- San Francisco, Seattle, NYC, Oregon: the new rage for predictable scheduling laws [Sara Eber Fowler, Seyfarth Shaw]
- “Montgomery County Wage Hike Will Drive Business to Virginia” [Emily Top, Economics21, Andrew Metcalf/Bethesda Beat, earlier here, here on the Maryland controversy]
- Truthfulness of plaintiff emerges as sticking point in gig-economy-threatening Grubhub suit [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica, earlier]
- Expecting further $15/hour wage enactments, Shake Shack plans for kiosk and app ordering without traditional cashiers’ counters [Ryan Bourne, Cato] What a former McDonald’s CEO had to say last year about the minimum wage-kiosk nexus [Ed Rensi, Forbes] Related: Twitchy quoting me;
- After restaurateur Danny Meyer moves to no-tip policy favored by labor activists, many servers report drop in income [Eater NY] As USDOL rethinks, will there be an end of tip pooling cases against the hospitality industry? [Daniel Schwartz]
- “Department of Labor’s FLSA Overtime Rule: Where Is It Now?” [Eric A. Welter and Kimberly Kauffman, Welter Law Firm]
Posts Tagged ‘Oregon’
Labor and employment roundup
- Sending a letter to your employees informing them of a pending EEOC investigation might itself violate discrimination laws [Jon Hyman] More: Jerome Woehrle;
- As its fiscal year 2017 closes, a “return to frantic filing” at the EEOC [Matthew J. Gagnon, Christopher J. DeGroff, and Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Seyfarth Shaw]
- Once occupational licensure is in place, it’s hard to pry off established interests that grow up around it [Steve Bates, Society for Human Resource Management, and thanks for quotes]
- Nassau’s labor unions say it’s “impossible” to summarize their contracts with county, as financial control board would like [Robert Brodsky, Newsday]
- “Michigan’s pension reforms are kind of a big deal” [Eric Boehm, Reason] “State Police Pay 43 Officers Over $300k Each To Not Retire” [Evan Carter, Michigan Capitol Confidential]
- “Organized Labor Wants to Push Out Local Restaurants and Raise Prices at Portland International Airport” [Nigel Jaquiss, Willamette Week]
Campus free speech roundup
- Many elements of First Amendment doctrine are applicable not at all to private universities and only in substantially modified form to public campuses. True enough, but few go as far in arguing this as does Yale’s Robert Post [Vox, Erwin Chemerinsky response, Will Creeley (FIRE) response, Post response to Creeley]
- Rundown of shout-downs: state representative kept from speaking at Texas Southern’s Thurgood Marshall Law School [Caron/TaxProf, Greenfield] University of Oregon president’s annual state-of-university speech [Oregonian] Pro-Trump hecklers shout down California Attorney General, assembly majority leader at Whittier College [Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE] College Republicans disrupted at UC Santa Cruz, not for inviting someone controversial, just for being them [Celine Ryan/Campus Reform, John Sexton/HotAir]
- Threats of violence against journal editors are one way to get a retraction [Sara Hebel/Chronicle of Higher Education, Jerry Coyne, Oliver Traldi, Quillette (Bruce Gilley, “Case for Colonialism” paper)]
- “New policy authorizes University of Wisconsin to expel students for repeatedly disrupting speakers” [ABA Journal] Will the new rules themselves improperly restrict speech? [Howard Wasserman, Joe Cohn/FIRE first and second posts]
- Debate over proposal by Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) to prohibit “hate speech” on campus [Andrew King vs. Chris Seaton, Simple Justice]
- Federal court agrees that Title IX does not oblige university to ban (now-defunct) student gossip anonymous messaging app Yik Yak [Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE]
Update: jury acquits in Nevada Bundy standoff
“For the second time this year, the federal government tried and failed to convict four men who joined the high-profile Bundy family in its 2014 [Nevada] standoff with federal agents in a dispute over grazing fees for cattle.” Two defendants were acquitted of all charges, and two others were acquitted of most with the jury hanging on the remainder. [Melissa Etehad and David Montero, L.A. Times] Both the armed Nevada standoff, and the later Bundy family takeover of the unoccupied Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon, played at the time as big crisis stories. Despite the weakness of many of the underlying legal claims about land advanced by the protesters, federal prosecutors have struggled to obtain convictions; the Oregon takeover resulted in acquittals in October [our earlier coverage] [revised and corrected; an earlier version of this post had been based on confused chronology]
Wage, hour, and pay roundup
- “AP Writes Over 1300 Words on the Loss Of Summer Jobs for Teens, Never Mentions Minimum Wage” [Coyote, AP] “In Denmark the minimum wage jumps up by 40% when a worker turns 18.” And once workers hit that age their employment levels drop by a third [Alex Tabarrok] More: Bryan Caplan;
- I’m quoted on how Fair Labor Standards Act’s pressure to impose 9 to 5 clock-punching regime pulls in opposite direction from modern trends in workplace organization [Karl Herchenroeder, PJ Media] Podcast on latest developments in Department of Labor overtime rules [Federalist Society with Tammy McCutchen]
- One thing Seattle was doing with its minimum wage hike: widening inequality [Coyote] A hygiene angle on Seattle [Tyler Cowen] Why should Minneapolis pay attention to Seattle, anyway? [Christian Britschgi, Reason] Or Montgomery County, Md.? [Glynis Kazanjian, Maryland Reporter]
- “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished – The Supreme Court May Decide Whether Payments for Meal Breaks Can Offset Alleged Off-The-Clock Work” [Kara Goodwin and Noah Finkel, Seyfarth Shaw on certiorari petition in Smiley v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Company]
- Philadelphia chamber files First Amendment challenge to city law barring inquiries about applicant’s past pay [Stephanie Peet and Timothy McCarthy, WLF]
- “Oregon Wants to Regulate Flexible Work Schedules Out of Existence” [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
Oregon seizes kids because parents have low IQ
The parents have not been accused of abuse or neglect. “Both have standard high school diplomas.” But the state of Oregon considers their IQs to be too low and has seized their two sons in what has turned into a nearly four-year battle [Samantha Swindler, The Oregonian]
Constitutional law roundup
- In name of suicide prevention, Oregon plans to use emergency one-sided hearsay proceedings to take away gun rights [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
- Past Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) readings of Emoluments Clause fall between extreme positions of CREW on the one hand and Trump White House on the other [Jane Chong/Lawfare, earlier]
- “Yes, Justice Thomas, the doctrine of regulatory takings is originalist” [James Burling, PLF] On the Court’s decision in Murr v. Wisconsin (earlier), see also Robert Thomas at his Inverse Condemnation blog here, here, and here;
- Notwithstanding SCOTUS decision in Pavan v. Brown just four days before, Texas Supreme Court intends to take its time spelling out to litigants the implications of Obergefell for municipal employee benefits [Josh Blackman (plus more), Dale Carpenter on Pidgeon v. Turner] Why the Supreme Court is not going to snatch back Obergefell at this point [David Lat]
- Tariff-like barrier: California commercial fishing license fees are stacked against out-of-staters [Ilya Shapiro and David McDonald, Cato]
- H.L. Mencken writes a constitution, 1937 [Sam Bray, Volokh]
Free speech roundup
- ACLU of Oregon has it right: even in near aftermath of violent Portland attack, government cannot revoke rally permits because of disapproval of the message being sent [Ronald K.L. Collins, Scott Shackford/Reason, John Samples/Cato]
- “The ‘eye for an eye’ theory of respecting free speech is particularly pernicious because it represents the worst sort of collectivism, something the principled Right ought reject.” [Ken White, Popehat] Courts have been doing a stellar job of upholding free speech. Other sectors of U.S. society, less so [same]
- tl:dr version: yes, legally it can. “Can Charlotte Pride parade exclude Gays for Trump float?” [Eugene Volokh]
- “California AG agrees: Calif. law does not preclude private citizens from displaying Confederate battle flag at county fairs” [Volokh, earlier]
- “Germany Raids Homes of 36 People Accused of Hateful Postings Over Social Media” [David Shimer, New York Times] Per David Meyer-Lindenberg, German police launched 234,341 investigations over insult or other hurtful speech last year [Scott Greenfield] A vigilant comrade has reported your tweet of Wednesday last to the constabulary as doubleplus ungood [Matt Burgess, Wired, last August on Met Police plans in U.K.]
- On inviting controversial speakers: “A response to Scott Alexander” [Flemming Rose, Cato]
Oregon man fined $500 for calling himself engineer in email to state
By reader acclaim: “In September 2014, Mats Järlström, an electronics engineer living in Beaverton, Oregon, sent an email to the state’s engineering board. The email claimed that yellow traffic lights don’t last long enough, which ‘puts the public at risk.'” The board fined him $500 for “practicing engineering without a license” and for referring to himself as an engineer in correspondence with the state despite his unregistered status. The Institute for Justice is in court on his behalf. [Jason Koebler, Motherboard]
“Portland’s First Mountain-Bike Park Could Be Crippled by a Court Decision”
“Parks where Oregonians pursue adventure sports—like East Portland’s Gateway Green—now have liability for visitors’ injuries. … Last March, the Oregon Supreme Court handed down a ruling that overturned a key premise of a 45-year-old law referred to as the Oregon Public Use of Lands Act.” [Nigel Jaquiss, Willamette Week]