…and how he spends his Unruh Act windfall results in — did you guess? — more legal complications. [Gendy Alimurung, L.A. Weekly via @andrewmgrossman; Nowell's earlier legal battles here and here]
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Posts tagged as:
California
- More intimidation of city councilors by Southern California police unions [Reason, earlier]
- Illinois Gov. Quinn calls for federal bailout of state pension plans [Ted Biondo, Rockford Register-Star, Ivan Osorio/CEI] Illinois Policy Institute launches campaign against idea [Frank Keegan, State Budget Solutions, IllinoisWatchdog.org]
- Former TSA Agent Says Stealing from Passengers’ Bags Is Common [Daniel Politi, Slate]
- “Chicago Teacher’s Strike Illustrates the Need for Choice” [Steve Chapman]
- California’s Potemkin public pension reform [Greenhut, City Journal] Report on political clout of California public service unions [Daniel DiSalvo, MI]
- College example shows how rules that lock in job security for some often leave others insecure [Virginia Postrel]
- Connecticut sweetheart labor deal: “Now, the governor doesn’t exactly report it that way in the press” [Zachary Janowski, City Journal]
“Delano Regional Medical Center in Kern County defended its English-only policy as necessary for patient care.” Nonetheless, without admitting wrongdoing, it yielded to a complaint from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center that it had improperly penalized Filipino-American workers for communicating with each other in their own language. The suit had alleged, among other things, that the hospital had been more liberal in permitting the use of other languages other than English, and that it had not prevented workers from making fun of accents and expressing ethnically-based hostility. [L.A. Times, ABA Journal]
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- “Background Checks for School Volunteers: Helpful or The Opposite?” [Lenore Skenazy, Free-Range Kids] And Kennedy interviews anti-helicopter mom Skenazy at Reason.tv;
- NAACP asks Department of Education to strike down entrance exam used by NYC for selective high schools [Roger Clegg, NRO]
- Even as feds restrict school lunch calories, they pump up new breakfast program. Both ways their power grows [James Bovard/USA Today, Ira Stoll] And here comes an expanded federal program of afterschool, weekend and holiday meals, relieving parents even further of responsibility [FRAC]
- If fiscal stringency is destroying U. Calif., you’d never guess from the diversity end of it [Heather Mac Donald, City Journal] Ilya Shapiro op-ed on Fisher v. University of Texas [Jurist, background] Why not let universities run themselves? [Richard Epstein]
- NYC: “Interesting that this all happened at the High School for *Legal Studies*.” [Ann Althouse]
- Bill vetoed by California Gov. Brown would require state university professors seeking tenure to engage in “service.” Research, teaching don’t count? [John Leo, Minding the Campus; history]
- After Tucson’s ethnic “solidarity” curriculum [New York Times via @NealMcCluskey]
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The California legislature this term chose to pass a raft of exceptionally bad legislation burdening business and employers, and Gov. Jerry Brown, perhaps mindful of the state’s ongoing poor economic performance, last week vetoed many of them [Ira Stoll, NY Sun; Steven Greenhut, City Journal] Among the vetoes: bills widening the rights of housekeepers’, babysitters’ and other domestic workers to sue their employers [earlier here, here]; greatly widening the survivors’ benefits paid for public safety workers [earlier, update]; unionizing grad student research assistants [Daily Californian] and an ostensible farmworker safety measure [Ruth Evans, Fresno Bee]
P.S. “Starts” isn’t really accurate, since, as David Boaz has pointed out, Gov. Brown cast some good vetoes last year.
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Coyote has some questions about a sweeping yet underpublicized new California law.
P.S. Josh Barro writes via Twitter (adapted), “I don’t buy this. Worker participation is voluntary, and if it looks like they’re paying into a slush fund, they’ll withdraw. I’d worry more that CALPers will start offering a tax-backed defined benefit to private workers, atop public promises. I think it would be a fine idea to let people participate in the CALPers investment fund, with the participant bearing all risk. Big pension funds do have real administrative cost advantages over 401(k)s. The problem is they get in the risk-shifting business. The bill says California must ‘secure private underwriting and reinsurance to manage risk and insure the retirement savings rate of return.’ I think that means there’s no reliance on a taxpayer guarantee — risk must be borne by a private firm and therefore priced right.”
P.P.S. Scott Shackford at Reason has further analysis, calling attention to “guaranteed return” language as well as to the AP’s description of the program’s must-make-an-effort-to-get-out structure: “The program directs employers to withhold 3 percent of their workers’ pay unless the employee opts out of the savings program, which can be done every two years.”
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“The California Homemade Food Act clears the way for home cooks to make and sell a wide range of products, such as jams and jellies, without the need to invest in commercial kitchen space or comply with zoning and other regulations.” [Christian Science Monitor]
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- “Wisconsin Judge To Voters: Drop Dead” [Matt Patterson, CEI; Adam Freedman, PoL; J.D. Tuccille, Reason]
- “How much of Occupy rally shrinkage is due to unions moving on and focusing their energy elsewhere?” [@daveweigel]
- Should babysitters be legally entitled to work rules and meal breaks? California Senate approves “Domestic Workers Bill of Rights” pushed by celebs, AFL-CIO [Politico, earlier]
- Good luck in getting that “don’t disparage or defame” employment policy past the NLRB [Molly DiBianca, Delaware Employment Law Blog]
- “Hospital unionization harms the sick” [David Bier and Iain Murray, Capital Research Center]
- Penn, Columbia: we’ll use this big cash pot to discriminate in faculty hiring [Minding the Campus: KC Johnson, John Rosenberg, Roger Clegg]
- More on NLRB’s new curbs on confidentiality in internal employee investigations [WSJ Law Blog, earlier]
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The California proposition [earlier here, here, and here] is now running into a wave of disapproving editorials in California newspapers, including the Sacramento Bee. Tyler Cowen administers a well deserved rebuke to tendentious NYT food-policy columnist Mark Bittman [Marginal Revolution and followup] Also check out the analysis by Jonathan Adler ["How Not to Label Biotech Foods," New Atlantis] and Baylen Linnekin ["California's GMO Labeling Law Isn't the Answer," Reason] And in California Political Review, John Hrabe notes my Daily Caller piece in the course of observations about the ambition of some Californians to play regulator to the world. (& Matt Bogard)
Somewhat relatedly, it is now clear that Vitamin-A-laden golden rice could fight child blindness arising from nutritional deficiency in the underdeveloped world; alas, it’s being held back by Greenpeace anti-GMO efforts [Margaret Wente/Toronto Globe and Mail; Art Caplan, NBC]
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- “Ohio Man Cites Obesity as Reason to Delay Execution” [WSJ Law Blog]
- West Hollywood bans sale of fur, no bonfires on the beach, and a thousand other California bans [New York Times]
- “Volunteers sued for ‘civil conspiracy’ for planning an open rival to WikiTravel” [Gyrovague]
- Practice of check-rounding at some Chipotles allows class action lawyers to put in their two cents [Ted at PoL]
- Daniel Fisher on business cases in the upcoming Supreme Court term [Forbes]
- In Bond v. U.S., coming back like a boomerang from an earlier ruling, Supreme Court may at last have to resolve whether the federal government can expand its constitutional powers just by signing on to treaties [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato]
- Law nerd’s heavy-breather: “50 Shades of Administrative Law” [LawProfBlawg]
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Why “we recently were forced to institute an HR policy in California that working through lunch is a firing offense.” [Coyote]
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AP: “SB1186 by Democratic Senate leader Darrell Steinberg and Republican Sen. Bob Dutton would ban so-called ‘demand letters’ in which lawyers threaten to sue over a violation unless a business pays a set amount. It also would require attorneys to give businesses notice before filing a lawsuit.” Sacramento Bee: “A key element of SB 1186 is that potential damages for disability access violations would drop from a minimum of $4,000 to much less, $2,000 in some cases, $1,000 in others, if the defendant corrected violations very quickly.” The damages would still remain higher than are available in most states, however, and “one-way” attorney fee shifts would remain available. The bill would also restrict “stacking” of multiple damage demands based on repeat visits to premises before the suit is heard. More: The Recorder.
We’ve been covering the disgrace of California access litigation for years and years. Because large sums will still be recoverable under the new rules, I expect the industry of complaint-filing will continue in some form, even if it becomes somewhat less lucrative.
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- Press accounts have exposed a pattern of police stops of out of state motorists in rural Tennessee, in which police search motorists’ cars and then confiscate large sums of money they find on the presumption that it is criminal-related. Now, in Henry, Tennessee — named after Patrick Henry, of “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” fame — the police chief has told the town he needs a police dog because “the city is missing out on possible revenues” [dog testimonials; more Tennessee, via Eapen Thampy of Americans for Forfeiture Reform, guestblogging last month at Radley Balko's Agitator site]
- Also via Thampy, economically hard-hit Butte County, California, north of Sacramento, has been filling its budget hole through pot-grower busts accompanied by aggressive forfeitures; in a perhaps not unrelated phenomenon, the county snatches kids from parents at an exceedingly high rate. More on child protective services in Butte County at the Chico News & Review (& more: Angela Bacca, SKUNK).
- Via Ilya Somin, this from a Steven Greenhut column:
Few groups of “sinners” were singled out in biblical accounts more than “tax collectors,” who were not merely state agents collecting revenues that taxpayers rightfully owed to the government. They were the source of particular loathing because they were extortionists, who profited personally by shaking down as much money from citizens as possible…
The Gospel accounts provide an early lesson in the danger of marrying the profit motive with governmental power. The possibility for abuse is great. Yet throughout the United States, government agencies increasingly rely on “civil forfeiture” to bolster their strained budgets. The more assets these modern-day tax collectors seize, the more money they have for new equipment and other things….
- From reader John Brewer, on an Ohio gardening-equipment seizure: “Structurally, it seems even worse to have the judge who originally signed the search warrant have a say in what gets done with the confiscated stuff than it does for the cops/DA to get it, despite the cute-and-cuddly outcome here.”
- Tomorrow’s abuses today: the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms [BATF] has just been given a major enhancement to its forfeiture powers. [David Kopel/Volokh]
- For more information on this subject, check out the many online resources offered by the Cato Institute; Cato scholars took an early interest in exposing the problems of civil and criminal asset forfeiture, and our focus on the issue continues to this day. More: Scott Greenfield. (& Tim Lynch, PoliceMisconduct.net)
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- “Do The New School Food Regulations Actually Hinder Scratch-Cooking?” Looks like it [Bettina Elias Siegel]
- What Gloria Romero saw in Sacramento: prison guards lobby for longer sentences, nurses lobby against first aid, but the teachers union was the most untouchable of all [WSJ] Media Matters and the NEA [David Martosko, Daily Caller]
- To earn top ratings under new city evaluation scheme, Denver teachers must press students to “challenge… the dominant culture” and “take social action to change/improve society or work for social justice.” Gee, thanks, Gates Foundation [9NEWS, auto-plays; earlier on ideological tests for educators]
- “School Tells Deaf Boy, ‘Hunter,’ to Change His Name — It’s Too Violent” [Skenazy/Agitator]
- More on pressure for race quotas in school discipline [Casey Cheney, Heartlander, quotes me; earlier here, here, etc.]
- Allegations of mass cheating in, too perfectly, Harvard “Introduction to Congress” course: “I say give the cheaters an A, fail the rest” [Alex Tabarrok] Suspended fraternity sues Miami University for $10 million [Cincinnati Enquirer]
- On coach liability for player injuries [Matt Mitten, Marquette]
- ACLU files novel suit alleging Michigan and its agencies failed legal, constitutional obligation to bring student reading up to grade level [WSJ Law Blog]
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The New York Times reports on some experienced plaintiffs’ lawyers who are hoping to rip big sums out of food companies alleging mislabeling; one is particularly outraged at a yogurt maker’s use of the “evaporated cane juice” euphemism for sugar. “The lawyers are looking to base damages on products’ sales…. [They] are being selective about where these suits are filed. Most have been filed in California, where consumer protection laws tend to favor plaintiffs.” The Times article, which reads somewhat like a press release for the lawyers involved, flatteringly describes them as “the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco,” though in fact a much larger group of lawyers played prominent roles in the Great Tobacco Robbery of 1998, and no evidence is presented that most of that larger group are taking any interest in the food-labeling campaign. What’s more, the many efforts by the plaintiff’s bar to identify a suitable Next Tobacco in the intervening years have been full of false starts and fizzles, including such mostly-abortive causes as mass litigation over alcohol, slavery reparations, HMOs, and dotcom failures.
The Times does draw the link to Proposition 37, the lawyer-sponsored measure I wrote about last week, which could open up a basis for rich new suits based on failure to correctly affix labeling tracking the sometimes-fine distinctions between genetically modified foodstuffs and all others. The text of Proposition 37 proposes to base minimum damages on the total sales volume of a product sold out of compliance, not on any measure of actual harm to consumers (& Thom Forbes, Marketing Daily; Ted Frank, Point of Law). Earlier on Don Barrett here and on Walter Umphrey and Provost Umphrey here and here.
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- $250,000+ payout for cardiac arrest at age 92? Stupendous giveaway for uniformed public employees is sailing through California legislature [Sacramento Bee via Hillel Aron]
- Those confidential workplace investigations won’t be so confidential any more if NLRB gets its way [Jon Hyman, Daniel Schwartz] And the EEOC too? [Hyman, Shannon Green/Corporate Counsel]
- Myths of the “pay gap” [Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg]
- Federal bailout of state pension funds? Don’t let it happen [Fergus Hodgson, John Locke]
- Former Indianapolis Colts cheerleader loses suit over nude body-paint photos [Staci Zaretsky, Above the Law, earlier]
- Some small businesses hope to dodge the employer mandate by getting below 50 employees [CNN]
- Obama names partner at class action powerhouse Cohen Milstein to EEOC vacancy [White House]
After the quarter-century disgrace that is Proposition 65 litigation — run by and for lawyers’ interests, with no discernible benefit to the health of the citizenry — you’d think California voters would have learned a thing or two. But unless poll numbers reverse themselves, they’re on the way to approving this fall’s Proposition 37, ostensibly aimed at requiring labeling of genetically modified food, whose main sponsor just happens to be a Prop 65 lawyer. I explain in a new piece at Daily Caller. More coverage: Western Farm Press; Hank Campbell, Science 2.0; Ronald Bailey, Reason (& Red State).
More: defenders of Prop 37 point to this analysis (PDF) by economist James Cooper, arguing that 37 is drafted more narrowly than 65 in ways that would avert some of the potential for abusive litigation. And from Hans Bader: would the measure be open to challenge as unconstitutional, or as federally preempted?
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