“‘We Shall Overcome,’ a song that was the ‘unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement,’ was wrongly placed under copyright and should be put in the public domain, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court. The complaint was filed by the same group of lawyers who succeeded at putting the world’s most famous song, Happy Birthday, into the public domain after years of litigation.” [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica; earlier on “Happy Birthday”]
Do bans on credit checks in hiring work as intended?
…one of the hottest ideas among lawmakers right now is to ban employers from running credit checks on job applicants. Since 2007, eleven states, as well as Chicago and New York City, have passed such laws….
But a new study from Robert Clifford, an economist at the Boston Fed, and Daniel Shoag, an assistant professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, finds that when employers are prohibited from looking into people’s financial history, something perverse happens: African-Americans become more likely to be unemployed relative to others….
“Employers have many screening measures to narrow down who they want to hire,” Shoag says. “If you take one away, they’ll put more weight on the others.” … Whatever the new criteria were, they seem to have put black applicants at a disadvantage.
[Jeff Guo, Washington Post “WonkBlog”] Shoag gets the best line of the piece: “This reflects a general movement of legislators monkeying around with the hiring process without thinking about the consequences.” A contrary view: Robert Hiltonsmith and Sean McElwee, US News.
Crime and punishment roundup
- Judges generally aren’t supposed to jail defendants over petty fines and fees they’re unable to pay, but many do anyway. How one Texas judge resists [Ed Spillane, Washington Post]
- Maryland legislature passes amended version of asset forfeiture bill I spoke favorably of at Annapolis press event in January [Tenth Amendment Center, background]
- Child services hair-sample forensics: “This Canadian Lab Spent 20 Years Ruining Lives” [Tess Owen, Vice]
- Cato’s 1995 Handbook for Congress urged repeal of Clinton crime bill, but Congress didn’t listen [Tim Lynch, Newsweek and more]
- “The main thing going through my head was, ‘I’m never going to get a job again.’” Public shaming as punishment [Suzy Khimm, The New Republic]
- Judge Alex Kozinski publicly names prosecutors in Washington state he thinks may have violated a defendant’s rights [Matt Ferner, HuffPo]
Overtime? It’s on the House
Well, isn’t this a shame:
Brad Fitch, president and CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 16 that House “Democratic chiefs of staff are freaking out” about finding room in their budget for overtime wages.
It’s not clear whether the Obama administration’s forthcoming edict on overtime will apply to legislative staffers, but House Democratic leadership decided it would be prudent for their members to at least gesture toward the spirit of the controversial rule by preparing for compliance. [BNA Daily Labor Report] Now “the rule is creating administrative headaches” and more:
“We don’t have a set-hour kind of situation here; some kids work 12, 14, 16 hours a day, weekends, and I feel terrible that I cannot afford to give raises to the staff,” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 11.
With $320,000 slashed from members’ representational allowances (MRAs) over the past four years, “I don’t see how we could pay overtime” for the “17 or 18 people that each of us is allowed to have—that’s problematic for me,” added Hastings, a senior member of the House Rules Committee.
Some members fear that an overtime mandate will result in having to send staffers home at 5 p.m., leaving phones unanswered and impairing constituent service. “Most members are of the sentiment that it’s impractical to be paying overtime,” said former Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran, now a lobbyist, who suggests that members choose to close one of their district offices or reduce constituent correspondence to adjust to a smaller staff number.
In the bonbon box of schadenfreude, this is one of the ones I would save to eat last.
West Hollywood: the sequel
One thing I like about running Overlawyered is that its readers regularly know more than I do. After I posted the other day about how West Hollywood, Calif. Mayor Lindsey Horvath said she was ordering city employees not to grant rally permits to Donald Trump because he’s such a terrible candidate — yes, really — reader Chris Bray pointed out that the mayor’s office in West Hollywood is a largely ceremonial position rotating among town councilors and has no authority to order city employees to do anything. That makes it sound as if the mayor might be a blowhard as well as someone who cannot be trusted near the First Amendment, two qualities she would have in common with Trump himself.
April 13 roundup
- Women-only ride-hailing service (“Chariot”) set to launch in Boston. But is it actually legal under prevailing discrimination law? [Story Hinckley, Christian Science Monitor]
- Troll it with flowers: “Intellectual Ventures Hits Florist With Do-It-On-A-Computer Scheduling Patent” [Daniel Nazer, TechDirt]
- Pirate smugglers of Lake Champlain! Hillary Clinton’s tales of Vermont gun-running are silly beyond belief [Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post “Fact Checker”; Three Pinocchios]
- “Does Anyone Get Arrested For Breaking Those Weird Old Laws? This Man Did” [Mental Floss on Michigan swearing law]
- Harassment in Harrisburg: “Retaliation and Intimidation Persist in AG [Kathleen] Kane’s Office” [Lizzy McLellan and Ben Seal, The Legal Intelligencer, earlier]
- “Congress should privatize the USPS, repeal its legal monopolies, and give the company the flexibility it needs to innovate and reduce costs.” [Chris Edwards, Cato]
From the unsealed Mississippi allegations on AG-cozy law firms
We took note last month that a court was unsealing the allegations of a since-settled lawsuit alleging quid pro quo payments at a prominent class-action firm that has represented the state of Mississippi. Now Alan Lange at YallPolitics has more details. “I still maintain that if this case involved any other state officeholder other than Jim Hood that there would be above the fold headlines for days on end.”
Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit has overturned a procedural win by Google that had halted an investigation by Mississippi AG Jim Hood into Google business practices in which Hood has more or less openly acted as the cat’s paw of Hollywood studios: “in some cases demand letters that came from Hood’s office were actually written by MPAA lawyers.” Google will still have the right to challenge the investigation at a later stage. [Joe Mullin/ArsTechnica, earlier]
“Political Parties Belong to Their Members”
Roger Pilon on laws forcing open primaries on political parties [Cato Institute]
Free speech roundup
- Eric Turkewitz has collaborated with other law bloggers on a series of April Fool’s blog hoaxes, but this year many bloggers sat out his joke about Donald Trump suits against the press. Sort of a canary in the coal mine right there [Paul Alan Levy]
- It’s come to this: Providence Journal runs pro/con debate on whether to criminalize “climate denial” [Michael E. Kraft, H. Sterling Burnett, link fixed now h/t Gitarcarver] Putting the R.I. in RICO: Sen. Whitehouse trades charges with WSJ, other malefactors (hello!) who keep fighting him on climate probe [Edward Fitzpatrick, Providence Journal, WSJ]
- “Judge Dismisses Felony Charge Against Michigan Jury Rights Pamphleteer” [Jacob Sullum, earlier on nullification activists and the law here, etc.]
- Feminist urges banning porn on the rationale least consistent with the First Amendment: that it operates as propaganda, the way a philosophical treatise might [Washington Post]
- FIRE announces free online First Amendment library; also interviews Eugene Volokh in a seven-minute video [Ronald Collins/Concurring Opinions]
- Greater Glasgow Police to social media users: “Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend.” [Alex Massie, Spectator, earlier on Scotland speech bans]
Eighth Circuit: obesity not a per se disability
Another big courtroom defeat for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: “A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled this week that obesity is not a ‘disability’ within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act — even as amended in 2009 — unless the condition was caused by some underlying physiological disorder. …The panel specifically rejected the position taken by the EEOC in its Compliance Manual.” [Employment and Labor Insider, Constangy; Morriss v. BNSF Railway]