- Are public subsidies to low-earning employees a subsidy to their employers, as Sen. Bernie Sanders claims? [Cato Daily Podcast with Ryan Bourne and Caleb Brown; Bourne in USA Today and National Review]
- “To Speak or Not to Speak, That Is Your Right: Janus v. AFSCME” [David F. Forte, Cato Supreme Court Review] From two critics of decision: “What Janus Got Right — and Wrong” [Will Baude and Eugene Volokh] “More on Suits against Unions for Janus Violations” [Will Baude] Earlier here, here, etc.
- On sexual harassment, social mores have changed; biology hasn’t [Suzanne Lucas, Law and Liberty]
- California’s criminal code is honeycombed with special exemptions for conduct carried on as part of labor activity [Edmund Pine, California Policy Center last year] Or at least make sure federal law does not provide it an artificial shield: “Congress Should Ban Union Violence” [Emily Top, Economics21; David Kendrick, Cato 1998]
- “Verizon employee leaves work early, prompting months long investigation, during which employees offered conflicting accounts of whether the employee’s departure was authorized. NLRB: All of which was a pretext to fire a union-supporting employee. D.C. Circuit: Nope. Companies can fire employees for being dishonest, and that’s all that happened here.” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit” on Cellco Partnership v. NLRB]
- “Workers affect worker safety too” [David Henderson]
Posts Tagged ‘California’
Banking and finance roundup
- Critique of political-spending provisions of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on corporate governance [Prof. Bainbridge] Plus, some WSJ letters on her plan [same; earlier here, here, and here]
- “The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business” [Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]
- Something to keep in mind in New York Attorney General races: “The Martin Act Gives New York Politicians Way Too Much National Power” [Jeff Patch, Real Clear Markets, and thanks for quotes]
- Through its Charities Bureau the New York AG’s office can also make life difficult for private nonprofits of whose ideology it disapproves; Democratic nominee Letitia (Tish) James says she intends to use the power to go after crisis pregnancy centers and NRA [Zach Williams, City And State NY]
- Treasury based a list of supposed Russian oligarchs on Forbes mag list of wealthy Russians. Now a 79-year-old laser scientist faces sanctions who’s been a U.S. citizen for 10 years and says he isn’t friendly with Putin [Steven Mufson, Washington Post]
- “Why California’s Gender Quota Bill [for corporate boards] Is More Likely To Be Unconstitutional Than California’s Pseudo-Foreign Corporation Statute” [Keith Paul Bishop, California Corporate & Securities Law (Allen Matkins)]
Police and prosecution roundup
- After parking lot shooting Pinellas County, Florida sheriff “claim[ed] his hands were tied by Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. But that is not true” [Jacob Sullum, Reason, more; David French, NRO]
- Major USA Today story on origins of Baltimore’s devastating crime and murder wave [Brad Heath; Jonathan Blanks, Cato]
- Related: in Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force police scandal, plea bargains punished the innocent [Capital News Service investigation by Angela Roberts, Lindsay Huth, Alex Mann, Tom Hart and James Whitlow: first, second, third parts]
- California Senate votes 26 to 11 to abolish felony murder rule, under which participants in some serious crimes face murder rap if others’ actions result in death [ABA Journal, bill]
- New Jersey’s reforms curtailing cash bail, unlike Maryland’s, seem to be working reasonably well [Scott Shackford; longer Shackford article on bail in Reason; earlier here, here, etc.]
- “Miami Police Union Says Head-Kicking Cop ‘Used Great Restraint,’ Shouldn’t Be Charged” [Jerry Iannelli, Miami New Times]
Land use and real estate roundup
- Political fight brewing in California over ballot initiative that would pave way for bringing back rent control [Michael Hendrix, City Journal]
- “Metes and bounds” method of describing legal property boundaries has been much derided, but new archival research from American colonial period suggests its benefits then were greater and costs lower than might appear [Maureen (Molly) Brady, SSRN, forthcoming Yale Law Journal] Just for fun: street grid orientation (or lack thereof) in major cities expressed as polar charts [Geoff Boeing]
- “Alexandria, Virginia Gets Housing Affordability Wrong” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- Houston does not zone but it does subsidize deed restrictions. Is that good? [Nolan Gray, Market Urbanism]
- Great moments in historic preservation: “Silver Lake gas station moves toward landmark status” but connoisseurs say it’s not nearly as choice as the three service stations previously landmarked in L.A. [Curbed Los Angeles]
- “America’s Ugly Strip Malls Were Caused By Government Regulation” [Scott Beyer]
July 11 roundup
- “Expensive new licensing requirements and the bureaucratic headache of implementing” new regulations are expected to reduce further the number of agencies offering international adoption to U.S. families [Liz Wolfe, Reason] And don’t forget to mark your calendar and, if you can attend in person, register for next week’s July 19 Cato conference on adoption policy, at which international adoption will be one focus;
- Report confirms again what I wrote nearly a year ago: many persons are being held in jail longer under Maryland’s ill-thought-out venture in restricting cash bail [Lynh Bui, Washington Post, my WSJ piece last September, more]
- Online data protection episode is just latest instance of how California initiative process can put disturbing leverage in private hands [Cathy Gellis, TechDirt]
- “The cans now read ‘NON-TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT ALMA MATER IPA’ with no other Pitt-related images.” [Grant Burgman, Pitt News on campus beer trademark controversy]
- “Pregnancy discrimination? Don’t rely on government for additional protection” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]
- If you’re looking to dodge voir dire scrutiny: “How To Get On a Jury” [Mark Bennett, Reason]
Regulation’s costs for low-skilled workers
Regulation of the labor market doesn’t come for free, and many of its costs fall on low-skilled workers, especially in states like California, writes employer Warren Meyer [Regulation Magazine]
Plus: how he came to write and revamp the piece, with a bit of help from yours truly [Coyote]
103 members of Congress to DoJ: do something to stop wave of web accessibility suits
“Responding to the surge of website accessibility lawsuits filed under Title III of the ADA, 103 members of Congress from both parties sent a letter to Attorney General Sessions urging action to stem the tide of website accessibility lawsuits.” The group is led by Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and J. Luis Correa (D-Calif.) [Minh N. Vu and Samuel Sverdlov, Seyfarth Shaw]
Related, more trouble coming down the road: “The World Wide Web Consortium just published an expanded version of the WCAG to add 17 more requirements to address new technologies and other digital barriers for individuals with disabilities.” [Kristina M. Launey and Minh N. Vu, Seyfarth Shaw]
And yet more: federal-level reform is one thing, but a California state court decision in Los Angeles sets the stage for costly liability under the state Unruh Act no matter how Washington goes.
California’s privacy-law bomb
Eric Goldman, “A Privacy Bomb Is About to Be Dropped on the California Economy and the Global Internet”:
By tomorrow, the California legislature likely will pass a sweeping, lengthy, overly-complicated, and poorly-constructed privacy law that will have ripple effects throughout the world. While not quite as comprehensive as the GDPR, it copies some aspects of the GDPR and will squarely impact every Internet service in California (some of whom may be not currently be complying GDPR due to their US-only operations). The GDPR took 4 years to develop; in contrast, the California legislature will spend a grand total of 7 days working on this major bill. It’s such a short turnaround that most stakeholders won’t have a chance to participate in the legislative proceedings. So the Internet is likely to change radically tomorrow, and most people have no clue what’s coming or any voice in the process.
As bad as this sounds, the legislature’s passage of the bill is likely the GOOD outcome in this scenario. What could be worse?
Read on in the post for a discussion of the peculiar dangers of the contemporary California initiative process. And as predicted, the bill did pass, unanimously [Issie Lapowsky, Wired]
California water projects face legal slog
“Constant litigation, combined with years of legislation empowering unions and state agency bureaucrats to slow construction, have quadrupled the time required to build California’s water projects.” [Ed Ring, City Journal]
Meanwhile, on the national level: “It can take years to get a federal permit for a major infrastructure project. Congress has an opportunity to change that” [Philip Wallach and Nick Zaiac, Brookings]
Labor and employment roundup
- Sens. Marco Rubio, Elizabeth Warren team up on federal bill to curb practice of yanking occupational licenses over unpaid student debt [Eric Boehm] “Pennsylvania’s Governor Calls for Abolishing 13 Occupational Licenses” [same] Licensing reform generally hasn’t been a partisan battle, but party-line vote in California legislative committee has derailed one promising bill [same] Nebraska gets out in front on the issue with a bill sponsored by libertarian state senator Laura Ebke [Platte Institute] “You Shouldn’t Need a License to Braid Hair” [Ilya Shapiro and Aaron Barnes on Cato amicus brief in Niang v. Tomblinson]
- Alone among states, California requires a “mandatory mediation and conciliation process” for agricultural employers. Arbitrary and open to constitutional challenge [Ilya Shapiro and Reilly Stephens on Cato amicus brief for California Supreme Court certiorari in Gerewan Farming Inc. v. Agricultural Labor Relations Board]
- “Lawsuits that compel sharing economy companies to treat their contractors as full-fledged employees will only forestall the inevitable transition towards a Tomorrow 3.0 economy.” [Pamela Hobart, Libertarianism.org reviewing Michael Munger’s new book “Tomorrow 3.0”] Plaintiffs in California Supreme Court ruling: “Uber Drivers Just Killed All the Parts of the Job They Supposedly Liked the Most” [Coyote]
- Or maybe the gig economy isn’t taking over after all [Ben Casselman, New York Times; Ben Gitis and Will Rinehart, American Action Forum, on new Bureau of Labor Statistics survey finding that prevalence of contingent work has declined, not risen, since 2005]
- “Original Meaning Should Decide Arbitration Act Case on Independent Contractors” [Andrew Grossman and Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus in Supreme Court case of New Prime v. Oliviera]
- “Disability rates among working-age adults are shaped by race, place, and education” [Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman, Brookings]