Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for August, 2016

D.C. Circuit: IRS must face suit in targeting scandal

Yesterday, in a major ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked the IRS over its targeting of conservative groups and said that it would have to face a lawsuit by two plaintiffs, reversing a lower court that had declared the dispute moot. The unanimous three-judge panel ruled that there is “little factual dispute” in the case and it is “plain…that the IRS cannot defend its discriminatory conduct on the merits,” that the wrongdoing included not only targeting itself but massively burdensome and intrusive examinations of targeted groups, and that despite the IRS’s claims to have ended the discriminatory treatment, there is evidence that it continues today. My new piece at Ricochet explains.

Sarah Westwood in the Washington Examiner also quotes me on the case: “This is a blistering rebuke to the IRS and its defenders.” Remember in June when the Washington Post ran an editorial dismissing this all as not much of a scandal? Here was my response then.

P.S. Kim Strassel passes the following along in her much-talked-about new book, The Intimidation Game: “So, yes, the president was saying—two months after the news broke—that the whole IRS thing was just a ‘phony scandal.’”

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Class action: Pokémon Go encourages trespassing

“Attorneys representing a New Jersey personal injury lawyer have brought a class-action suit against the company they say is responsible for an ‘unlawful and wrongful’ invasion of the man’s property.” To quote from the complaint “filed against the game’s developer, San Francisco-based Niantic Inc.:”

In the days following the U.S. release of Pokémon Go, Plaintiff became aware that strangers were gathering outside of his home, holding up their mobile phones as if they were taking pictures. At least five individuals knocked on Plaintiff’s door, informed Plaintiff that there was a Pokémon in his backyard, and asked for access to Plaintiff’s backyard in order to “catch” the Pokémon.

[Jacob Gershman/WSJ Law Blog, Variety; earlier on Pokémon Go here, here]

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Richard Epstein on antidiscrimination laws and common carriers

Libertarian legal scholar Richard Epstein discusses the conflict over religious exemptions to antidiscrimination laws at Hoover “Defining Ideas” and in a related podcast at Acton Institute. He suggests that it might be helpful to refocus the concept of “public accommodations” on businesses held to common carrier principles, typically because of elements of monopoly:

Historically, Title II [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with public accommodation provisions] had two potent justifications. The first is that it was a necessary corrective against massive abuses of state power under Jim Crow. Thankfully, that risk is gone today. The other justification was that the traditional common law view — still good today — that any common carrier or public utility, by virtue of holding a monopoly position, was duty-bound to take all customers on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. When ordinary people have nowhere else to go for power, water, or transportation, they are entitled to get these services at reasonable rates. The rule covered all cases of racial discrimination, but it was not limited to it.

The implicit drawback of this position was that there was no duty to serve anyone in a competitive industry, precisely because disappointed customers had a full range of alternatives to which they could turn. The common law rightly held that refusals to deal in competitive industries counted as basic liberties.

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Tennessee: “Bill allows suits over gun free zone incidents”

Once again some advocates are advancing what they see as gun rights at the expense of the general rights of private property and contract. This time it’s a new state law that “allows any Tennessean with a valid gun permit to sue a property owner in the event of injury or death provided the incident occurred while in a gun-free zone.” More specifically, the “legislation places responsibility on the business or property owner of the gun-free area to protect the gun owner from any incidents that occur with any ‘invitees,’ trespassers and employees found on the property, as well as vicious and wild animals and ‘defensible man-made and natural hazards.'” The bill excludes situations where the law itself imposes the status of “gun-free zone,” but includes situations in which a Tennessee business adopts the status in order to follow the policy of its corporate owner or franchisor.

Traditional Anglo-American law grants to a property owner as a matter of course not only the right to exclude guns, but also to ask of customers and other invitees that, as a condition of their visit, they agree to assume the risk of some “defensible hazards” contemplated by the law, such as harm occasioned by roaming wild animals. Is it too much to ask that gun advocates promote the actual rights prescribed by the Second Amendment against government infringement — which certainly could use promotion right now — rather than infringe traditional individual property and contract liberties by inventing spurious new gun “rights”? [Tennessean via Bearing Arms] Earlier on laws restricting property owners’ rights to set rules against guns in parking lots here, here, here, here, related Roger Pilon at Cato, and, also with coverage of “off-duty conduct” as a protected class in discrimination law, here.

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Crime and punishment roundup

  • Virginia “one of a minority of states that suspend driving privileges — in most cases, automatically — for failing to pay court costs and fines arising from offenses completely unrelated to driving.” [Washington Post editorial]
  • D.C. Circuit “Rules DOJ Discovery Blue Book Off-Limits … For Now” [Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
  • “The New York Times Knows Florida’s Self-Defense Law Is Bad but Can’t Figure Out Why” [Jacob Sullum]
  • “We often hear that almost no one goes to prison simply for using marijuana.” But add “near a school”… [David Henderson]
  • A forensics roundup from Radley Balko;
  • “When Everything Is a Crime: The Overregulation of Ordinary Life” [Harvey Silverglate conversation with Reason’s Nick Gillespie]

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Mention the Olympics at your peril

Unless you’ve bought an official sponsorship, for your business to so much as mention the upcoming Olympics on social media “can be like doing the 100-yard dash through a minefield.” The rules warn non-sponsors not to “create social media posts that are Olympic themed… or congratulate Olympic performance” even if you have sponsored individual hopefuls, wish luck, use phrases like “go for the gold” or “let the games begin,” report Olympic results, host Olympic-themed team-building exercises for your employees, or “share anything from official Olympics social media accounts. Even retweets are prohibited.” [AdWeek]

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Reformers target occupational licensure

Alden Abbott reports at Truth on the Market on legislative initiatives to curb occupational licensure, which often works to limit competition and consumer choice.

At the state level, the American Legislative Exchange Council has developed something called the Model Occupational Board Reform Act, with four components:

The State will use the least restrictive regulation necessary to protect consumers from present, significant and substantiated harms that threaten public health and safety.

An occupational regulation may be enforced against an individual only to the extent the individual sells goods and services that are included explicitly in the statute that defines the occupation’s scope of practice.

The attorney general will establish an office of supervision of occupational boards. The office is responsible for actively supervising state occupational boards.

The legislature will establish a position in its nonpartisan research staff to analyze occupational regulations. The position is responsible for reviewing legislation and laws related to occupational regulations.

While the federal government’s involvement in the subject is relatively limited, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) have introduced a bill intended to liberalize licensure in the District of Columbia, military bases and in national parks.

More on licensure: Patricia Cohen, New York Times. Its relation to economic inequality [David Henderson] And why does the state of Louisiana require 750 hours of training before you can pluck eyebrows as a living? [Kevin Boyd, The Hayride]

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August 3 roundup

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