- New York City embarks on extensive new regulation of freelance work [Jennifer A. Williams, Ford Harrison]
- “Maryland Decriminalizes Unlicensed Barbering; Jacks Up Fines for Unlicensed Barbering” [Eric Boehm, Reason] “A New Jersey Bill Protects Pool Owners from Low Prices” [Shoshana Weissman, NRO on licensing of pool/spa service contractors and installers]
- “Lawsplainer: How The Seventh Circuit Decided That Sexual Orientation Discrimination Violates Federal Law” [Ken at Popehat, earlier here, here, and here]
- New Jersey taxpayers pay $100 million+ a year to resolve public worker lawsuits [Mark Mueller, NJ.com]
- “How the Fair Labor Standards Act Hurts Women” [Heather Owen/Constangy Brooks, thanks for mention] More on comp time: Diana Furchtgott-Roth, WSJ MarketWatch; Connor Wolf, Inside Sources.
- Browning-Ferris at the NLRB: “Predictable, Uniform Standard Needed for Who Is a Joint Employer” [Michael Lotito and Missy Parry, WLF, earlier here, here, here, here, here, and here]
Filed under: Maryland, National Labor Relations Board, New Jersey, NYC, pools, public employment, sexual orientation, wage and hour suits
6 Comments
NYC freelance law–
On the face of it, it only seems to require that freelancers get paid the agreed upon amount, hardly a controversial idea. But perhaps the “retaliation” provision is open to abuse: a shady freelancer could create an artificial controversy about payment, then later on try to cash in on “retaliation” when dropped for a legitimate reason.
RE: Lawsplainer: How The Seventh Circuit Decided …” I am absolutely amazed at judge Posner’s honesty. I imagine that his colleagues on the majority must be really mad at him for giving the game away.
As one of the bloggers indicates, the really scary thing about this decision is that no human being in the entire country can do anything about it except fellow judges (Supreme Court) and no citizen has any direct recourse against it. These judges can basically do whatever they want, unless the Supremes step in.
Not so, in this case. This is a matter of interpretation of federal law (as opposed to the Constitution), so Congress could change the law so as to not give the courts any room for interpretation. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
(For that matter, Congress could have changed the law to expressly say what the court wanted the law to say, and Congress didn’t, so the court shouldn’t have changed the interpretation like they did.)
Mike, I do not believe That is the case. It is my understanding that the Court was interpreting Title VII, a law passed by Congress and signed by the president. Congress and the president can change the law whenever they want to, so long as they are in agreement..
That, it seems to me, is just the problem.
Title VII is not at all ambiguous. It looks to me like Hon. Posner acknowledged rewriting the law, not interpreting it (as a court should properly do).
I do not know what Congress could do to make this law Judge-proof.
Once federal courts start Resisting, there is no easy remedy.
According to the article cited, an argument for the licensing of pool maintenance people is that fact that hundreds of people drown in pools. I was struck by the fact that there was no mention of the lack of any relationship between drownings and the activities of pool maintenance people. When a pool maintainer does something wrong, it is typically screwing up the chemistry of the pool water. This may result in sore eyes or irritated skin, in growth of algae, or in swimmers getting infections, but to my knowledge it rarely if ever results in drowning. Drowning results from inadequate supervision, inadequate control of access to the pool, or, perhaps in rare cases in poor designs conducive to diving and injuring one’s head or that make it hard to get out of the pool. None of these factors are the responsibility of the people who drain, fill, clean, and control the chemistry of pools.