Posts Tagged ‘Sixth Circuit’

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Supreme Court roundup

Hearing might be required before city can close business under nuisance-abatement law

Earlier this month we linked the story of a Dallas car wash owner whose business was shut down by the city under a nuisance abatement law because it was deemed to attract crime, even though the owner was not alleged to have done anything to further the crime and in fact had called police many times to complain about it.

Last month a Sixth Circuit panel, over a dissent, ruled that the city of Saginaw, Mich. may have violated Rita Johnson’s rights when it shut down her Rita’s Southern Soul Café without first according her a hearing. Johnson had rented out her restaurant one evening to a private party; “For unknown reasons, individuals unaffiliated with her or the party emerged from a vehicle that night and began shooting at the restaurant.” Police surmise that rivalry between gangs might have prompted the attack, but neither perpetrators nor motive were established. The case now goes back for further litigation in which Johnson will be allowed to argue that a hearing before shutting down her café would have been warranted. [Johnson v. Morales via Institute for Justice “Short Circuit”]

“The First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke.”

“…when it comes to parody, the law requires a reasonable reader standard, not a ‘most gullible person on Facebook’ standard. The First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke.” — Judge Amul Thapar, Sixth Circuit, writing on behalf of a unanimous panel that “an Ohio man who was acquitted of a felony after creating a parody Facebook page that mocked a suburban Cleveland police department can sue the city and two police officers over his arrest.” [Jonathan Stempel, Reuters]

Related: everyone has the right to call politicians idiots, and that goes for gun store owners too [Eugene Volokh; North Carolina gun store owner’s billboard likened by sitting member of Congress to “inciting violence”]

Insurer owes $200,000 after drunken game of “chicken”

The insurance policy had excluded coverage for injuries arising from “illegal use of alcohol,” but a Sixth Circuit panel ruled that since the 22-year-old’s actual consumption of the alcohol hadn’t been unlawful — though his decision to operate a dirt bike while intoxicated afterward was — the exclusion did not apply. Back to the drawing board on contract language for the insurer [John Agar, MLive; Lowell, Mich.]

May 3 roundup

Sixth Circuit: IRS, unlike Caligula, cannot punish under unproclaimed law

Judge Jeffrey Sutton, writing for a Sixth Circuit panel, reverses a Tax Court ruling in an opinion beginning thus:

Caligula posted the tax laws in such fine print and so high that his subjects could not read them. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, bk. 4, para. 41 (Robert Graves, trans., 1957). That’s not a good idea, we can all agree. How can citizens comply with what they can’t see? And how can anyone assess the tax collector’s exercise of power in that setting? The Internal Revenue Code improves matters in one sense, as it is accessible to everyone with the time and patience to pore over its provisions.

In today’s case, however, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service denied relief to a set of taxpayers who complied in full with the printed and accessible words of the tax laws. The Benenson family, to its good fortune, had the time and patience (and money) to understand how a complex set of tax provisions could lower its taxes.

And taking issue with the IRS Commissioner’s decision to disallow the use of two Congressionally approved devices, the Roth IRA and DISC (domestic international sales corporation), in a way said to trigger the so-called substance-over-form doctrine:

Each word of the “substance-over-form doctrine,” at least as the Commissioner has used it here, should give pause. If the government can undo transactions that the terms of the Code expressly authorize, it’s fair to ask what the point of making these terms accessible to the taxpayer and binding on the tax collector is. “Form” is “substance” when it comes to law. The words of law (its form) determine content (its substance). How odd, then, to permit the tax collector to reverse the sequence—to allow him to determine the substance of a law and to make it govern “over” the written form of the law—and to call it a “doctrine” no less.

[Summa Holdings v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue via Paul Caron/TaxProf]

Free speech roundup

  • Uh-oh: “40% of Millennials OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities” [Pew Research, Cathy Young on Twitter (“OK, NOW can we stop the ‘naww, political correctness isn’t a threat to free speech, it’s just about courtesy’ spin?”)]
  • Breezy but informative guide to why Schneiderman & Co. might hope to find, amid the general rule that the First Amendment protects business speech about public policy, an exception/ loophole for business speech about public policy when it affects securities [Matt Levine, Bloomberg View; earlier on climate speech investigations here, etc.]
  • “Lawsplainer: How The Sixth Circuit Stood Up To Hecklers (And Cops)” [Popehat on Michigan case of Bible Believers v. Wayne County, Dearborn protesters threatened with arrest for “disorderly conduct” arising from prospect of violence against them]
  • Discrimination law: “Can Office Depot be forced to print flyers that it disapproves of?” [Eugene Volokh; compare Hands On Originals case in Kentucky]
  • Scary: UK’s Muslim Council calls for controls on UK press coverage of Islamic issues [Ben Flanagan, Al-Arabiya] Prominent Labour MP says he would have “no problem” with reintroducing blasphemy laws [National Secular Society]
  • Cook County sheriff sent letterhead takedown demands to Backpage.com over sex ads, but Supreme Court has looked askance at informal you’d-better-not-publish-this pressure by government [Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer, Cato]
  • Portland, Ore. police department “encourages the reporting to law enforcement” of “offensive language used on social media” even when not illegal. It does? [Charles Cooke]

Sixth Circuit smacks EEOC on work-from-home accommodation

An 8-5 decision from (these days) one of the nation’s more liberal circuits in EEOC v. Ford Motor Company:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to reasonably accommodate their disabled employees; it does not endow all disabled persons with a job—or job schedule—of their choosing. Jane Harris, a Ford Motor Company employee with irritable bowel syndrome, sought a job schedule of her choosing: to work from home on an as-needed basis, up to four days per week. Ford denied her request, deeming regular and predictable on-site attendance essential to Harris’s highly interactive job. Ford’s papers andpractices—and Harris’s three past telecommuting failures—backed up its business judgment.

Nevertheless, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Ford under the ADA. It alleged that Ford failed to reasonably accommodate Harris by denying her telecommuting request and retaliated against her for bringing the issue to the EEOC’s attention. The district court granted summary judgment to Ford on both claims. We affirm.

More: Jon Hyman. On the EEOC’s many rebuffs in federal court, see here, here, here, here, etc.

Labor and employment roundup