That’s what Booth v. Pasco County (M.D. Fla. Oct. 28, 2011) concludes. Two fire department employees sued their employer for discrimination and harassment; they asked their union for help, but the union declined. The employees then filed an EEOC charge against the union for discrimination, to which the union responded by circulating to its members […]
Archive | November, 2011
Not Safe to Display an American Flag in an American High School
By Eugene Volokh on November 10, 2011 9:46 am in Freedom of Speech at K-12 Schools, Freedom of Speech Restricted by Thugs
Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District (N.D. Cal.), decided the day before yesterday, upholds a California high school’s decision to forbid students from wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. (See here and here for more on this case.) The decision might well be correct under Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School […]
Justice Frankfurter Writes A Former Student During WWII
Regular readers know of my love for antiquarian law books, an interest that extends to letters and court documents. See here and here, for example. One favorite recent acquisition is this letter that Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote during World War II to a former student who was serving in the military: Dated August 24, 1944, the letter […]
You Can Now Read This Opinion
Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the release of a redacted copy of its opinion in Latif v. Obama. When the case was first decided in October, the opinion was classified. Based on his initial read, Ben Wittes thinks the opinion is “a very big deal” because it “expressly adopts […]
Camping Out to See a Supreme Court Argument
A report from the front of the line for United States v. Jones, the GPS case.
How DOJ Can Use the CFAA to Try to Federalize State Crimes
I’ve blogged a lot about 18 U.S.C. 1030, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), and how broad readings of the statute potentially criminalize a tremendous amount of entirely innocuous activity. The broad readings of the CFAA also have another important effect: They allow DOJ to try to turn any state crime that happens to […]
Unpopular?
From the Weekly Standard Blog: A ballot measure that StateImpact Ohio (a creation of local public media and NPR) describes as “a referendum on a constitutional amendment…aimed at keeping the national health care reform law from taking [e]ffect” won in all 88 counties in Ohio. In 81 of the counties, it won by a margin of at least […]
My Op Ed on the Passage of Mississippi Measure 31
By Ilya Somin on November 9, 2011 3:39 pm in Blight, Eminent Domain, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights
Today, I published an op ed in the Daily Caller on the passage of Mississippi referendum Measure 31, an important eminent domain reform law. Here is an excerpt: The Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London generated a record political backlash. Kelo upheld the condemnation of private property for transfer to […]
“Three Young People Talking About Bisexuality Were Kicked off a Spokane Transit Authority Bus Last Month”
The Spokane Transit Authority just apologized for the incident; I quote the Spokane Spokesman-Tribune article: Two women in their 20s and a teenage boy were talking among themselves about a friend’s sexual orientation during a bus ride on Oct. 20. After other passengers got off the bus, the young people got into a dispute with […]
Reforming Higher Education: Incentives, STEM Majors, and Liberal Arts Majors – the Education versus Credential Tradeoff
The Wall Street Journal’s excellent series on jobless young people features an article today on why students study liberal arts in college over STEM subjects, and why so many would-be STEM majors shift to liberal arts, despite the apparent loss of career prospects. Larry Ribstein follows up with commentary suggesting that law school becomes a […]
My Take on the Individual Mandate Litigation
It hasn’t changed since I wrote the following almost a year ago: What the opponents of the individual mandate had to do was provide plausible arguments that the individual mandate is distinguishable from precedents like Wickard v. Filburn and Gonzales v. Raich. Whether or not the best interpretation of those precedents supports the individual mandate […]
The Two Questions of Jones, and the Potential Difficulty of Identifying the Proper Voting Rule
The Justices of the Supreme Court will meet soon to offer preliminary votes in United States v. Jones, the GPS case. We don’t know what the voting alignment will look like: The votes are hard to predict. But it seems to me that there’s a substantial chance that the Court’s opinions might face a puzzling […]
Mississippi Measure 31 Passes
Mississippi Measure 31 – the important eminent domain reform initiative – has passed, probably by an overwhelming margin. Although the returns are not yet completely in, the “yes” side has 74% of the vote with almost 65% of precincts reporting. I outlined the case for Measure 31 here. The overwhelming support for the measure is […]
Kavanaugh on the Case for Not Deciding the Constitutionality of the Mandate
Judge Kavanaugh wrote a separate opinion in the DC Circuit’s mandate case that many readers will overlook: It’s based on the tax code, and the opinion itself acknowledges that its analysis is dense and difficult. (“The Tax Code is never a walk in the park. . . . I caution the reader that some of […]
The Supreme Court Plaza on a Sunny Day
Today was a beautiful fall day in Washington, DC, and after the Jones argument I shot this 10-second video of what it’s like on the front steps of the Supreme Court after a 10 am oral argument. Note that the people in line are waiting to get a brief glimpse of the 11am argument, which […]