- Summary of bills passed in legislature [Washington Post] With legislative session over, bills that did not meet with favorable action include “source of income discrimination,” i.e., requiring landlords to accept Section 8 [unfavorable report, earlier]; curbing competition among hospices [unfavorable report, earlier]
- Dining allergy bill gets to conference committee stage, requirement that restaurants keep trained allergy advisers on hand watered down to county option [action, NFIB, AP after Senate passage, earlier]
- Crime and police bills that didn’t pass: requiring reports on asset seizures/forfeitures [Senate hearing, earlier]; police wearing of videocameras [amended substantially before House passage, unfavorable report in Senate]; castle doctrine and self-defense [unfavorable report, more];
- New school construction prevailing wage bill hurts communities and kids [Ellen Sauerbrey letter]
- Terms of final dog bite bill signed by governor: owner generally liable for bites to unoffending persons, can escape liability by rebutting presumption that it knew or had reason to know dog was dangerous, all breeds treated alike [AP, Baltimore Sun]
- Yes, Maryland legislators just decriminalized marijuana while banning grain alcohol and declining to lift the ban on raw milk;
- How does Maryland rank among the 50 states for property rights protections? Not well, that’s for sure [Freedom in the Fifty States]
Posts Tagged ‘property rights’
Organizers Should Have Access?
“Union representatives join federal government safety inspectors on site visits to non-union businesses” [Patrick Howley, Daily Caller; SHRM, Better Roads, Associated Builders and Contractors on OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) letter of interpretation]
Bullet overflight
Does it violate your rights when someone’s flying bullet enters your property? Should the law attempt to prohibit that? Or does it depend on the setting and customary land uses in the community? [Insurance Journal on Fla. law]
Koontz: a win for property rights
The Supreme Court had already ruled that disproportionate “exactions” levied on property owners in exchange for the right to develop are an unconstitutional taking if they consist of demands for land. Now, in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District, the Court confirms that the rule also applies to exactions of money and effort — in this case, a demand that a landowner develop a government property miles away from his own holdings. It also confirms that the principle applies to denials of permits as well as approvals. [Roger Pilon, Tejinder Singh/SCOTUSBlog, Ilya Somin, Damon Root/Reason] Background: Cato brief and summary, Timothy Sandefur and Ilya Shapiro. More: Richard Epstein, Gideon Kanner, Randal O’Toole, Rick Hills, Ilya Somin.
SCOTUS: Raisin-confiscation dispute is ripe enough
In its unanimous decision yesterday in Horne v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Supreme Court did not reach the merits of whether the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 worked an unconstitutional taking without compensation from the Horne family, who process as well as grow raisins in central California, by compelling them to participate in its scheme. But it did rule that the Ninth Circuit was wrong in disclaiming jurisdiction over the Hornes’ suit on the grounds that they should have paid an enormous fine first and then sued to get it back. In doing so, it rejected the position taken by the Obama administration in favor of that taken by (among others) a Cato Institute amicus brief. (More: Ilya Shapiro, Cato; Ilya Somin; Damon Root, Reason; more background, Lyle Denniston/SCOTUSBlog, Michael Doyle/McClatchy, The Economist, James Bovard, Ilya Shapiro)
After the Ninth Circuit takes a further look, it would surprise no one if the merits of the case wound up back at the Supreme Court. I touched on the merits in this earlier post:
Max Boot, who has written a new book on the history of guerrilla movements, tells how Shamil, firebrand leader of a celebrated 19th-century Muslim insurgency in Chechnya and Dagestan, began to lose the allegiance of “many ordinary villagers who balked at his demands for annual tax payments amounting to 12 percent of their harvest.” Instead, they switched their allegiance to the rival Russian czar, whose demands were more modest.
The USDA’s marketing order committee demanded that the Hornes hand over 47 percent of their raisins without compensation.