First Amendment Defense Act, draft two

Both sides in the culture war are gearing up for a fight in Congress on the proposed First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which would establish various rights for persons and institutions who object to same-sex marriage. The bill’s text, however, has proved a moving target (earlier here and here). Scott Shackford at Reason gets farther into the details than the mainstream media has done.

Relatedly, Rod Dreher writes at the American Conservative that as a social conservative who resisted gay marriage, but now considers that cause lost, he believes fellow thinkers concerned with religious liberty should look to ally with libertarians. He recommends Shackford’s recent piece in Reason (which quotes me on adoption issues) noting the organized gay movement’s ever wider split from libertarians on issues of central government power, individual liberty and free association.

Filed under: religious liberty, sexual orientation

EPA’s lobbying on “Waters of the United States”: no big deal?

My local paper, the Frederick News-Post, ran an editorial on Monday that 1) saw nothing especially wrong in the Environmental Protection Agency’s illegally expending tax money to stir up pressure on Congress to support a wider interpretation of EPA power; 2) claimed that the fuss over tax-paid lobbying was for lack of any substantive critique of EPA’s “WOTUS” (Waters of the United States) rule, although a majority of states have challenged that rule, the farm and rural landowner communities have been up in arms against it all year, and a federal appeals court has agreed to stay it.

So I wrote this letter in response, which ran today. There wasn’t space for me to dispute the FNP’s peculiar notion that to oppose the water rule as exceeding the EPA’s statutory authority is to encourage the “anti-science, climate change denial crowd,” which tends to reinforce my sense that “anti-science” and “climate denial” are turning into all-purpose epithets increasingly unhooked from any particular relationship to science or climate. (cross-posted at Free State Notes)

Filed under: advocacy funding, climate change, climate deniers to the wall, Environmental Protection Agency, lobbyists, Maryland, science and scientists, WO writings

“The most warningful time of the year”

“Beware: sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions,” Christmas trees “not for human consumption,” and more holiday warnings. [Bob Dorigo Jones]

Filed under: Christmas and other holidays, wacky warnings

Roanoke man pardoned on arson conviction

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has granted an unusual absolute pardon to Davey Reedy, released six years ago after many years of imprisonment on an arson murder conviction after a house fire that killed his two small children. The case is one of dozens in which forensic methods formerly used for evaluating arson have been re-examined as poorly based and unreliable. “According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 38 people have been exonerated before Reedy for arson-related crimes since 1991.” [Washington Post; earlier]

From the Post’s Christmas Day story:

After his release in 2009, he has settled back in the Roanoke area with his family. The day McAuliffe called to tell him of his exoneration, Roberta Bondurant said, he was coordinating a volunteer project.

“He’s at a place and time in his life where he’s at peace with himself,” she said. “It doesn’t help him at all in the time he has left on this planet to hold bitterness for anyone who made a mistake along the way.”

Filed under: fires, forensics, Virginia

Neil Steinberg: “Sued by a Lunatic”

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg reprints a column from 2000 about a lawsuit that ensued after he exchanged words with a young man waiting in line at the drugstore. The process dragged on through the Christmas season until just before the holiday itself: “It is days in a windowless, airless room, somehow both too big and claustrophobic, waiting for your case to be called, staring dully at tiles on the ceiling, hearing the headachy murmur of legalisms just out of earshot, noting the starched exhaustion of lawyers, the unease of regular folk. There are motions and counter-motions. Many times I recalled that Hamlet, listing reasons to kill himself in his famous ‘To Be or Not to Be’ soliloquy, puts ‘the law’s delay’ up high, right after the pangs of despriz’d love.”

Filed under: Chicago, Christmas and other holidays

Merry Christmas, and highlights of Overlawyered past

Merry Christmas to all! Our posts will be slowing down, though not disappearing, over the next week or so. You can read some highlights from past Overlawyered coverage of the holiday here.

Filed under: best of, Christmas and other holidays

December 23 roundup

Russian man sues developer of videogame Fallout 4, saying he lost wife and job due to addiction to playing it [BGR]
“Indiana Briefly Considered Fining Bad Anthem Singers” [Lowering the Bar] Relatedly, if you’ve been wanting to do a dance remix of “Star-Spangled Banner,” Michigan law now permits it [Lowering the Bar]
Is administrative law unlawful? Philip Hamburger vs. Adrian Vermeule [more, William Funk/Jotwell and David Bernstein; earlier here and here]
Will Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell runoff loss end his office’s contracts-for-pals “Buddy System”? [Chris Butler/Louisiana Watchdog, Richard Miniter, American Media Institute/Louisiana Record, Eric Boehm/Louisiana Watchdog]
“Let’s get rid of private housing.” The Nation never gives up, does it?
Congress’s surrender of power of purse opened door to outrages like Department of Justice’s activist slush funds [Randal John Meyer]
Gun-rights and marijuana advocates set themselves against liberty generally when they back discrimination-law coverage of employee “off-duty conduct.” [Ohio, Jon Hyman first (firearms) and second (pot) posts]

Filed under: administrative law, advocacy funding, attorneys general, Department of Justice, guns, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, property rights, videogames

How to draw a certain familiar mouse

Step 3: “Receive letter from Disney Legal.” [Mauricio Abril on Tumblr]

Filed under: art and artists, Disney

Paternalist interventions of the Times

Well-known New York Times food and opinion writer wants to card teens buying a Dr Pepper. [Liz Crain Lucky Peach interview with Mark Bittman, who has made many appearances in these columns]

Filed under: Mark Bittman, nanny state, soft drinks

Supreme Court and constitutional law roundup

Supreme Court agrees to review CRST Vans Expedited v. EEOC (Eighth Circuit) on standard for prevailing-party fee awards in EEOC cases, could mean help for defendants against overzealous government lawyering (and thanks for quote) [Sean Higgins, Washington Examiner, earlier here and here]
6-3 win for arbitration and freedom of contract in DirecTV case [Deborah LaFetra/PLF, Daniel Fisher, ABA Journal] WSJ editorial: Bravo to Justice Breyer for upholding as precedent what he’d earlier dissented from on substance [Texans for Lawsuit Reform reprint]
OK to choke off legal defense by freezing all assets before trial, even if not criminally obtained? [Radley Balko]
South Carolina $124 million penalty against Risperdal maker should be recognized as violating Excessive Fines clause [Ilya Shapiro and Randal John Meyer, Cato]
“Supreme Court will review state laws making it a crime to refuse blood-alcohol tests” [ABA Journal, Reason]
Helpless against the administrative state: revisiting SCOTUS’s awful 1944 Yakus case [James Conde and Michael Greve, SSRN via Michael Greve, Law and Liberty]
New Akron Law Review symposium on class action jurisprudence of Roberts Court [Paul Karlsgodt]

Filed under: administrative law, arbitration, class actions, DUI, EEOC, Supreme Court