“With a crackdown on payday lenders, subprime borrowers are increasingly using auto title loans, whose high interest rates can lead to repossession and financial ruin.” [DealBook/NYT] Todd Zywicki at Volokh finds much lacking in the article’s analysis: “it turns out that those who use these products are not as stupid as the Times’s reporters imply they are.” Reihan Salam: “Remember when people said that cracking down on payday loans would have regrettable consequences?”
Archive for 2015
Holder reins in “equitable sharing” asset forfeiture
Good for Eric Holder. (And yes, that may be the first time I’ve strung those first four words together in that order.) He’s throttling way back on the “equitable sharing” program that has helped turn civil asset forfeiture into a national disgrace. A shame it’s taken this long, and that he didn’t end the program entirely.
Radley Balko praises the order as “a big deal” and notes that if effective, it “will stop local police agencies from circumventing state laws aimed at reining them in.” (If state legislatures want to allow abuse, on the other hand, the order won’t stop them.) But Balko also warns that the order is ambiguous about whether the exception made for joint federal-state task forces will be permitted, as at least one close observer warns, to swallow the rule. Many law enforcement operations have at least a passing contact with the federal government’s many programs, and if that is enough to get them exempted from the new order, business as usual may continue in the seizure of property from unwitting victims (or even under certain assumptions might things worse.) More: Roger Pilon, Jacob Sullum, Institute for Justice; lawmakers’ letter earlier this month.
Florida: No more claw machines, redemption arcades at Disney hotels
Big Mouse is apparently afraid of getting sued on charges of operating a gambling establishment. [Orlando Sentinel]
Letting kids, 10 and 6, walk home from the park
The Meitiv family of Silver Spring, Maryland is now under Child Protective Services scrutiny for permitting their children to walk the neighborhood alone a little too freely. Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids has been on the story for a while, and now the Washington Post and columnist Petula Dvorak are covering it too (related). More: Beth Greenfield, Yahoo Parenting (cross-posted from Free State Notes).
P.S. Google Street View will let you simulate the experience of walking south a mile down Georgia Avenue from Woodside Park through and past downtown Silver Spring. And welcome listeners from “Frederick’s Forum” on WFMD with host Dave Schmidt, where I’ll be calling in to discuss the case this morning.
NY woman sues because tights didn’t zing her
I am going to take a wild guess that the suit is aimed at exciting class-action fees [NY Post; @barbararich_law (“A Carbolic Smoke Ball for the Sex and the City generation”)]
Don’t hold us to time limits for suing, the nation’s at war
Last year I wrote a piece for Jurist on the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act (WSLA). Now the False Claims Act case of Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Carter is before the Supreme Court, which heard oral argument on Tuesday. [transcript; Ronald Mann/SCOTUSBlog; WSJ editorial; Courthouse News; earlier here and here]
Labor and employment roundup
- Obama wants Hill to force paid leave on employers. What, his rule-by-decree powers didn’t stretch that far? [RCP, USA Today] Department of Labor, using funds taxed from supporters and opponents alike, happy to act as frank advocate for legislation [its blog]
- Employers brace for salaried-overtime mandate, wrought by unilateral Obama decree [KSL, earlier at Cato]
- Related: “Employers To Face More Litigation In 2015 As Plaintiff Lawyers Swoop In” [Daniel Fisher on Gerald Maatman/Seyfarth Shaw report] Here come more NLRB decisions too [Tim Devaney, The Hill]
- Krugman on minimum wage: two economists in one! [Donald Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek via Coyote, @Mike_Saltsman (“Min wage in France is closer to $12/hr US. But Krugman still being inconsistent bc he’s also backed $15 US minimum”)]
- Five pro-de Blasio unions — SEIU/1199, teachers, hotel workers, doormen/building staff, CWA District 1 — help enforce NYC mayor’s agenda [NYDN]
- Testimony: “worst-kept secret” in Philly ironworkers’ union was that you could get ahead through violent “night work” [Philadelphia Inquirer; earlier on Quaker meetinghouse arson here and here, related here]
- Loads of new compliance burdens: “Changes in California Employment Law for 2015” [Baker Hostetler] And it wouldn’t be California without many more employer mandates pending in legislature [Steven Greenhut]
Imprécis sur le concept
France has arrested 54 persons “not… linked to the attacks” over alleged hate speech [AP, Matt Welch, earlier on wavering European commitment to free expression]
Bonus: “Knowledge starts as offendedness”: new Jonathan Rauch video interview for FIRE on free speech from the Salman Rushdie case to now.
Should cops view bodycam footage before writing use-of-force reports?
An ACLU report argues not, taking issue with some police groups. Practice has differed — the L.A. sheriff’s department, in installing jail cameras, recently adopted a policy that deputies will have to file incident reports before viewing videos.
Supreme Court roundup
- Perez v. Mortgage Bankers: can agency escape notice-and-comment requirements for new rulemaking by couching edict as other than a rule? [The Hill]
- Contrary to imaginings in some quarters, anti-business side doesn’t lack for access to front-rank Supreme Court advocates [Tom Goldstein, SCOTUSBlog]
- Speaking of which, Alison Frankel’s profile of Prof. Samuel Issacharoff’s work on behalf of class actions illuminates little-seen world of cert practice [Reuters]
- After two near misses, it’s time for Justices to turn thumbs down on housing disparate impact theory [Ilya Shapiro and Gabriel Latner, Cato]
- Integrity Staffing v. Busk: Court unanimously rules Fair Labor Standards Act does not require overtime pay for security screening after work [SCOTUSBlog, Michael Fox, On Labor, Daniel Fisher, Dan Schwartz]
- “Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution” [Cato panel discussion with Roger Pilon, Ilya Shapiro, Randy Barnett, David Gans]
- Some local governments presume to license local tour guides, which amounts to requiring a license to speak [Shapiro and Latner, Cato]
- More: 1997 flap over sculpture of Muhammad in Supreme Court building mostly subsided after Islamic scholar interpreted it as gesture of goodwill [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog]