Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘schools’

December 31 roundup

Lists of lists, if not indeed lists of lists of lists:

  • Lenore Skenazy picks worst school safety overreaction cases of the year [Reason] and worst nanny state cases [Huffington Post]
  • Radley Balko, “Horrifying civil liberties predictions for 2015”, and you won’t need to read far to get the joke [Washington Post]
  • Feds probe NY Speaker Sheldon Silver over pay from law firm — not his big personal injury firm, but an obscure firm that handles tax certiorari cases [New York Times; our earlier Silver coverage over the years]
  • “Doonesbury” Sunday strip gets filed 5-6 weeks before pub date, so if its topicality compares unfavorably to that of Beetle Bailey and Garfield, now you know why [Washington Post and Slate, with Garry Trudeau’s embarrassing excuses for letting papers run a strip taking the Rolling Stone/U. Va. fraternity assault story as true, weeks after its collapse; Jesse Walker assessment of the strip twelve years ago]
  • Jim Beck’s picks for worst pharmaceutical law cases of the year [Drug & Device Law]
  • “The Ten Most Significant Class Action Cases of 2014” [Andrew Trask]
  • Washington Post calls for steep cigarette tax hike in Maryland, makes no mention of smuggling/black market issue so visible in New York [my Cato post]

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Schools roundup

  • National Education Association has spent estimated $35 million on politics this year [Jason Hart, Watchdog]
  • Not everyone in academia admires the federal law entitling tenured professors to stay on “until they’re carried out of the classroom on a gurney” [Laurie Fendrich, Chronicle of Higher Ed; my earlier]
  • Montgomery County, Md.: “The School Religious Holidays Problem is Really a Public Schooling Problem” [Neal McCluskey]
  • “Concussion Lawsuits Hit High School Level” [AP; Cook County, Ill.]
  • Reminder: much-quoted “one in five college women is raped” statistic is not real [Christina Sommers, Time; the Washington Post’s contribution (not to forget this); and a very important new piece by Emily Yoffe in Slate]
  • Ousting bad cops, ousting bad teachers: parallel obstacles [RiShawn Biddle, Dropout Nation]
  • George Leef on federal pressures behind Minneapolis school-discipline initiative [Forbes, earlier here and here]
  • DoJ “feigning concern about access for disabled children” in suit challenging Wisconsin school choice [George Will]

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Schools roundup

  • UCLA admins grovel, humiliate veteran profs over charges of “microaggression” [Heather Mac Donald, City Journal] Meanwhile, this piece on overuse of disability card/trigger warnings in academic settings has already gotten labeled #AbleistAbuse so read at own risk [June Thunderstorm, The Baffler]
  • Toughened D.C. truancy laws “flooding schools with paperwork and pushing tardy students into the criminal justice system” [WP]
  • Polite opinion beginning to turn in favor of procedural protections for accused in campus sex cases? [Ruth Marcus, Washington Post] Richard Painter: accused minorities may be at disadvantage under new house rules [Legal Ethics Forum]
  • Schoolboy hurts himself opening emergency exit at back of bus, lawsuit follows [NY Daily News]
  • Union fines Nassau Community College adjuncts for not “supporting” strike, including one who was on leave at time [Newsday] P.S. Union situation over at Rockland Community College has its own problems;
  • Before registering for classes, students at some universities must submit to Title IX training with wildly intrusive personal questions [Susan Fruth, FIRE]
  • Summary of Eric Hanushek’s expert report in Texas school finance case [Texas Public Policy Foundation]

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Schools roundup

  • Oklahoma school district agrees to pay survivors of teen who drove drunk [Tulsa World]
  • “The Evidence on Universal Preschool” [David Armor, Cato]
  • Things you can hit with a Title IX complaint for doing: fighting academic boycott of Israel [Ben-Atar, Tablet]
  • “It may take the fun and spontaneity out of sex, but I don’t care. That’s for the kids to worry about.” [Ron Kuby quoted in WSJ via Hans Bader; earlier on affirmative consent]
  • Jason Bedrick on lawsuits against school choice [Cato]
  • “The Left/Right Alliance That Legalized Homeschooling” [Jesse Walker, Reason]
  • Kid safety mania: “I suggest just keeping children in large jars until they’re 40.” [Amy Alkon]

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Update: false accuser liable to school district in Brian Banks case

After Wanetta Gibson falsely accused Brian Banks of rape (earlier), her family won a settlement in a civil suit against the Long Beach, Calif. schools; Banks himself, a former prep football star, served more than five years in prison. Now the school district has obtained a $2.6 million default judgment against Gibson, whose whereabouts are unknown. “According to the school district, the judgment recoups a $750,000 settlement paid to Gibson and also includes attorney’s fees, interest and $1 million in punitive damages.” [Long Beach Press-Telegram] Earlier accounts had erroneously reported that Gibson had been paid $1.5 million.

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Schools roundup

  • New report: “Schools Cut Back as Litigation Costs Eat into Budgets” [California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, PDF] “Swings too dangerous for Washington schools” [AP; Richland, Wash.]
  • “Appeals Court Ruling Paves Way for Gender Quotas in High School Sports” [Saving Sports, Ninth Circuit on Title IX] More: Alison Somin [Ollier v. Sweetwater Union School District]
  • “College and university administrators demolishing freedom of religion and association” [Bainbridge]
  • “Grenade Launchers: The Newest Must-Have School Supply” [Jason Bedrick/Cato, earlier]
  • “It was against the school policy for elementary kids to have Chapstick” [Amy Alkon; Augusta County, Va.] “Mom Tells Therapist About Briefly Leaving Kids Alone, Shrink Calls Cops” [Lenore Skenazy]
  • Disability and school discipline: “Wondering why a preschooler would ever need to be suspended? Here’s an explanation.” [Amy Rothschild, Greater Greater Washington]
  • Civic education needed: some Greendale, Wisc. parents and educators wonder why non-parents are allowed to vote on school matters [Lenore Skenazy]

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“Positive rights,” in one lesson

According to an international study, nations that announce a constitutional right to education have on average a lower caliber of schooling: “the relation between the strength of constitutional educational rights and the quality of education is negative and statistically significant.” [Sebastian Edwards and Alvaro Garcia Marin, National Bureau of Economic Research via Tyler Cowen]

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“But the Supreme Court has its own buffer zone…”

Whichever way you come down on the sidewalk-buffer-zone series of cases, it’s time to retire the wheeze about how the U.S. Supreme Court is supposedly being inconsistent by not inviting protesters up really close to its entrance doors — though the taunt does conceal something of a genuine point about how smaller, poorer organizations are more likely to have to put up with the annoyances and inconveniences of public space and its concomitant public forum doctrine, as they also do when the forums involved are public parks or schools [Eugene Volokh, earlier]

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