Seven-year-old accuses teacher of shoving him, teacher is jailed and fired, a big lawsuit follows. But ten years later their lives once again intersect…. [Marc Fisher, Washington Post Magazine; Josh Kaplowitz; Raynard Ware; and particularly recommended, Fisher’s 2003 story (“He began his teaching stint with idealism. And ended it in jail”)]
Archive for 2015
Minimum wage closes much-loved S.F. bookstore
Don’t believe minimum wage hikes hurt real people? After March 31, a famed sci-fi bookstore on Valencia St. in San Francisco’s Mission District will no longer be able to cater to your taste in fantasy:
The change in minimum wage will mean our payroll will increase roughly 39%. That increase will in turn bring up our total operating expenses by 18%. To make up for that expense, we would need to increase our sales by a minimum of 20%. We do not believe that is a realistic possibility for a bookstore in San Francisco at this time.
And this, which speaks for itself:
In November, San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that will increase the minimum wage within the city to $15 per hour by 2018. Although all of us at Borderlands support the concept of a living wage in [principle] and we believe that it’s possible that the new law will be good for San Francisco — Borderlands Books as it exists is not a financially viable business if subject to that minimum wage. Consequently we will be closing our doors no later than March 31st. The cafe will continue to operate until at least the end of this year.
Early reactions from customers online run heavily to two themes: 1) anguish that a beloved cultural institution is passing from the scene and 2) reflections that they, the fans and customers, had supported the minimum wage hike too when it was on the ballot. (It might restrict businesses’ rights, but who cares about that?) But in this world — as in so many of the well-crafted alternative worlds of science fiction — the link between actions and their logical consequences, foreseen and intended or otherwise, is not to be broken. [Reprinted from my post at Cato at Liberty]
Coyote read the letter in recognition:
I found the language here familiar because I spent most of last year writing such letters to angry customer bases. In our case, fortunately, we had the ability to raise prices so the letters were to defuse customer irritation rather than to announce a closure.
And Mark Perry at AEI identifies why a bookstore in particular cannot adjust the way a restaurant or a dry cleaner might:
There’s a limit to how much a bookstore can increase book prices to offset higher labor costs because the publisher sets the list price of the book and it’s printed on the book cover.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, a new minimum wage law hits nonprofits, which ask for more taxpayer money so they can comply [Inquirer]
EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch: employers as mind-readers
The Supreme Court is considering the case of a woman who sued torrid-youth retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, saying it discriminated against her based on religious belief when it failed to waive its “Look Policy,” in which sales personnel are expected to wear only clothes sold by the store, to accommodate her modesty headscarf. Never mind whether this demand would be a reasonable one in itself; the case has gone up to the U.S. Supreme Court in large part because of a second issue, whether the store was legally obliged to grasp the situation intuitively as based on religion and pre-emptively accommodate Samantha Elauf “even though Elauf never informed them that she would need a religious accommodation.” A district court ruled that it was so obliged, the Tenth Circuit reversed, and now the Supreme Court is hearing the case at the EEOC’s request.
Requiring employers to offer a religious accommodation before they are on notice that one is sought requires them to act on “crude stereotypes or pry into employees’ personal lives,” write Ilya Shapiro and Julio Colomba. Not all employee requests on subjects such as modesty, diet, or weekend attendance are associated with religious affiliation and observance, while conversely many persons with genuine or sincere religious affiliation or belief do not conform to stereotypical expectations about what their religion might require of them in the workplace. Individual employees are thus “in a significantly better position to identify conflicts than employers.” The Cato Institute has filed an amicus brief on Abercrombie’s side arguing that the Court should reject the EEOC’s position as unworkable, unfair, and not required by the statute.
Related: Eugene Volokh has been posting on religious-exemption and religious-accommodation law at Volokh Conspiracy. For those who imagine, reading the Hobby Lobby and state-RFRA coverage, that religious exemptions have mostly been favored by conservatives over liberal opposition, he reminds us that the actual history is nearer the opposite. And he explains why his own view is that an optimal approach would include a mix of legislatively and judicially crafted (consistent with legislative wishes) religious exemptions and accommodations, but not necessarily a constitutional entitlement to accommodation.
Harvard study: lawyers tilt left, judges don’t
A new study out of Harvard finds that lawyers in the United States lean left politically — though not nearly as far left as do law professors — while judges’ political views by contrast tend more toward the middle of the spectrum. An author of the study concludes something’s wrong with the judges. Oh, Harvard, don’t ever change [Adam Liptak, New York Times]
P.S. And in case you hadn’t guessed, lawyers are phenomenally active in the political process:
The study is based on an analysis of the campaign contributions of American lawyers, a group that turns out to be exceptionally active in the financial side of elections.
Of the 975,000 lawyers listed in 2012 in the Martindale-Hubbell legal directory, 43 percent had made contributions to state or federal candidates — including state judicial candidates — since 1979. That is about 10 times the rate of the voting-age population.
One difficulty with the study’s approach, as Liptak notes, is that contributions may reflect factors distinct from ideological leanings, such as economic self-interest. Certainly some lawyers have no terribly strong political views of their own but regard Democratic policies as more conducive to the prosperity of the legal sector or their own particular firm.
Sheldon Silver and lawyers in politics
Sheldon Silver’s arrest prompts Jeffrey Toobin to relate a war story regarding the now-defunct law firm known as Morris Eisen, P.C., “an outfit so extravagantly corrupt, so hilariously dishonest, and so creatively malign as almost to defy belief.” (I’ve written a number of times about the Eisen firm myself.) Eisen’s son-in-law, who had gotten his start with the firm, went on to found the firm of Weitz & Luxenberg, where Silver had his no-visible-duties job and to which he occasionally sent lucrative asbestos referrals from his friends at the Columbia clinic and elsewhere.
Weitz & Luxenberg (which has not been charged with any wrongdoing in the federal investigation, and says it has asked Silver to take a leave of absence) is also a big political player nationally, not just in New York. As Kim Strassel notes at the WSJ, “Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s top contributor from 2009 to 2014 was Weitz & Luxenberg. The firm played the same role for Bruce Braley, the trial-lawyer Democrat who just lost an Iowa Senate race.” The other large asbestos firm to receive lucrative patient referrals from Dr. Robert Taub’s now-discontinued Columbia University mesothelioma center is the Simmons firm of Illinois, another big political donor that Strassel says has been the single biggest backer of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Previously on the Silver arrest here and here. More: “Tarnished Silver: Speaker’s arrest upends most everything in Albany” [Andrew Hawkins, Crain’s New York (“his support for the teachers’ union has kept education reformers at bay”); Henry Goldman, Bloomberg; Wayne Barrett on Silver’s “Friends of Shelly” network of pals, including Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman (“In his varied posts, Lippman has long overseen the very courts hearing the asbestos and other cases brought by Silver’s firm.”)
And this Joseph Nocera column from the weekend, which is particularly strong on Silver’s influence over the judiciary in New York, built up through methods all “perfectly legal.” But note this NYT correction stating that Nocera’s discussion of the judiciary in that column was “premised on several factual errors.” (More on that: New York Sun.) The New York Post believes the feds are sniffing around Manhattan trial courts.
Police use of force roundup
- Fairfax County, Va. finally releases file on police shooting: contradicting fellow officer’s account, three cops say homeowner had hands up when shot [Washington Post, earlier here and here] “11,000 pages of court documents released on a Friday night, almost a year and a half after the shooting” [@markberman]
- New York Gov. Cuomo pocket-vetoes bill that would have further insulated unionized cops from discipline [E.J. McMahon, Empire Center]
- Police use of force is on the decline [Steve Malanga, City Journal]
- Utah bill would significantly reform no-knock police raids, bringing law back closer to common-law knock-and-announce standard, while Georgia bill would do less [Balko, Jacob Sullum, Scott Greenfield]
- “Even Small Towns Are Loading Up On Grenade Launchers” [Joseph Bottum, The Federalist] Charting the growth in MRAPs, militarization [Brent Skorup and Andrea Castillo, Mercatus via Balko] Investigative story on use of flashbang grenades [Julia Angwin and Abbie Nehring, ProPublica] Earlier on militarization here, here, here, here, here, here, etc., and generally here.
- The New Yorker looks into the shooting of a mentally ill man in his home by Albuquerque police [Rachel Aviv] Same town: “Albuquerque prosecutor indicts cops, immediately faces repercussions” [Balko, Greenfield]
- “Time for a Police Offenders Registry: A police job is a privilege, not a right” [Ed Krayewski]
- More from Jonathan Blanks at Rare: “police practice, and not the law, should be the focus of reform“; when police lie about use of force.
Idaho prosecutor now regrets arrest of 9 year old over stealing gum
And yes, that is gum with an “m” not gun with an “n.” [CNN]
A Dodd-Frank reform menu, ready to go?
Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Regulation has a list of seven bills “amending the Dodd-Frank Act [that] passed the House in the 113th Congress by a bi-partisan vote, sometimes an overwhelming bi-partisan vote, but were never taken up [by] the Senate.” Topics of the bills include: exempting from SEC registration venture capital and SBIC advisers; exempting advisers to private equity funds when not over-leveraged; requiring study of effects of non-conforming U.S. standard on derivative credit valuation adjustment (CVA) capital requirement; clarifying handling of centralized treasury units (CTUs); removing indemnification requirement imposed on foreign regulators; coordinating regulations on cross-border derivatives transactions; and curbing Volcker Rule application to debt securities of collateralized loan obligations.
Pennsylvania’s law-firm-contract mess
“Four law firms received three no-bid contracts for the secret investigations [of litigation prospects by the state of Pennsylvania against nursing homes and other defendants]. The firms and their lawyers donated a combined $191,400 to [attorney general Kathleen] Kane’s campaign from 2011 to 2013, records show. … Fees in most of the contracts are structured on a “contingency” basis, meaning the law firms typically get 20 to 25 percent of any final award — which ultimately could reap tens of millions for the state.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review] But this sounds better: as one of his first acts in office, Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law “a requirement that all private legal contracts go out to bid.” [Harrisburg Patriot-News] Earlier on Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Ready for the Super Concave Serving Vessel?
Hilarious commercial from Staples makes fun of the trademark claims that keep businesses from talking about Super-You-Know-What sales, events, and gatherings this time of year. Earlier here, etc., etc.