes after a Congressional Review Act (CRA) repeal of a regulation? [Sam Batkins and Adam White, Cato Regulation magazine]
- Estate tax, DC Metro, bogus search-engine takedown suits, and kudos for a Democrat in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]
June 28 roundup
- Unlike some other states, Massachusetts has not passed a law making it unlawful to encourage suicide; confidante nonetheless convicted of involuntary manslaughter over texts encouraging fellow teenager to do that [New York Times, NPR]
- New Emoluments Clause lawsuits against President Trump vary from previous pattern, still face uphill battle [Victor Li, ABA Journal; earlier]
- “Putting occupational licensing on the Maryland reform agenda” [my new Free State Notes]
- “Interpreting State Constitutions,” judges’ panel discussion with Judith French, Jeffrey Sutton, Steve Yarbrough, Matt Kemp [Ohio Federalist Society chapters]
- SCOTUS closes a door, and rightly so, in the long-running Chevron-Ecuador-Donziger saga [Michael Krauss]
- Green Bay fan sues Chicago Bears over “no opposing team gear at pregame warmups” rule [WDEZ, Howard Wasserman/Prawfs]
June 7 roundup
- “Copyright Troll’s Tech ‘Experts’ Can Apparently Detect Infringement Before It Happens” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt] “Judge Alsup Threatens To Block Malibu Media From Any More Copyright Trolling In Northern California” [Mike Masnick, same]
- “The Truth About Seattle’s Proposed Soda Tax and its Ilk” [Baylen Linnekin quoting my piece on the Howard County, Maryland campaign against soft drinks; my related on Philadelphia soda tax] Update: measure passes;
- “Judge calls attorney a ‘lowlife’ in tossing defamation suit, says ‘truth is an absolute defense'” [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
- Rent control in Mumbai, as closer to home, brings strife, litigiousness, and crumbling housing stock [Alex Tabarrok] “How Germany Made Rent Control ‘Work'” [Kristian Niemietz, FEE]
- Together with Judge Alex Williams, Jr., I wrote an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun on the Maryland legislature’s misbegotten scheme to require a six-state compact before fixing its gerrymander-prone redistricting system;
- Inefficient land title recording leaves billions on table, but lawmakers show scant interest in reform [Arnold Kling]
Labor and employment roundup
- New York City embarks on extensive new regulation of freelance work [Jennifer A. Williams, Ford Harrison]
- “Maryland Decriminalizes Unlicensed Barbering; Jacks Up Fines for Unlicensed Barbering” [Eric Boehm, Reason] “A New Jersey Bill Protects Pool Owners from Low Prices” [Shoshana Weissman, NRO on licensing of pool/spa service contractors and installers]
- “Lawsplainer: How The Seventh Circuit Decided That Sexual Orientation Discrimination Violates Federal Law” [Ken at Popehat, earlier here, here, and here]
- New Jersey taxpayers pay $100 million+ a year to resolve public worker lawsuits [Mark Mueller, NJ.com]
- “How the Fair Labor Standards Act Hurts Women” [Heather Owen/Constangy Brooks, thanks for mention] More on comp time: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, WSJ MarketWatch; Connor Wolf, Inside Sources.
- Browning-Ferris at the NLRB: “Predictable, Uniform Standard Needed for Who Is a Joint Employer” [Michael Lotito and Missy Parry, WLF, earlier here, here, here, here, here, and here]
Drop that iced tea and back away
According to coverage at places like NPR and CNN, an innovative campaign in Howard County, Maryland “provides a road map for other communities to reduce consumption of sugary drinks.” Not so fast, I argue in my new Washington Examiner piece: the suburban county in question is not remotely typical of America as a whole, the Howard County Unsweetened campaign blurred public and private boundaries in a dubious way, and the whole enterprise generated a deserved political pushback. While the plan, promoted by the local Horizon Foundation, might not have been all bad, “it sowed divisiveness, put government resources to improper purpose, and rested on a premise of frank paternalism. When it arrives in your community, you might want to respond as you might to a second pitcher of cola — by pushing it away with a polite, ‘no thanks.'”
May 10 roundup
- Redistricting, transit farebox, Court of Appeals, decriminalizing barbers, and more in my latest Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes] And I’m quoted on the highly unpersuasive “six-state compact” scheme, which amounts to an excuse for leaving gerrymandering in place [Danielle Gaines, Frederick News-Post]
- After scandal over falsified safety records, fired track workers sue Washington’s Metro on claims of discrimination and hostile work environment [Martine Powers, Washington Post]
- Chicago mulls ordering private shopkeepers to provide bathroom access to non-customers who say they’ve got an emergency need. Too bad its own CTA is no-go zone [Steve Chapman]
- Says a lot about why Obama CPSC ignored pleas for CPSIA relief: “US Product Safety Regulator Sneers at ‘Fabricated Outrage’ Over Regulations” [C. Ryan Barber, National Law Journal on Elliot Kaye comments]
- “Implied certification” theory, okayed by SCOTUS in Universal Health Services last year, enables False Claims Act suits hinging on controversial interpretations of regulation [Federalist Society podcast with Marcia Madsen and Brian D. Miller] “A Convincing Case for Judicial Stays of Discovery in False Claims Act Qui Tam Litigation” [Stephen A. Wood, WLF]
- Judge signals reluctance to dismiss hospital’s suit against Kamala Harris over her actions as California AG on behalf of SEIU in merger case [Bianca Bruno, Courthouse News via Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner, earlier]
April 19 roundup
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), key vote on tort reform in upper house, plans Texas visit to raise funds from trial lawyers [Palmetto Business Daily]
- “Indeed, most major law schools have fewer conservatives or libertarians on their faculty than can be found on the U.S. Supreme Court.” [Jonathan Adler, Martin Center]
- Anti-craft-beer bill, Marilyn Mosby followup, legislature rescinds earlier Article V calls, Baltimore minimum wage in my latest Maryland roundup;
- Man given $190 ticket for having pet snake in park off-leash. Off leash? [John Hult, Sioux Falls Argus-Leader]
- As victim’s wife looks on, identity thief and 20-time illegal border crosser testifies that he fathered two of victim’s children [Brad Heath on Twitter citing Judge Bea ‘s opinion in U.S. v. Plascencia-Orozco, Ninth Circuit]
- Central California: “State and federal legislation take new aim at predatory ADA lawsuits” [Garth Stapley, Modesto Bee]
Baltimore police consent decree, cont’d
There’s much that needs reforming about the Baltimore police department, but the collusive sweetheart agreement between two lame duck administrations, transferring power over department practices to outside activists and the usual monitor setup, has a great deal wrong with it. George Liebmann of the Calvert Institute, who has been critical of the settlement, wrote up his objections in a lengthy communication to the court, excerpted at Free State Notes.
More from Tim Lynch at Cato on the DoJ’s changing posture:
…Sessions is making a grave mistake if he thinks previous DOJ investigations did not uncover severe problems in American policing. The problems are there. The real question is how to address them. In the education area, teacher unions are the main obstacles to reform. Police unions are the major obstacle to sensible accountability measures for police organizations. But over the long run, local mayors and city councils must make a sustained commitment to proper oversight of police. It is unrealistic to expect the Attorney General or a federal monitor to do their jobs.
March 15 roundup
- A workplace hazard? Push in Britain to “make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work.” [Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason]
- Service dogs on planes: “a ‘credible verbal assurance’ books Fido a trip to San Francisco for the weekend” [David Post, Volokh Conspiracy] Australia, too, sees trend toward exotic service and emotional-support animals [Workplace Prof; earlier]
- Trial lawyers would like Supreme Court to squash the arbitration alternative, but few signs Judge Gorsuch is on board with that plan [Edith Roberts, SCOTUSBlog]
- New York radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, not a favorite in these columns, dead at 77 [Scott Johnson, PowerLine, earlier]
- Baltimore police scandal, “yes means yes” bill for MoCo schools, homicide rap for overdose suppliers?, school wi-fi scare, Tom Perez, and more in my Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes]
- Suing so soon over White House regulatory reform, Public Citizen, and with so little show of injury? [Brian Mannix, Law and Liberty]