Overlawyered » school discipline

Education roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:06:33 +0000

Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan, facing class-action suit, subpoenas Colorado lawprof Paul Campos, vocal critic of schools’ disclosure policies [Campos, Scott Greenfield]
“Maintenance of effort”: Yielding to special ed lobby, feds won’t let local school districts cut outlays [Nirvi Shah, Ed Week] “Havoc in classrooms” feared as NYC pushes least restrictive placement of disabled students [NY Post] Feds to universities: it’s an ADA violation to ask suicidal students to leave [WFAE, Popehat]
Arizona lawmaker proposes ban on political viewpoint discrimination in faculty hiring [Inside Higher Ed]
“University of Maryland Cuts Varsity Cheer Program” [Washington Post] Title IX competes with true gender equality
[Doug Robinson, Deseret News via Saving Sports]
Due-process revolution in school discipline hasn’t worked out as intended [Richard Arum, The Atlantic] Heavy police presence in schools is something new [J.D. Tuccille, Reason] “Education Department Pushes Racial Quotas in School Discipline” [Hans Bader, CEI]
“What Yale and the Times Did to Patrick Witt” [KC Johnson, Minding the Campus]

Tags: colleges and universities, disability & schools, law schools, New York Times, school discipline, schools, suici, Title IX, Yale

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

March 16 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:50:35 +0000

“A new target for tech patent trolls: cash-strapped American cities” [Joe Mullin, Ars Technica] Crowdsourcing troll control [Farhad Manjoo, Slate] “Why patent trolls don’t need valid patents” [Felix Salmon] “Why Hayek Would Have Hated Software Patents” [Timothy Lee, Cato] Et tu, Shoah Foundation? [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
Cory King case: “Not Everything Can Be a Federal Crime” [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
“Ban on smoking in cars with young children clears Md. Senate” [WaPo]
On religious exemption to birth control mandate, NYT wrestles with unwelcome poll numbers [Mickey Kaus]
“Undocumented Law Grad Can’t Get Driver’s License, But Hopes for Fla. Supreme Court OK of Law License” [ABA Journal]
Department of Justice launches campaign against racial disparities in school discipline [Jason Riley, WSJ via Amy Alkon]
James Gattuso and Diane Katz, “Red Tape Rising: Obama-Era Regulation at the Three-Year Mark” [Heritage]

Tags: immigration law, patent trolls, regulation and its reform, school discipline, smoking bans

March 16 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Mean-girl YouTube video

Walter Olson — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:11:41 +0000

The New York Times tells of a Beverly Hills, Calif. student who

videotaped friends at a cafe, egging them on as they laughed and made mean-spirited, sexual comments about another eighth-grade girl, C. C., calling her “ugly,” “spoiled,” a “brat” and a “slut.” J. C. posted the video on YouTube. The next day, the school suspended her for two days.

Now, before clicking the link, guess who collected the resulting $107,150.80. Right. Ken at Popehat thinks the judge decided the case in favor of the right party, more or less, which doesn’t keep the right party from also being a deplorably wrong party (strong language, invective, etc.)

Tags: attorneys' fees, school discipline, YouTube

Mean-girl YouTube video is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

School discipline quotas in Tucson

Walter Olson — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:00:05 +0000

Heather Mac Donald in City Journal:

As part of its plan to comply with a federal desegregation order now decades old, Tucson’s school district adopted racial quotas in school discipline this summer. Schools that suspend or expel Hispanic and black students at higher rates than white students will now get a visit from a district “Equity Team” and will be expected to remedy those disparities by reducing their minority discipline rates.

What? They can’t comply by collaring and disciplining a random selection of additional white students?

Tags: Arizona, discrimination law, school discipline

School discipline quotas in Tucson is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

June 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:04:03 +0000

UK libel law still casting a chill on free speech around the world [Floyd Abrams, Index on Censorship via Ken at Popehat, Kirk Hartley]
Much talked about Ramesh Ponnuru op-ed on Constitution and government consideration of race [NYT]
“EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent” [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
Why you can’t get low-cost health insurance, part LXVII: legal pressure on insurers to cover behavioral autism treatment [NLJ, Detroit Free Press]
New Jersey disbars reparations lawyer Ed Fagan, New York having already done so [Black Star News, JTA, Newark Star-Ledger, NJLJ]

Author Wendell Berry: force NAIS animal-tagging on every small farmer, and you’ll have to call the cops on me [Food Renegade; more on NAIS and small producers, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund; earlier here, etc.]
Indiana enacts what Gov. Mitch Daniels calls nation’s strongest law protecting teachers from lawsuits [WANE, WTHR]
Town of Kenner, La. says it’s learned its lesson from being sued and will ticket drunken bicyclists even if they’re badly hurt in accidents [nine years ago on Overlawyered]

Tags: agriculture and farming, autism, free speech, Indiana, insurance, patent quality, school discipline, United Kingdom

June 25 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Quoted more on Sotomayor

Walter Olson — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:41:26 +0000

In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Carolyn Lochhead quotes me on the Supreme Court pick:

“It’s not as if I think Obama’s incapable of nominating someone who is more adventurous and more activist by nature,” said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “Maybe we should save the all-out blast for when he nominates that one.”

I also have a comment on Ricci v. DeStefano, the lawsuit that arose from relatively blatant discrimination by the city of New Haven against non-minority firefighter applicants. I would not be surprised to learn that Sotomayor’s views on reverse discrimination differed widely from my own, but still note that it’s vaguely incongruous to treat as Exhibit A for a charge of judicial activism an instance in which the judge and her colleagues ducked a case.

Finally, my postings on the Sotomayor nomination continue at Point of Law, including an item on a Connecticut school discipline case where the nominee has drawn fire for (as part of a unanimous panel) siding with the school authorities. More: Jake Tapper, ABC.

Tags: discrimination law, school discipline, Sonia Sotomayor

Quoted more on Sotomayor is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 22 roundup

Walter Olson — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:41:03 +0000

No back-alley bikini lines: New Jersey consumer affairs director rejects proposed ban on Brazilian waxing [Asbury Park Press, JammieWearingFool, Jaira Lima and protest site, Popehat, News12 video] Florida, however, won’t let you get a fish-nibble pedicure [WWSB]
Kids doing well in homeschool but divorcing dad disapproves, judge says they must be sent to public [WRAL, Volokh]
Al Franken comes out for loser-pays in litigation (well, in this case at least) [MSNBC "First Read"]
U.K.: “A man who tried to kill himself has won £90,000 in damages from the hospital which saved his life but hurt his arm in the process” [Telegraph]
Life in places without the First Amendment: “Australia’s Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed” [Slashdot, Volokh, Popehat]; British Telecom passes all internet traffic through “‘Cleanfeed” filters to identify (inter alia) racist content [Glasgow Herald]
More on that suit by expelled student against Miss Porter’s School; “Oprichniki” said to be not identical to Keepers of Tradition [NYTimes; our December coverage]
“Why We Need Cop Cameras” [Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune] Shopkeepers terrorized in Philadelphia: “The thugs had badges.” [Ken at Popehat]
Counting former lobbyists in Obama Administration? Don’t forget Kathleen Sebelius [Jeff Emanuel, RedState]
Wisconsin: “$50,000 claim filed over girl’s time-out in school” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Tags: Al Franken, Australia, First Amendment, Kathleen Sebelius, lobbyists, loser pays, Milwaukee, nanny state, New Jersey, online speech, Philadelphia, police, school discipline, United Kingdom

March 22 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Cheerleading: Serious Business

SSFC — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:16:36 +0000

Making a federal case out of petty politics in high school cheerleading: Where else but Texas?

The mother of a former Creekview High School cheerleader has filed a federal lawsuit against Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools, arguing the district did not sufficiently discipline cheerleaders who she says bullied her daughter.

The lawsuit, brought by Liz Laningham, argues that the district discriminated against her daughter and “turned a blind eye” to the harassment. The lawsuit could result in a jury trial.

So far as I can tell from the linked story, the main element of damages appears to be that Liz Laningham’s daughter did not make the cheerleading squad in her senior year, after being a member in her junior year. And there are the usual allegations of Facebook frippery, rumors and innuendos within the team, biased judging during senior year tryouts, etc. etc.

What I can’t tell from this Dallas Morning News story is what possible basis Liz Laningham’s lawyer could have for bringing this action in federal court. While various civil rights acts prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, disability, etc., none of those are named as putative grounds for the suit. As for sex and age discrimination, presumably the victim and her harassers are all young women. Does Title IX prohibit girls from being girls?

And does any girl, no matter how spoiled and entitled her mother has made her, have a right to lead cheers?

Tags: cheerleading, school discipline

Cheerleading: Serious Business is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Lawsuit: school district was wrong to discipline cheerleaders over nude cellphone pics

Walter Olson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:45:21 +0000

Just trying to dispose of all the nude cellphone pic lawsuit stories in one weekend, so that we can get back to more seemly litigation topics. (The other one was the case of the couple suing an Arkansas McDonald’s, saying the husband left his cellphone in the restaurant and the nude photos of his wife that were on it wound up on the internet.) In Bothell, Washington, parents of two cheerleaders “have sued the Northshore School District, alleging school officials erred when they suspended the girls from the team this year after nude photos of them circulated throughout the student body via text message.” Cellphone pictures of the two were separately and, it is said, accidentally circulated among fellow students; the lawsuit charges, inter alia, that the school was arbitrary to suspend the two girls while not disciplining students that had seen the pictures. (Jessica Blanchard, “Cheerleaders’ parents sue in nude photos incident”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 21).

Tags: cellphones, cheerleading, school discipline, Washington state

Lawsuit: school district was wrong to discipline cheerleaders over nude cellphone pics is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 12 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:06:35 +0000

Canada free speech: Islamic group files complaint against Halifax newspaper over cartoon of burka-wearing terror fan; two more libel suits aimed at online conservative voices; growing furor over complaint against Steyn/Macleans [National Post]
More than 5,000 students committed crimes last year in Philadelphia schools, but none were expelled — consent decrees tying system’s hands are one reason [Inquirer]
U.K.: Man threatened with legal action for flying pirate flag as part of daughter’s birthday party [Guardian]
Bankruptcy judge doesn’t plan to accept at face value Countrywide’s claim that it generated false escrow documents by mistake in foreclosure [WSJ, WSJ law blog]
Amid bipartisan calls to step down, Ohio AG Marc Dann [Apr. 19, May 6] hires an opposition researcher [Adler @ Volokh] on top of Washington lobbyist [Legal NewsLine], after being rebuked by judge for political suit [Dispatch]. And where’s that ethics form on the Chesley flight? [Dayton Daily News]
Missouri med-mal claims fall sharply after legislated damages curb [Springfield News-Leader]
More on Dartmouth prof Priya Venkatesan, the one who wants to sue her students — as suspected, she’s a devotee of deconstructionist Science Studies [Allen/MtC; earlier]
Covert plan to sabotage Chinese economy? [Wilson Center event]
What, never? Well, hardly ever: Docs continue to assail notion that various complications such as patient delirium, clostridium difficile infection, iatrogenic pneumothorax, etc. — not to mention falls — are “never events” [KevinMD various posts; earlier]
Mich. high court agrees anti-gay-marriage amendment bars municipal health benefits for domestic partners, just what key proponents had claimed it wouldn’t do [Rauch @ IGF, Carpenter @ Volokh, earlier]
Private service rates the safety of charter air providers — but can it afford the cost of being sued after giving a bad rating? [Three years ago on Overlawyered]

Tags: bankruptcy, Countrywide, Dartmouth, domestic partners, free speech, free speech in Canada, hospitals, libel slander and defamation, Marc Dann, Mark Steyn, Missouri, never events, Ohio, Philadelphia, regulation through litigation, roundups, same-sex marriage, school discipline, Stan Chesley, tort reform

May 12 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system