Posts Tagged ‘Washington D.C.’

Wage and hour roundup

  • Politicians interfere with a complex industry they don’t understand: when the $15 minimum wage came to New York car washes [Jim Epstein, Reason: article, 13:32 video]
  • “D.C. Repeals a Minimum Wage Hike That Restaurant Workers Didn’t Want” [Eric Boehm, Reason] “Tipping lawsuit leads popular Salem restaurant to declare bankruptcy” [Dan Casey, Roanoke Times]
  • Challenging a premise: “Why a federal minimum wage?” [Scott Sumner] “Pew Map Shows One Reason a National $15 Minimum Wage Won’t Work” [Joe Setyon, Reason]
  • New evidence on effects of Seattle $15 minimum: benefits go to workers with relatively high experience, “8% reduction in job turnover rates as well as a significant reduction in the rate of new entries into the workforce.” [NBER] “Minimum wage hike in Venezuela shuts stores, wipes out many jobs” [Hans Bader]
  • “Ontario labour minister’s office vandalized after minimum wage cap announced” [Canadian Press, CBC background of Ford provincial government rollback of Wynne-era labor measures]
  • DoL plans new rules on joint-employer definition [Jaclyn Diaz, Bloomberg; Alex Passantino, Seyfarth Shaw, earlier]

July 18 roundup

Pearson pants suit, ten years later

Believe it or not, the case of Judge Roy Pearson and his lost pants, widely covered here and at many other outlets ten years ago, continues to drag on in peripheral legal proceedings. “Disciplinary Counsel began this investigation eleven years and one name change ago,” declares the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility in an opinion rejecting a lesser sanction and ordering a 90-day suspension for the former administrative law judge, who had “sued his dry cleaners for $67 million for allegedly losing his pants.” The court said that although the definition of frivolous litigation in Washington, D.C. practice was so strict that few lawsuits went over the line, Pearson’s did. He had also unreasonably delayed and multiplied proceedings in the disciplinary case itself. [Mike Frisch, Legal Profession Blog; ABA Journal] “Throughout the proceedings,” the board said, Pearson “failed to conduct an objective appraisal of the legal merits of his position. He made, and continues to make, arguments that no reasonable attorney would think had even a faint hope of success on the legal merits.”

Land use and development roundup

Schools and childhood roundup

D.C.’s childcare credentialism, cont’d

From Jarrett Dieterle and Shoshana Clara Weissmann of R Street Institute in a comment on a Washington, D.C. government rulemaking (see earlier):

Even in a nation overwhelmed by well-intentioned but misguided occupational licensing laws, the District of Columbia’s childcare degree requirement has achieved particular notoriety. …

Specifically, the requirement that childcare workers obtain an associate degree in early childhood education or childhood studies (or at least an associate degree that includes 24 semester credit hours in these subjects) is problematic for three main reasons:

1. The requirement disproportionately hurts low-income childcare workers and individuals seeking to become childcare providers….

2. The requirement reduces the ability of out-of-state childcare workers to move to the District of Columbia….

3. The requirement will raise the cost of daycare in the District.

A yet more basic problem is that there are large numbers of persons who would make or are making excellent caregivers, some of whom are experienced parents themselves, whose liberty the D.C. law abridges. In addition to abridging their liberty to offer their services, the law also abridges the liberty of families who would like to engage those services.

Note that in order to engage in paid child care in the District, it wouldn’t do to have a bachelor’s degree or for that matter any number of impressive advanced degrees. There would have to be that concentration of specific coursework. The continued survival of the human race is evidence that children can be raised successfully without credentials of that sort being expected of caregivers.

October 4 roundup

After many a workplace enactment, is D.C. experiencing mandate fatigue?

Washington, D.C. “Council Chairman Phil Mendelson …has proposed a moratorium through the end of 2018 on [labor-law] bills that would negatively affect businesses.” About time, too: “While D.C., like Seattle and San Francisco, has the slack to absorb large-scale folly thanks to its role in hosting a booming sector of today’s economy, it is not entirely immune from nearby competition, a few miles away in Virginia and Maryland.” Let’s hope this snaps the recent streak of employer mandate legislation in cities and states that see themselves as progressive. I discuss in my new Cato post.

Free speech roundup

  • “You Can’t Sue People for Being Mean to You, Bob” – ACLU brief in Robert Murray-John Oliver case. Or can he? [Lowering the Bar, Popehat]
  • Eugene Volokh will keynote lunch and colleague Emily Ekins will describe results of a new survey on free speech at Cato’s inaugural conference on “The Future of the First Amendment,” that’s aside from my religious liberty panel [register or watch online]
  • “Build the Wall” flyers in Washington, D.C. draw reaction: “Council member Brandon Todd has told residents to call 911 if they are handed one of the flyers.” [Liberty Unyielding]
  • Is legal fate of Gawker chilling journalism about the rich and famous? [Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post, on coverage of R. Kelly story] Did ABC News really pay $177 million even after insurance reimbursement to settle pink slime case? [Jacob Gershman on Twitter citing SEC filing]
  • Symposium with Richard Epstein, Heather Mac Donald, KC Johnson, John McWhorter, Jonathan Rauch, Adam White and many others: “Is Free Speech Under Threat in the United States?” [Commentary]
  • Calls for a crackdown on bad guys’ political expression in 1950s and today, compared [Eugene Volokh]

Labor and employment roundup

  • Welcome news: Labor Secretary Alex Acosta urges states to fix occupational licensing [Eric Boehm, Reason] Fresh thinking on the antitrust angle in a bill from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) [Ilya Shapiro, Cato] “Occupational licensing should not be used to keep honest Americans out of work” [Clark Neily, The Hill] Video of Heritage panel on the subject with Maureen Ohlhausen of the FTC, Alex Tabarrok, Paul Larkin, and Dexter Price [Marginal Revolution]
  • “The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has allowed an employee to pursue a disability discrimination claim based on the use of medical marijuana.” [Jon Hyman]
  • That’s how we’ll solve difficult issues of statutory interpretation. We’ll call names [Richard Thompson Ford, Take Care, on expansion of Title VII interpretation to sexual orientation, earlier here, here, etc.] More: Scott Greenfield;
  • If not for wise lawmakers like those in California, who would look out for our privacy? [Steven Greenhut on proposal to give unions private workers’ phone numbers and addresses]
  • D.C. politicians are one big reason residents east of Anacostia River have poor grocery options [Diana Furchtgott-Roth; minimum wage]
  • Uniform, predictable test needed for who is an “employee” and “employer” [Glenn Lammi, WLF, first and second posts]