Court: IVF clinic cannot turn away single customers

“A single woman who was denied treatment by a west Michigan in vitro fertilization clinic can proceed with a lawsuit claiming unlawful discrimination, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a decision released today. The case against Grand Rapids Fertility and IVF was filed after a doctor there told Allison Moon that his clinic could not provide the service out of concern that Michigan paternity law is so vague that a child conceived by IVF and born to a single mother could successfully sue the clinic for child support.” [Dawson Bell, Detroit Free Press] The appeals court said Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits services of public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of marital status among other grounds, extinguishes doctors’ common law right to decide with whom to undertake a physician-patient relationship. [Michigan Health Law Link]

NYT front-pager: law schools don’t teach how to be a lawyer

The story, by David Segal, is here, and yes, I did get there first earlier this year in chapter 3 of my book Schools for Misrule (which you can now take a closer look at through Amazon’s “Look Inside the Book” feature). Reaction from legal academia to Segal’s piece has been largely negative (Matt Bodie/Prawfs, Adler roundup), but Orin Kerr argues:

there’s an underlying point that I think is both important and correct: Law professors, at especially the “top” law schools, are becoming less connected to the legal profession. As a result, over time, they are less likely to know — and therefore less able to teach — the perspective an experienced lawyer would bring to legal problems.

And here is John Steele in the comments section at Prawfs:

Guys, lighten up. The article goes a little overboard here and there but for a general audience readership covers a lot of ground accurately. If “man bites dog” is what makes for news, the fact that students rack up $150,000 in debt and have no clue about mergers get done is news. It’s not news for those of us in practice or law schools or an in-house law departments, but it’s certainly news for the general audience.

Gideon Kanner sees an ideological angle.

P.S. So does Hans Bader. And John Steele amplifies his comments, while Rick Garnett weighs in on the anti-Segal side. Further: Erik Gerding.

NBA-er: team’s medical ineligibility ruling was disability discrimination

“Former National Basketball Association player Cuttino Mobley sued Madison Square Garden LP, parent of the New York Knicks, alleging that the team discriminated against him based on what it perceived to be a disability.
Mobley, who hasn’t played since the 2008-09 season, says the Knicks ended his career by having him declared medically ineligible to play because of a heart ailment, according to the complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.” [Bloomberg, NY Post]

November 21 roundup

  • Spanish government fines filmmaker for movie poster showing “reckless driving” [Lowering the Bar] Siri, distracted driving, and police discretion [Balko]
  • Parents taking care of their kids under Michigan program must pay $30/mo. to SEIU for representation [Joel Gehrke, Examiner]
  • Stretching the Fifth: Joe Francis bad deposition behavior [Legal Ethics Forum]
  • WaPo covers deep split on Consumer Product Safety Commission, left wants fifth seat filled ASAP;
  • “Threat to Student Due Process Rights Dropped from Draft of Violence Against Women Act” [FIRE, background; Cathy Young/Reason]
  • After $300K donation from Philadelphia trial lawyers, you may call him “Judge Wecht” [AP/WPVI]
  • Court reverses $43M Madison County verdict against Ford [AP/Alton Telegraph, some background]

“EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration”

Beyond satire: “Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month. …NHS health guidelines state clearly that drinking water helps avoid dehydration, and that Britons should drink at least 1.2 litres per day.” [Telegraph] A writer in the Guardian defends the ban.

“Passing along” our new tax? Tell it to the judge, mate

The official Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is menacing businesses with audits, “substantiation notices” and potentially stiff fines if they tell customers — even over the phone or in emails — that future price hikes on goods or services are the result of the nation’s newly adopted carbon tax. I discuss at Cato at Liberty (& Mark Hemingway, Weekly Standard).

Food and agriculture law roundup

  • Just as FDA begins laying groundwork for mandatory salt reduction in prepared food, research raises new doubts about the science [Reuters, Atlantic Wire, Alkon]
  • Feds now scrutinizing “everything about kids’ food” [Star-Tribune] Top-down remake of school lunches runs into trouble in Congress [AP]
  • “Christmas tree tax”: blame big growers and GOP lawmakers, not White House [Tad DeHaven, , Mark Perry]
  • Living right by a USDA-designated “food desert,” she’s “never had better access to food in my life.” [Angie Schmitt, Urbanophile] “As income rises, so does fast-food consumption, study finds” [L.A. Times, Sullum] “You can eat local, or you can eat organic, but it’s very hard to do both.” [Felix Salmon]
  • Bloomberg News (not Bloomberg Hizzoner) hypes food-as-addiction, child obesity figuring in more custody battles [WSJ] Michelle Obama on the role of personal responsibility, alas not in this realm of life [Andrew Coulson, Cato]
  • Private bed-leasing law is finally restoring Maryland’s depleted oyster stocks [Rona Kobell, Reason] Catch shares for Alaskan king crab might even be saving human lives [Adler]
  • Why bother cooking for your kids at all? Feds ramp up program that serves them dinner as well as breakfast, lunch [Stoll]