- Gov. Christie vetoes bill enabling workers and job applicants to sue employers who asked about Facebook use [NJLRA, Star-Ledger, more]
- “Shockingly a British pub might want to hire British employees,” NYC Human Rights Commission sees things differently [Amy Alkon]
- Anticlimax: despite fears, NLRB won’t ban at-will disclaimers in employee handbooks [Jon Hyman]
- “Equally injurious to the children of the laboring classes is their utilization by their parents in theatrical and operatic shows” [Kyle Graham]
- Senate confirms plaintiffs’ class action attorney as newest appointee to EEOC [Stoel Rives]
- Public accounting: “Two advances for pension transparency” [Josh Barro]
- At least there’s one category of young worker for whom job prospects remain bright, namely kids of Andrew Cuomo’s friends [David Boaz]
Tagged as:
Andrew Cuomo,
discrimination law,
EEOC,
Facebook,
New Jersey,
NYC
- Appalling: pursuing the logic of equality arguments, prominent constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky has proposed abolishing private/religious/home K-12 schooling [Eugene Volokh, Rick Garnett, Marc DeGirolami]
- How wrong is the NRA on school security? So wrong that even Marian Wright Edelman makes more sense [Gene Healy]
- Schools, marriage, and self-replicating elites: Ross Douthat tells some secrets of the NYT-reading class [NYT]
- Critics flay Connecticut bill to require school mental health checkups of children [Raising Hale]
- “How the Anti-Bully Movement is Hurting Kids: An Interview with Bully Nation’s Susan Porter” [Tracy Oppenheimer, Reason]
- Montgomery County, Maryland pols concerned some public schools might become unfairly good [DC Examiner] Also in Maryland, there’s a push to emulate a truly bad New Jersey idea by shifting the burden of proof onto schools in special education disputes [WaPo]
- Telephone frustration in New Haven: “How public schools drive us away…” [Mark Oppenheimer]
Tagged as:
bullying,
Connecticut,
disability & schools,
Erwin Chemerinsky,
guns,
Maryland,
New Jersey,
psychiatry,
schools
Please don’t do these [in some cases alleged] things:
- Calif.: “Judge accused of stealing elderly neighbor’s $1.6M life savings resigns from bench” [ABA Journal]
- Stan Chesley joins a rogue’s gallery of disgraced litigators [Paul Barrett/Business Week, earlier here, etc.]
- San Francisco’s Alioto firm: “Attorney and law firm must pay $67K …for ‘vexatious’ suit challenging airline merger” [ABA Journal, Andrew Longstreth/Reuters (Joseph Alioto: "badge of honor"), Ted Frank/PoL (sanctions are small change compared with enormous fees obtainable through merger challenges]
- N.J.: “Lawyer takes state plea, will pay $1M to widow’s estate” [ABA Journal]
- Texas: “State Rep. Reynolds charged with 7 others in barratry scheme” [SETR]
- “Paul Bergrin, ‘The Baddest Lawyer in the History of Jersey,’ Convicted at Last” [David Lat/Above the Law, earlier]
- “Attorney’s mug shot winds up next to his law firm’s ad, in marketing effort gone awry” [Martha Neil, ABA Journal]
- Once the American legal profession reformed itself, but that was long ago [John Steele Gordon]
Tagged as:
don't,
judges,
New Jersey,
San Francisco,
Texas,
wills and trusts
Newark Star-Ledger editorial:
There’s a big difference between a normal kid who teases a fellow fourth-grader and a bona fide bully who does real harm.
But you wouldn’t know it from our state’s anti-bullying law. In the burst of indignation after Tyler Clementi’s suicide three years ago, we were determined to do something about bullying.
And we drafted a sloppy statute…. it’s ensnaring way too many kids.
[h/t Neal McCluskey]
Tagged as:
bullying,
New Jersey
“[T]here is no reliable evidence that genetically modified foods now on the market pose any risk to consumers,” says an editorial in, of all places, the New York Times. ["Why Label Genetically Engineered Food?"]
And while on the subject of publications outperforming expectations, Slate features a sober look at “cancer clusters,” with George Johnson reviewing a new book on the Toms River, N.J. episode.
Tagged as:
environment,
food safety,
New Jersey
Then what do you think he does? “Carroll then started a business that cleans up gory crime scenes, a New Jersey Watchdog investigation found. Yet the state continues to pay him a disability pension for life, a sum that could total $1 million or more.” [Morris County, N.J.; Mark Lagerkvist, Reason]
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
police,
public employment
- Seventh Circuit upholds Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector labor law reform [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- In theory, California workers fired for cause aren’t entitled to unemployment compensation. In practice… [Coyote]
- Comstockery meets occupational licensure: how New York’s Cabaret Law tripped up Billie Holiday [Bryan Caplan]
- New Jersey lawmakers move to cut nonunion workers out of Hurricane Sandy recovery jobs [Jersey Journal]
- Cheer up, plaintiff’s bar, you’re doing very well these days out of FLSA wage-and-hour actions [Max Kennerly]
- Back to “spiking”: “CalPERS planning to gut a key cost-control provision of new pension law” [Daniel Borenstein, Contra Costa Times] When government negotiates with public sector unions over pay, the process should be transparent to taxpayers and the public [Nick Dranias, Goldwater Institute]
- Sacre bleu! Labor law reform reaches France [NYT]
Tagged as:
California,
France,
labor unions,
New Jersey,
public employment,
unemployment benefits,
wage and hour suits,
Wisconsin
“The expected amount left over for affected motorists is just $6″ and if motorists don’t file a claim, reversions go to defendant American Traffic Solutions (ATS). “More than 81,000 citations worth $10.2 million were issued in New Jersey through red light camera programs that were not in compliance with state law.” Lawyers who filed the suit are in line to collect $800,000. [The Newspaper; AnnMarie McDonald, NJLRA]
Tagged as:
class action settlements,
New Jersey,
red light cameras
Because, as the magazine explains, “Those states do not allow operation of a skill contest that requires an entry fee.” Which results in the following rather awesome disclaimer (via Petapixel):
CONTEST IS VOID IN CUBA, IRAN, NEW JERSEY, NORTH KOREA, THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, SUDAN, SYRIA, VERMONT AND WHERE PROHIBITED.
Rubbing it in a bit about the unfreedom, no?
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
Vermont
A judge has dismissed another of the wave of lawsuits charging that law schools concealed evidence that placement rates, employment prospects and other relevant statistics were bleak for many graduates. The most recently dismissed case was against Chicago’s DePaul; earlier, judges threw out cases against Thomas Cooley, in Michigan, and New York Law School. [Caron, TaxProf; ABA Journal on Cooley] On the other hand, a California court will allow fraud suits to proceed against the University of San Francisco and Golden Gate law schools [Caron]
Meanwhile, critics have been sniping over some funny numbers at Rutgers-Camden [Paul Campos, Law School Scam; and more on an unrelated controversy in which an assistant law dean is hinting at legal action following unfavorable press coverage of her combined role as compliance officer and spouse for a New Jersey member of Congress]
Tagged as:
law schools,
libel slander and defamation,
New Jersey
Parsippany, N.J. hired a new town clerk last year, but her tenure does not seem to have proved a long or happy one: four office employees soon filed complaints against her, “charging her with making racial, sexual and religious statements that left them feeling uncomfortable in the workplace,” and she filed counter-complaints. “All of the grievances were dismissed by township administration, and both sides filed suit against the town.” Now the town has paid $200,000 to resolve the former town clerk’s claims, which she has not elaborated publicly on advice of counsel, while the status of the office workers’ $4 million claim is not clear. [Parsippany Patch via NJLRA]
Tagged as:
New Jersey,
public employment,
sued if you do
