Earlier this month, “in Lawson v. Grubhub [pdf], a California federal judge granted the gig-employer a huge victory by ruling that [plaintiff Raef] Lawson and all other similarly situated drivers are independent contractors, and not employees.” [Jon Hyman, earlier here and here]
Eyes on the community, and your business must participate
The city of Saginaw, Mich. has ordered businesses in a long list of categories, including bars, phone sellers, and secondhand merchants, to install video surveillance systems whose output is to be made available on demand to the police [Isis Simpson-Mersha, MLive via Scott Shackford, Reason] Earlier proposals in Detroit and Maryland called for requiring gas station owners to install surveillance video systems, but this extends the idea to many other types of business.
How common are lawyer-themed birthday parties for toddlers, anyway?
“There were a bunch of kids all dressed up, the boys wearing power ties.” Are toddler birthday parties themed after personal injury lawyers becoming a thing? The latest case, from South Carolina, like one noted in 2015 from Louisiana, seem to have come into existence because the kids see and listen to injury lawyers’ ads and jingles on TV again and again (and again) and fix on them. Indeed, they may even begin to interpret the counselors as some species of superhero. “The report includes plenty of party pics as well as a three-minute highlight video, all provided by the office of George Sink, P.A., Injury Lawyers. Is it a marketing piece? Sure. But hey—the family asked him to come to the party, and he was a good sport about it. He’s entitled to a little credit for that, I think.” [Lowering the Bar; earlier 2015 on Louisiana case]
FOSTA, SESTA, and Section 230
The U.S. House of Representatives appears about to vote on a bill forcing platforms to monitor users’ content and undermining Section 230, charter of freedom for online social media, all in the name of the widening campaign against real or imagined trafficking. [Electronic Frontier Foundation; Eric Goldman post and podcast and background from September; Adam Brandon, FreedomWorks; earlier here, etc.] More: John Samples, Cato; Cathy Gellis, TechDirt.
Medical roundup
- “The dominant narrative about pain treatment being a major pathway to addiction is wrong, [and] an agenda heavily weighted toward pill control is not enough.” [Sally Satel on origins of opioid crisis]
- The press gets it wrong: “A Young Mother Died Because Her Flu Meds Were Too Expensive – Or Did She?” [Josh Bloom, ACSH]
- New research brief: tort reform could have effects in both directions on innovation [Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo, Cato]
- Appalling: editor of The Lancet extols Marx as a guide to understanding medical science [Theodore Dalrymple, Law and Liberty]
- “We harbor a suspicion that half the drug/device tort cases we encounter are really medical malpractice cases in search of a deeper pocket” [Stephen McConnell, Drug & Device Law Blog]
- Should the Food and Drug Administration concern itself with the effect of its decisions on drug prices? [David Hyman and William Kovacic, Regulation mag]
Redistricting in listenable format
I’ll be testifying in Annapolis on behalf of comprehensive redistricting reform on Monday (Maryland House of Delegates) and Thursday (Senate) of this week. In the mean time, here are two new audio contributions, first (above) a Cato Daily Podcast in which I’m interviewed by Caleb Brown.
The second clip is a narrator’s reading for Cato’s “Cato Out Loud” feature of my recent piece on why libertarians and others should oppose gerrymandering:
I’m also in the question period a bit more than two-thirds through this Federalist Society program featuring former Rep. Chris Shays (R-Ct.) and Weekly Standard senior writer Jay Cost.
On recent redistricting fireworks in Pennsylvania — which are being decided under that state’s constitution, and thus do not directly affect the federal constitutional issue or the situation in other states — see Nate Cohn, Matthew Bloch and Kevin Quealy, New York Times and Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s map scores high on a measure of partisan proportionality — that is, matching the number of seats won by a party to its share of overall vote. As Cohn et al. note, however, partisan proportionality in general “is not usually a goal when redistricting,” in part because it calls for conscious affirmative attention to partisan considerations as distinct from neutral principles. In this case it also comes as “something of a surprise, since the court’s order didn’t specify that partisan balance was an objective for the new map.”
Great moments in what-I-told-the-officer
Suspects in possession of 4,000 kilos of oranges, or four metric tons, said they had no idea where they came from [Lowering the Bar, Spain]
Florida shooter had been chronic disciplinary problem. “Could school system have done more?”
Amid horrendous misbehavior attributed to his emotional and behavioral disabilities, the future shooter was shuttled among various Broward County schools, including an episode being “mainstreamed” at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, scene of his later atrocity. Under the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which has been intensively litigated over the years, “school districts are required to provide kids with physical, emotional or intellectual disabilities a free education in the ‘least restrictive’ setting, and to accommodate the needs of such students.” [Carol Marbin Miller and Kyra Gurney, Miami Herald] He “was well-known to school and mental health authorities and was entrenched in the process for getting students help rather than referring them to law enforcement….Beginning in 2013, Broward stopped referring students to police for about a dozen infractions ranging from alcohol and drug use to bullying, harassment and assault,” under influence of national campaign against “school-to-prison pipeline.” [Tim Craig, Emma Brown, Sarah Larimer and Moriah Balingit, Washington Post]
Cutting project red tape
I have favorable words in this Fox News special report for the Trump administration’s push to streamline infrastructure permitting. Currently, even relatively straightforward projects can get stalled for years; states and cities have helped show the way with one-stop permitting, “concierge” service, shorter decision deadlines, and rules that reduce handles for litigation. Philip K. Howard’s Common Good organization, which has been working on this issue for years, likes the push too.
Free speech roundup
- You don’t have to think porn’s OK, or that speech never does harm, to see that Ross Douthat’s censorship ideas will fall flat on their face [Rick Garnett/Prawfs, Taylor Millard/Hot Air quoting me, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Tyler Cowen]
- Group libel theory meets nationalism in Europe’s censorship creep: “Poland Passes Bill Criminalizing Claims Of Its Complicity In The Holocaust” [Colin Dwyer/NPR, Eugene Volokh, Jacob Sullum]
- “Arizona Bar Accuses Libel Lawyers of Suing Fake Defendants” [Eugene Volokh; related Paul Alan Levy]
- First Amendment should protect t-shirt shop that refused to print gay pride message [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus in Hands-On Originals case, involving Lexington, Ky. anti-discrimination law; earlier here, etc.]
- Federal judge rules Electronic Frontier Foundation need not obey an Australian court order directing it to take down a “Stupid Patent of the Month” blog post, finding the order “repugnant to the United States Constitution.” [Kurt Opsahl, EFF]
- “First Amendment Watch is a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Our mission is to document threats to the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and petition, all rights that are critical to self-governance in a democratic society….First Amendment Watch is an online news and educational resource for journalists, educators and students.”