“California regulator seeks to shut down ‘learn to code’ bootcamps” [Venture Beat]
Archive for January, 2014
Check your religious scruples at the company gate?
The Cato Institute has submitted an amicus brief in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga cases, which test the extent to which the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the First Amendment restrain the federal government from requiring employers to participate in employee benefit arrangements that violate the conscience of the individuals who own and run the company. More on the other amicus briefs from Rick Garnett at PrawfsBlawg and commenters. Prof. Bainbridge takes issue with a brief signed by a group of law professors on whether a corporate enterprise can be treated as an alter ego for its owners for purposes of imputing to it their rights (“reverse veil piercing”), and has some further thoughts on the legal principle — sometimes ideologically contested, but seldom in a consistent way — of corporate personhood. Related earlier here.
Watch: Virginia Postrel’s author panel at Cato
Now online: Wednesday’s Cato Institute event at which Virginia Postrel discussed her new book The Power of Glamour: Persuasion, Longing, and Individual Aspiration with sparkling comments from economist Tyler Cowen and New York Times writer-at-large Sam Tanenhaus. Subtracting considerably from the glamo(u)r factor, I moderated and introduced. More here.
If you missed that fantastic lunch, you’ll really kick yourself if you miss our author lunch next Wednesday with the phenomenal Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free-Range Kids movement. Click through and register now, while you’re thinking about it.
Panel on local nannyism next Thursday at ABA Midyear in Chicago
See you there? Quoting Hawaii lawyer Robert Thomas at the Inverse Condemnation blog:
Next Thursday, February 6, 2014, we’ll be in Chicago to moderate an American Bar Association discussion/debate on a topic that’s not our usual takings-eminent domain-land use stuff, but is still one of the hotter topics around. “They’ll Take My Big Gulp From My Cold Dead Hands” is an hour-and-a-half with three experts in “Public Health, the Police Power, and the Nanny State,” to quote our subtitle. (Yes, we realize that New York City’s ban actually exempted Big Gulps® but hey, it’s a catchy title.)
Joining me for the discussion:
*Walter Olson, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. While his list of accomplishments is long, we lawyers love him best for his “Overlawyered” blog.
*Sarah Conly, Professor of Philosophy at Bowdoin College. Author of “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism,” forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
*Alderman George Cardenas, who represents the City of Chicago’s 12th Ward. Among other issue, Alderman Cardenas has proposed raising the smoking age to 21, and to tax sugary drinks.
Here’s the description of the program:A moderated panel discussion of the issues raised by New York City’s attempt to regulate the portion size of sugary drinks, and similar measures around the country. Advocates from both sides of the issue will present their rationales, and legal scholars and media commentators will provide the larger picture. The panelists will be comparing various state and federal approaches with the common question: what limits on personal choice can be adopted in the name of public health, the environment, and the traditional police powers exercised by governments? How do these measures work with a federal system where local regulation may conflict with state and federal laws, or at the very least may conflict — at least philosophically — with subsidies to sugar and corn producers, and protective tariffs?
It’s sponsored by the ABA’s State and Local Government Law section, and CLE credit will be provided.
Environmental roundup
- Behind costly EPA crackdown on wood-burning stoves, a whiff of sweetheart lawsuits? [Larry Bell]
- Reminder: California’s Prop 65 doesn’t actually improve public health, makes lawyers rich, and harasses business [Michael Marlow, WSJ]
- “What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters” [Nathanael Johnson, Grist]
- Eminent domain threatens store owner in Fire Island’s Saltaire [NYP]
- In case you haven’t seen this one: chemical content of all-natural foods [James Kennedy Monash]
- “The court ordered that the county pay the turtles’ attorneys fees.” [Dan Lewis, Now I Know]
- “On the government’s books, the switch [from steel to aluminum in Ford’s new F-150 pickup] is a winner because MPG goes up.” [William Baldwin, Forbes]
Gender pay gap: when you’ve lost Slate…
“You Know That ‘Women Make 77 Cents to Every Man’s Dollar’ Line? It’s Not True.” The long-refuted canard gave President Obama one of his biggest applause lines in the State of the Union address. [Hanna Rosin, Slate] More from, among many others, Christina Hoff Sommers, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Cathy Young, and the Glenn Kessler/Washington Post.
“Taxpayer Scores $862,000 from IRS after Tripping over a Phone Cord”
Before you surrender entirely to schadenfreude, reflect that the payout will come at the expense of other taxpayers. [Home Maxwell; Kay Bell, Don’t Mess With Taxes] More: Lowering the Bar.
California’s “cottage-food” law
More than a thousand local businesses have sprung up following California’s legalization of at-home foodmaking for sale. One of them is Mark Stambler’s reopened Pagnol Boulanger, which authorities had raided and shut down the day after the Los Angeles Times profiled its French bread. [Nick Sibilla, Forbes] Effort underway to expand cottage food law in Virginia [Baylen Linnekin]
Free speech roundup
- “Bloggers = Media for First Amendment Libel Law Purposes” [Obsidian Finance Corp. v. Cox; Volokh]
- Co-workers’ taking of Lord’s name in vain is element in discrimination claim of religious harassment [Oregon; Ruder Ware]
- “Michigan Court of Appeals Again Protects Anonymous Criticism” [Paul Alan Levy] Virginia by contrast adopts standard less protective of speech [same] Is D.C. lawyer attempting to unmask Wikipedia editor in defamation suit a “public figure?” [NLJ]
- Judge Posner blasts class-action firm for supposed misconduct, law firm offers evidence to rebut that and proceeds to sue law firm McGuire Woods for allegedly misrepresenting facts of case at its prominent Class Action Countermeasures blog [Alison Frankel, Reuters]
- “Lawyer says he will drop suit alleging website unfairly cast him as a ‘tree mutilator'” [ABA Journal (compares townspeople who criticized tree removal to “bullies,”) Greenfield, Columbia (Mo.) Tribune]
- “The victims are ‘too Christian’ to excite the Left, and ‘too foreign’ to excite the Right.” [Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Week, on Mideast persecution] “God may not have felt threatened, but his supporters did” [Nick Cohen on UK’s Maajid Nawaz t-shirt controversy via @secularright, Ken at Popehat] Prison for “blasphemous” Facebook posting, in Greece, not Pakistan or Sudan [Guardian]
- Defendants in Michael Mann’s lawsuit against critics seem to be getting standard “don’t write about getting sued” instructions from their lawyers, but that’s not easy advice to give Mark Steyn [SteynOnline, Jonathan Adler (Mann wins a round opening way to discovery]
Great moments in defense law
Menlo Park, Calif.: A 90-year-old lawyer’s BMW SUV jumped the curb and pinned two 6-year-old twin brothers against a wall, seriously injuring them. Now the driver, Edward Nelson, “states in his response to the lawsuit that the plaintiffs ‘carelessly, recklessly and negligently conducted and maintained themselves’ in a way that contributed to the accident. Furthermore, ‘knowing the probable consequences thereof, (they) placed themselves in a position of danger and voluntarily participated in all the activities,’ and so assumed any related risks. Finally, the plaintiffs failed to ‘reasonably mitigate’ any damages they sustained.” [Sandy Brundage, The Almanac (Peninsula communities, Bay Area)]