“A Kansas district court heard arguments [last] Friday in the case of a man who is being sued for thousands of dollars in child support by the state after donating his sperm to a same-sex couple he found through a Craigslist ad.” By law artificial insemination in Kansas requires a doctor’s supervision, but mechanic William Marotta instead relied on a private contract with the women who wanted his services, which the state argues cannot excuse him from parental responsibility. [NBC News]
Archive for November, 2013
Rulings unwelcome to prosecutors
They appear to have gotten one very conservative San Diego judge exiled to traffic court [Will Baude]
Mount Holly Gardens: ‘Til we moot again
It looks as if someone really doesn’t want the Obama administration’s treasured but shaky “housing disparate impact” theory to come under review by the Supreme Court [Josh Blackman on reports of settlement mooting Mount Holly, N.J. case granted certiorari and pending before the Court; earlier on controversial tactics used to moot St. Paul case through settlement]
More: Piscataway v. Taxman also dropped off the Court’s docket via a mootness tactic. And shorter Doug Kendall/Constitutional Accountability Center: how dare PLF, Cato and IJ take the Court’s word on what the issue is in Mt. Holly? [Ilya Shapiro]
La trahison des woncs
Megan McArdle on what the policy experts knew about ObamaCare but didn’t tell us. [Bloomberg]
International human rights roundup
- U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities remains a bad, bad, bad, idea, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee has now scheduled hearings for Nov. 5 and Nov. 12 in effort to push it through;
- Proliferation of human rights treaties not necessarily good for, well, human rights [Jacob Mchangana et al. via Sullivan “Dish”; cf. David Kopel, NYT “Room for Debate” last year]
- Claim: Urban planning schemes are a human right [Wikipedia on “Right to the City”] U.N. Special Rapporteur calls for legally enforceable international right to food [UN]
- CRPD cited in Spain by group campaigning against “disability-selective abortion” [Pablo de Lora, Harvard “Bill of Health”]
- Some forms of national sovereignty OK after all? Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) cited in Indian tribal claims [Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Truthout] “Lakota to file UN Genocide Charges Against US, South Dakota” [Jeff Armstrong, CounterPunch]
- “N.Y. state appeals ruling opens courthouse door to foreign victims” [Alison Frankel] First post-Kiobel ATS case smacks down plaintiffs on South Africa claims [Julian Ku/Opinio Juris, Fed Soc Blog]
- Panel from Cato’s Constitution Day includes Kenneth Anderson discussing his excellent article on Kiobel in the Cato Supreme Court Review; also includes presentations by Ilya Somin on property rights and Andrew Grossman on City of Arlington, with Roger Pilon moderating [Cato video, podcast]