Steve Malanga on New Jersey’s perennially activist Supreme Court [City Journal]. We’ve periodically discussed the court’s lamentable jurisprudence in its Abbott (school finance redistribution) and Mount Laurel (towns given quotas to build low-income housing) decisions. The court has also nullified constitutional limitations on borrowing by the state.
Tagged as:
fair housing,
New Jersey,
schools
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles appears to be proceeding on the theory that city and redevelopment officers committed potential “fraud” by accepting federal money for housing projects but omitting to run the projects in compliance with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requiring that accommodations be offered for disabled patrons. At Cato at Liberty, I wonder whether we’re in for another venture into criminalization of an area best left to civil law.
Tagged as:
crime and punishment,
disabled rights,
housing discrimination,
Los Angeles
Four people were killed when pill addict David Laffer robbed a Medford, N.Y. pharmacy. Now the survivors of victim Jamie Taccetta are suing a variety of defendants including the drugstore whose pharmacist was killed, the Suffolk County police and a former commissioner, “and pharmaceutical companies that make the drug oxycodone.” [CBS New York, Newsday]
Tagged as:
Long Island,
pharmaceuticals,
third party liability for crime
“A Fistful of Rebates“:
….what’s true about Detroit is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get back up, slip again, and send the video to our personal injury lawyer. And when we do – the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.
Tagged as:
autos,
Detroit,
parody
“Henry Ford Health System will pay $70,000 to a family who alleges the system failed to provide sign language interpreters to a patient and family members in 2004, and must train staff on the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a settlement announced … by the U.S. Justice Department.” [Detroit News]
Tagged as:
disabled rights,
hospitals
It has been asserted in various outlets that many states already mandate contraceptive coverage, that the Catholic church has been content to live with those mandates, and so that the current firestorm over the ObamaCare provision must just be something cooked up by Republican consultants. Here is a response from the National Council of Catholic Bishops via NR’s Kathryn Lopez:
6. The federal mandate is much stricter than existing state mandates. HHS chose the narrowest state-level religious exemption as the model for its own. That exemption was drafted by the ACLU and exists in only 3 states (New York, California, Oregon). Even without a religious exemption, religious employers can already avoid the contraceptive mandates in 28 states by self-insuring their prescription drug coverage, dropping that coverage altogether, or opting for regulation under a federal law (ERISA) that pre-empts state law. The HHS mandate closes off all these avenues of relief.
More on the controversy from my Cato colleague Roger Pilon and from Jonathan Rauch. And: John Cochrane on the wider folly of letting the feds mandate contraceptive coverage in the first place: “Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.”
Tagged as:
Catholic Church,
medical
- Ninth Circuit panel strikes down California’s Prop 8 [Volokh, Kerr, Magliocca, Lithwick, Steve Chapman]
- Judge dismisses PETA “killer whales enslaved” case [Caroline May/Daily Caller, CNN, earlier]
- “Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web – And Might Win” [Joe Mullin/Wired, earlier; more on testimony by Web father Tim Berners-Lee] Update: Ding Dong! Jury rejects claim;
- “Further Analysis of the Bottle-Rocket Case” [Lowering the Bar, earlier]
- As patients suffer: “The War Over Prescription Painkillers,” start of a Radley Balko series [HuffPo parts one, two so far]
- Richard Epstein on federal fiat and Yale disciplinary procedure [Defining Ideas] Under new-style rules at Yale, will a professor even be aware he’s been accused and henceforth is to be “monitored”? [KC Johnson]
- Jim Copland testimony on abuses in government contingent-fee litigation [Manhattan Institute, PDF] “Parens patriae” proposal to replace class actions with state attorney general suits, but with private entrepreneurial bar still in saddle [Adam Zimmerman/Prawfs on Myriam Gilles/Gary Friedman, SSRN]
Tagged as:
animal rights,
attorneys general,
class actions,
colleges and universities,
Ninth Circuit,
patent trolls,
pharmaceuticals,
same-sex marriage,
Yale
“A Seminole County man who sued his ex-girlfriend for half of her $1 million Florida Lottery winnings went away empty-handed Tuesday, her attorney said.” [Orlando Sentinel]
Tagged as:
Florida,
lottery
And thank goodness for that, observes my Cato colleague Roger Pilon. Promising more while in practice delivering less, other countries’ constitutions tend to be less careful in enumerating and limiting government powers, even as they promise all manner of (often unsustainable) entitlements. More: Mike Rappaport and relatedly, on the academic left, Mark Tushnet (among his colleagues “debate has ended over whether constitutions should include …rights” of the social/economic sort that depart from U.S. constitutional practice).
Tagged as:
constitutional law
Merger announcements often trigger a spate of press releases announcing that securities plaintiff’s firms are “investigating” the situation. Even if the evidence of wrongdoing is absent and the financial analysis thin, lawsuits may be the next step, because that’s where the money is [David Nicklaus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
Tagged as:
class actions,
securities litigation
The case does raise an issue of importance — at what point does a parent’s mental illness expose children to unreasonable risk? But if Ms. Ogunbayo is hoping to convince a court that she has everything in perspective now, asking for $900 trillion may not help. [Staten Island Advance]
Tagged as:
damages