- EEOC guidance lost big in last week’s SCOTUS employment decisions [Daniel Fisher, Michael Greve]
- Classification of obesity as a “disease” has huge employment law implications [Jon Hyman]
- EEOC goes after BMW, Dollar General over criminal background checks on job candidates [ABA Journal, Althouse, Michael Carvin and Eric Dreiband (“The Government Checks Criminal Records. Why Can’t Private Employers?”), Employer’s Lawyer, earlier] “So the gov’t convicts minorities at a disproportionate rate. Then the gov’t sues companies that checks those records, smart.” [Surya Gunasekara] Why not ban Google too? (Don’t give them ideas, please) [ Mike Riggs]
- Wage and hour suits soar, record number filed so far in 2013 [Corp Counsel, Overtime Lawyer, I-Sight] Related: what’s wrong with the epithet “wage theft” [Hyman]
- Employer’s claim: I can’t get due process from Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities [Daniel Schwartz]
- The First Amendment protects our speech rights against the government, not against those we deal with in the workplace who may disapprove [Schwartz and more on Connecticut employment proposal] NLRB “attempting to sanction a California newspaper despite a federal appeals court’s decision that such a ruling threatened the publisher’s First Amendment rights.” [Washington Free Beacon]
- “Bergen, Passaic County towns saddled with costs as lawsuits filed by police add up” [Bergen Record via NJLRA]
Posts Tagged ‘New Jersey’
“…It was certainly *not* some impulsive, ham-fisted attempt to bully a local resident…”
The township of West Orange, N.J. sends a cease and desist letter to a local political activist who runs the domain westorange.info and gets the following response from attorney Stephen Kaplitt (via Above the Law):
Dear Mr. Trenk:
I am pro bono counsel to Jake Freivald and write in response to your “cease and desist letter,” dated May 13, 2013, regarding his domain westorange.info. Obviously it was sent in jest, and the world can certainly use more legal satire. Bravo, Mr. Trenk! ….
Oh, and just to play along, had you intended for your letter to be taken seriously, even in some small measure, we would have sent in response something along the following lines: …
[several legal points follow about municipalities’ general lack of a right to exclude others from using their names as part of domains]
If you manage to produce supporting authority that even remotely passes the laugh test, I will donate $100 in your honor to the American Civil Liberties Union — N.J. chapter. I plan to make the donation online, assuming the state of New Jersey has not shut down aclu-nj.org.
Law schools roundup
- Law-school leftism is no longer a progressive force, argues Brian Tamanaha [Stanford Law and Policy Review, more] Paul Campos responds to critics of Tamanaha [UCLA Law Review via Caron]
- Related: “Cleaning (one’s inbox) is its own reward: nice podcast re: law school reform that I took to gym (via @WalterOlson)” [@DavidLat]
- Good news for law students? “Student Loans May Now Be Discharged More Easily In Bankruptcy in the 9th Circuit” [Karen Oakes, Bankruptcy Law Network] “Only if the law students don’t want to become lawyers.” [@moiracathleen]
- No love lost: Mark Tushnet vs. Richard Epstein on Epstein’s new book Design for Liberty (PDFs)
- “People’s Electric Law School”: George Conk recalls Rutgers-Newark’s salad days as a committed-Left law school at a state university [Fordham Urban Law Journal via Steele] Thoughts from Elizabeth Warren ’76 [Rutgers via @LegInsurrection]
- “Assignment: defend the opponent’s viewpoint….” A dying art in the ideologized law school? [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum]
- John Murtagh hasn’t forgotten what Columbia prof/NYU “scholar in residence” Kathy Boudin did [NY Post]
Colorado school funding found constitutional
The Colorado Supreme Court, wisely resisting a national campaign of school funding litigation, has turned down a lawsuit arguing that the state is obliged under its constitution to step up school spending. [Denver Post, KDVR, opinion in State v. Lobato]
I’ve got a post up at Cato at Liberty about the Colorado decision, noting that although school finance litigators make a lot of noise about educational quality, they are actually on a mission of “control —specifically, transferring control over spending from voters and their representatives to litigators whose loyalty is to a mix of ideologues and interest groups sharing a wish for higher spending.” I quote from a section on school finance litigation that I wound up cutting from my book Schools for Misrule about the enormous impact such suits have had in other states:
Vast sums have been redistributed as a result. Lawmakers in Kentucky enacted more than a billion dollars in tax hikes. New Jersey adopted its first income tax. Kansas lawmakers levied an additional $755 million in taxes after the state’s high court in peremptory fashion ordered them to double their spending on schools.
The results have been at best mixed: while some states to come under court order have improved their educational performance, many others have stagnated or fallen into new crisis. Colorado is fortunate not to join their ranks. (& reprint: Complete Colorado)
P.S. From a Colorado Springs Gazette report, Jul. 31, 2011:
“Putting more money into a broken system won’t get a better results. There are improvements that could be made without money,” says Deputy Attorney General Geoffrey Blue. …
He points to a Cato Institute study that showed spending on education across the country has skyrocketed but test scores didn’t improve.
“That would mean that potentially every cent of the state budget would be shifted over to K-12 education,” says Blue, who heads the office’s legal policy and government affairs.
N.J.: student kicked off track team, father sues
Ervin Mears Jr. has sued in Camden County, claiming his son Mawusimensah Mears, a sophomore, was kicked off the track team on the grounds of unexcused absences from practice. “‘Participation in extracurricular activities is a right,’ Mears said. Not allowing his son to participate constitutes bullying, harassment, and an ‘abusive school environment’ in which the sophomore’s rights to due process and freedom of speech were impeded, the suit says.” He wants $40 million. [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Labor and employment roundup
- Gov. Christie vetoes bill enabling workers and job applicants to sue employers who asked about Facebook use [NJLRA, Star-Ledger, more]
- “Shockingly a British pub might want to hire British employees,” NYC Human Rights Commission sees things differently [Amy Alkon]
- Anticlimax: despite fears, NLRB won’t ban at-will disclaimers in employee handbooks [Jon Hyman]
- “Equally injurious to the children of the laboring classes is their utilization by their parents in theatrical and operatic shows” [Kyle Graham]
- Senate confirms plaintiffs’ class action attorney as newest appointee to EEOC [Stoel Rives]
- Public accounting: “Two advances for pension transparency” [Josh Barro]
- At least there’s one category of young worker for whom job prospects remain bright, namely kids of Andrew Cuomo’s friends [David Boaz]
Schools roundup
- More commentators weigh in on the truly horrible new federal campus speech and discipline code [Harvey Silverglate /Juliana DeVries, Minding the Campus; Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic; Will Creeley, HuffPo; Scott Greenfield; Reason TV; my two cents] More: Greg Lukianoff, WSJ.
- Feds: states must impose extensive disability-rights regime — including obligations to accept students with difficult accommodation needs — on private/religious schools participating in voucher programs [Bagenstos, Disability Law; Ramesh Ponnuru (noting that loading new regulatory burdens onto private and religious schools may not be displeasing to school choice opponents in the administration)] NYC’s famous selective/performance schools obliged to take special ed kids who can’t meet standard entrance or audition requirements [Inside Schools]
- Volunteer-led school band survives shutdown attempt by Oregon teachers’ union [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
- AFT: donate to groups that oppose our aims, and we’ll see that you pay [Jason Bedrick, Cato]
- Chicago: “Teachers union plans to file civil rights suits to stop school closings” [Chicago Tribune]
- Newly passed Minnesota “anti-bullying” law will expand state control over local schools [Pioneer Press] Court proceedings over alleged taunting and insults proliferate under New Jersey’s law [Star-Ledger via Reason]
- “Graduates, your ambition is the problem” [Roger Pilon on the president’s Ohio State commencement address]
Schools roundup
- Appalling: pursuing the logic of equality arguments, prominent constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has proposed abolishing private/religious/home K-12 schooling [Eugene Volokh, Rick Garnett, Marc DeGirolami]
- How wrong is the NRA on school security? So wrong that even Marian Wright Edelman makes more sense [Gene Healy]
- Schools, marriage, and self-replicating elites: Ross Douthat tells some secrets of the NYT-reading class [NYT]
- Critics flay Connecticut bill to require school mental health checkups of children [Raising Hale]
- “How the Anti-Bully Movement is Hurting Kids: An Interview with Bully Nation’s Susan Porter” [Tracy Oppenheimer, Reason]
- Montgomery County, Maryland pols concerned some public schools might become unfairly good [DC Examiner] Also in Maryland, there’s a push to emulate a truly bad New Jersey idea by shifting the burden of proof onto schools in special education disputes [WaPo]
- Telephone frustration in New Haven: “How public schools drive us away…” [Mark Oppenheimer]
Medical roundup
- “It Didn’t Feel Like a ‘Win'” [“Birdstrike, M.D.”/White Coat]
- Federal ban on long shifts by hospital residents may have harmed safety, in part because it drove up number of patient handoffs [USA Today]
- N.J. bill would narrow chance for suits against first aid, ambulance and rescue squads [NJLRA]
- Bill in Georgia legislature aims to apply workers’-comp-like principles to med-mal [Florida Times-Union]
- I mostly agree that med-mal reform is for states to decide, but Ramesh Ponnuru may underrate Washington’s legitimate role in prescribing legal consequences when it pays for care [Bloomberg/syndicated]
- Shift burdens through price control: NJ assemblyman’s bill would prohibit insurers from considering docs’ claims experience except for cases that result in actual court findings [NJLRA]
- Someone’s hand stuck in the sharps box again? Sixth time this month [Throckmorton]
Our wayward bench and bar
Please don’t do these [in some cases alleged] things:
- Calif.: “Judge accused of stealing elderly neighbor’s $1.6M life savings resigns from bench” [ABA Journal]
- Stan Chesley joins a rogue’s gallery of disgraced litigators [Paul Barrett/Business Week, earlier here, etc.]
- San Francisco’s Alioto firm: “Attorney and law firm must pay $67K …for ‘vexatious’ suit challenging airline merger” [ABA Journal, Andrew Longstreth/Reuters (Joseph Alioto: “badge of honor”), Ted Frank/PoL (sanctions are small change compared with enormous fees obtainable through merger challenges]
- N.J.: “Lawyer takes state plea, will pay $1M to widow’s estate” [ABA Journal]
- Texas: “State Rep. Reynolds charged with 7 others in barratry scheme” [SETR]
- “Paul Bergrin, ‘The Baddest Lawyer in the History of Jersey,’ Convicted at Last” [David Lat/Above the Law, earlier]
- “Attorney’s mug shot winds up next to his law firm’s ad, in marketing effort gone awry” [Martha Neil, ABA Journal]
- Once the American legal profession reformed itself, but that was long ago [John Steele Gordon]