Overlawyered » Minnesota

Schools roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:08:46 +0000

More commentators weigh in on the truly horrible new federal campus speech and discipline code [Harvey Silverglate /Juliana DeVries, Minding the Campus; Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic; Will Creeley, HuffPo; Scott Greenfield; Reason TV; my two cents] More: Greg Lukianoff, WSJ.
Feds: states must impose extensive disability-rights regime — including obligations to accept students with difficult accommodation needs — on private/religious schools participating in voucher programs [Bagenstos, Disability Law; Ramesh Ponnuru (noting that loading new regulatory burdens onto private and religious schools may not be displeasing to school choice opponents in the administration)] NYC’s famous selective/performance schools obliged to take special ed kids who can’t meet standard entrance or audition requirements [Inside Schools]
Volunteer-led school band survives shutdown attempt by Oregon teachers’ union [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
AFT: donate to groups that oppose our aims, and we’ll see that you pay [Jason Bedrick, Cato]
Chicago: “Teachers union plans to file civil rights suits to stop school closings” [Chicago Tribune]
Newly passed Minnesota “anti-bullying” law will expand state control over local schools [Pioneer Press] Court proceedings over alleged taunting and insults proliferate under New Jersey’s law [Star-Ledger via Reason]
“Graduates, your ambition is the problem” [Roger Pilon on the president's Ohio State commencement address]

Tags: Barack Obama, bullying, Chicago, colleges and universities, disability & schools, labor unions, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, schools

Schools roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Dale Carpenter on same-sex marriage and religious liberty

Walter Olson — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:40:26 +0000

The University of Minnesota law professor and Volokh Conspiracy contributor sorts out claims that the pending bill in his state threatens religious liberty. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

Tags: Minnesota, religious liberty, same-sex marriage

Dale Carpenter on same-sex marriage and religious liberty is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Free speech roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:05:41 +0000

“Crime to Create a ‘Hostile Environment’ That ‘Substantially Interferes’ with Person’s ‘Psychological Well-Being’ Based on Race, Religion, Sex, Etc.?” [Volokh] “Minnesota Bill to Ban K-12 Speech That Denies Fellow Students a ‘Supportive Environment’” [same]
Blogger dropped as defendant in “pink slime” defamation litigation, but suit against ABC and others continues [Bettina Siegel/Lunch Tray] Suit against ABC based in part on state food-disparagement statute occasionally criticized in this space [Reuters] Dearborn residents: are you sure you want to patronize a restaurant that deploys lawyers to suppress criticism? [Paul Alan Levy, earlier]
Libya arrests foreigners accused of distributing Christian literature, charge could carry death penalty [Guardian]
Sometimes it seems NYT editors are First Amendment absolutists about everything except political speech First Amendment was meant to protect [SmarterTimes]
Global Wildlife Center of Folsom, Louisiana sues a satirical website and then menaces Ken of Popehat;
Long piece on Naffe/O’Keefe backstory of Kimberlin/Patterico legal/media war [Chris Faraone, Boston Phoenix, earlier]
Update: following outcry, publishing company drops suit against Canadian librarian [CBC, earlier] Also from Canada: Nanaimo, British Columbia: “Mayor ensures ‘Koruption’ stickers never seen again” [Beschizza, BoingBoing] Voltaire wept: Bruce Bawer on the Canada Supreme Court’s “hate speech” decision [Front Page mag, earlier]
“Donald Trump, paper tiger?” [Paul Alan Levy]

Tags: bullying, Donald Trump, free speech in Canada, hostile environment, libel slander and defamation, Minnesota, New York Times, South Dakota

Free speech roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Police and prosecution roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:06:30 +0000

“Once your life is inside a federal investigation, there is no space outside of it.” [Quinn Norton, The Atlantic]
“Cops Detain 6-year-old for Walking Around Neighborhood (And It Gets Worse)” [Free-Range Kids] “Stop Criminalizing Parents who Let Their Kids Wait in the Car” [same]
Time to rethink the continued erosion of statutes of limitations [Joel Cohen, Law.com; our post the other day on Gabelli v. SEC]
“Are big-bank prosecutions following in the troubled footsteps of FCPA enforcement?” [Isaac Gorodetski, PoL]
The “‘professional’ press approach to the criminal justice system serves police and prosecutors very well. They favor reporters who hew to it.” [Ken at Popehat]
Scott Greenfield dissents from some common prescriptions on overcriminalization [Simple Justice]
Anti-catnip educational video might be a parody [YouTube via Radley Balko]
“Too Many Restrictions on Sex Offenders, or Too Few?” [NYT "Room for Debate"]
Kyle Graham on overcharging [Non Curat Lex] “The Policeman’s Legal Digest / A Walk Through the Penal Laws of New York (1934)” [Graham, ConcurOp]
“D.C. Council Proposes Pretty Decent Asset Forfeiture Reform” [John Ross, Reason] And the Institute for Justice reports on forfeiture controversies in Minnesota and Georgia.
Does prison privatization entrench a pro-incarceration lobby? [Sasha Volokh, more]

Tags: banks, child protection, crime and punishment, forfeiture, Georgia, illegal drugs, Minnesota, police, prisoners, statutes of limitations, Washington D.C.

Police and prosecution roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Minnesota doctor loses suit over consumer review

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 04:18:18 +0000

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a Duluth physician was not defamed by a contributor to a consumer-review site who criticized his bedside manner and referred to the doctor as a “real tool.” [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, ABA Journal, earlier here, etc.]

Tags: libel slander and defamation, medical, Minnesota

Minnesota doctor loses suit over consumer review is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Lawyer billed client “for time they spent having sex”

Walter Olson — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:12:38 +0000

The ultimate Overlawyered story? Minnesota: “An Eagan lawyer is suspended indefinitely after having an affair with a client whom he represented in a divorce, then billing her for time they spent having sex. … At various points, Lowe billed the woman for legal services on the dates of their sexual encounters, coding the time as meetings or drafting memos. … [He] won’t have a chance for reinstatement for at least a year and three months after the decision… by the Minnesota Supreme Court.” [St. Paul Pioneer-Press]

Tags: ethics, legal discipline, Minnesota

Lawyer billed client “for time they spent having sex” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Police taping, with a HIPAA twist

Walter Olson — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:33:54 +0000

When Andrew Henderson videotaped police frisking a man about to be transported by ambulance in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul, an officer confiscated his handheld videocamera, allegedly for evidence: “If I end up on YouTube, I’m gonna be upset.” Later, when Henderson sought to get his camera back, the sheriff’s office refused and instead charged him with misdemeanors. Among the notes on the citation: “Data privacy HIPAA violation.” A Stanford law professor says it would be nonsense to regard HIPAA, the federal health privacy law, as constraining the activity of bystanders like Henderson who are not legally defined as health providers. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

Tags: HIPAA, Minnesota, movies film and videos, police

Police taping, with a HIPAA twist is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

How GOP votes carried same-sex marriage to victory, cont’d

Walter Olson — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:10:17 +0000

One important reason same-sex marriage won on three state ballots last month is that many Republican voters, especially in affluent suburbs, crossed over to vote in favor of it. I’ve continued to document this phenomenon in a piece in this weekend’s Washington Post “Outlook” section (incorporating precinct-level detail on Minnesota and Maine) as well as in a second Huffington Post piece (with precinct-level detail on Maryland; my earlier HuffPo piece is linked here). Also, this Cato podcast:

One correction on the podcast: I mistakenly said Question 6 carried the two biggest Romney counties in Maryland, but I should have said two of the biggest three.

P.S. Mine was the second-most-popular article on WashingtonPost.com as of early morning Dec. 2.

Tags: Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, same-sex marriage, WO writings

How GOP votes carried same-sex marriage to victory, cont’d is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Female Cop Gets $1 Million After Colleagues Trolled Database to Peek at Her Pic”

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:47:10 +0000

No, these were not naughty pictures, they were driver’s license headshots. “The city’s liability could have been upwards of $565,000 because the statute provides $2,500 to be assessed per each unlawful look-up of the database, and we had 226 look-ups,” City Attorney Sara Grewing [of St. Paul, Minn.] told the Pioneer Press. “So we were looking at $565,000 plus attorney’s fees, if we were found liable.” St. Paul was one of several municipalities that settled with Anne Marie Rasmusson, whose picture fellow officers often looked up without proper authority in violation of a 1994 enactment called the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act. [Kim Zetter, Wired "Threat Level"; CityPages.]

Tags: Minnesota, police, privacy

“Female Cop Gets $1 Million After Colleagues Trolled Database to Peek at Her Pic” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Maine Question 1, Maryland Question 6, Washington Referendum 74, Minnesota Amendment One

Walter Olson — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:33:36 +0000

Voters in four states will decide same-sex marriage ballot questions on Nov. 6. As many readers know, I’ve been writing actively on the Maryland question, and those interested in catching up on that can follow the links here to find, among other things, my recent interview on the subject with the Arab news service Al-Jazeera, my thoughts on Judge Dennis Jacobs’s decision striking down Section 3 of DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act), and my reaction to the other side’s “bad for children” contentions.

The Cato Institute has been doing cutting-edge work on the topic for years from a libertarian perspective; some highlights here.

Yet more: Hans Bader on religious liberty and anti-discrimination law [Examiner, CEI] And my letter to the editor in the suburban Maryland Gazette: “Civil society long ago decoupled marriage law from church doctrines.”

Tags: Catholic Church, churches, discrimination law, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, same-sex marriage, Washington state

Maine Question 1, Maryland Question 6, Washington Referendum 74, Minnesota Amendment One is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system