If you’ll drop Magner v. Gallagher, your case against us before the Supreme Court, we’ll drop this other big case we’ve filed against you, the Department of Justice told the city of St. Paul, Minnesota. And thus the government averted an embarrassing high court opinion reining in some of its most avant-garde lending-discrimination theories [American Banker, Kevin Funnell/Bank Lawyer’s Blog, WSJ, Hans Bader, Ted Frank]
Archive for October, 2012
“Hospital OKs Language-Discrimination Settlement of $975K”
“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]
Free speech roundup
- Why did Chevron subpoena a lawprof/blogger who took opposite side in Ecuador case? [Kevin Jon Heller, Opinio Juris]
- “Paleo Diet Lawsuit Dismissed By Court in Blow to Free Expression” [Brian Doherty, Reason; earlier here, etc.]
- “[National Hispanic Media Coalition] Renews Call for Federal Government to Study Hate Speech in Media” [Volokh]
- Call for “oversight board of regional experts” to direct more YouTube takedowns [Ann Althouse]
- No more dirty looks: North Carolina students now face possible jail time for what they say about teachers online [Reason]
- Popehat sampler: “Schadenfreude Is Not A Free Speech Value; Holmes’s fire-in-theater quote the most “pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech”; “Zampolit Angela McCaskill, Report For Reeducation.”
- EU “terror” web-muzzle schemes: “We should start to freak out, but in a sort of preliminary way” [Ars Technica]
VP debate: the Tweets
A selection from my live-Tweets last night, as part of the Cato team, in reverse chronological order. For the entire team coverage, go here or here.
One more Scalia, or nine, would not “ban” abortion. I’m guessing Biden knows that and quickly regretted misspeaking. #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
Ryan feels it’s impossible to separate his private religious views from his public opinions. Advantage Biden. #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
Can’t cut Medicare, can’t cut defense spending, can’t disengage abroad… #WishGaryWereHere #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
And once again I suppose the mortgage interest deduction is going to pass for sacrosanct #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
Phrase “tax expenditures” comes rather too readily to Biden’s lips #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
“Obama *did* ‘let Detroit go bankrupt'” overlawyered.com/2012/09/obama-… #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
The “would let Detroit go bankrupt” canard, again. Both Obama & Romney supported bankruptcy, and that’s what happened. #VPDebate
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
#VPDebate Biden smiles at the oddest moments.
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) October 12, 2012
“Inmates denied lawyer for now for dental floss lawsuit”
“A group of Westchester County Jail inmates will have to fight their own legal battle for access to dental floss, a federal judge has ruled. …the 11 Westchester inmates… sued the county Sept. 10 for $500 million because they were denied access to dental floss.” [Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, White Plains Journal-News]
Gallaudet U. diversity officer suspended for signing marriage petition
Get ready for the next round in the who’s-persecuting-whom culture wars, following Chick-Fil-A and Burns-vs.-Ayanbadejo. I’ve got a write-up at Maryland for All Families reacting to initial reports by Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed and Annie Linskey at the Baltimore Sun; David Bernstein also comments. Regarding the unique status of Gallaudet, the national university for the deaf, a commenter at NRO offers the following:
Gallaudet cannot sell or transfer any of its real property without Congressional approval.
All Gallaudet diplomas are signed by the President of the United States.
Three members of Congress are statutorily required to sit on the school’s Board of Trustees.
Gallaudet is required to submit an annual report on its operations to the Department of Education and has purchasing authority through the General Services Administration.
Gallaudet receives a direct, annual Congressional appropriation, rather than mere federal student loan funds, and that direct appropriation accounts for the overwhelming majority of the school’s income.
Prosecution and police roundup
- Forfeiture: “Defend the Right to Carry Cash and Travel Unmolested” [Eapen Thampy, Agitator]
- Recent Japanese racketeering law, unlike our RICO, actually focuses on organized crime [Adelstein]
- Sheriff’s flack to Fiona Apple: shut up and sing [Ken at Popehat]
- Jimenez case: 99-year sentence, “substantial likelihood defendant was not guilty of this offense” [Jacob Sullum]
- Conrad Black continues to speak out on barbarities of “prosecutocracy” [NY Sun]
- “Are whistle-blowers the new IRS business model?” [Victor Fleischer, NYT DealBook]
- “Minnesota Farmer Found ‘Not Guilty’ in Raw Milk Case” [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason]
- Utah man shoots neighbor he thinks “telepathically raped” his wife, is ruled mentally fit for trial [CBS]
Update: judge dismisses Oglala Sioux alcohol case
A federal judge has declined jurisdiction of the Oglala Sioux tribe’s lawsuit claiming that liquor sellers just over the Nebraska border are legally answerable for the harms of alcoholism on the reservation. The dismissal is without prejudice to possible refiling of the claims in state court; New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof had promoted the cause. [BBC]
P.S. Kristof vs. college sophomore, advantage sophomore [James Taranto, WSJ, fifth item; Robert James Bidinotto] And don’t get us started about his chemophobia.
Lines that made me laugh
“This is known as the ‘Canadian girlfriend’ school of legal argumentation.” [Popehat, on the unwillingness of the British government to cite specific legal authority backing up its threats against NearlyFreeSpeech.net, a U.S.-based website]
Schools roundup
- “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]