Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘Pennsylvania’

States ordered nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients, cont’d

“States ordered nursing homes to take COVID-19 residents. Thousands died. How it happened.” We previously linked to earlier reporting on this remarkable set of decisions, with a focus on New York and New Jersey, but this report adds much detail as well as updating the ghastly toll. “Strikingly, Italian officials issued similar orders for nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients on March 8, a move under investigation by authorities for contributing to potentially preventable deaths, according to the Associated Press.” [David Robinson, Stacey Barchenger and Kelly Powers, USA Today Network, and Jo Ciavaglia, Bucks County Courier Times (Pennsylvania)]

More: Jim Geraghty rounds up many states’ problematic policies.

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COVID-19 pandemic roundup

  • Get the truckers what they need: reversing itself, Pennsylania agrees to reopen all 17 closed turnpike service plazas, heavily relied on by truck workforce [Ashley, CDL Life]
  • No, Senator, Medicare for All would not have kept us safe: “An Epidemic Big Enough to Accommodate Everyone’s Wish List” [Jacob Sullum] Has spending on the federal Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health been squeezed, gutted, etc.? My colleague Chris Edwards checks the numbers;
  • This is not the first time epidemics have interrupted the Supreme Court in its work [ABA Journal]
  • Medical supplier, speaking anonymously “for fear of FDA retaliation,” says it has large quantities of protective masks ready that cannot be used or even unpacked until FDA gets around to inspection [Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner] As part of liability protection, new bill will allow masks manufactured for industrial uses to be put into health care service [Jeanne Whalen, Washington Post; earlier here and here]
  • Good luck and renewed health to David Lat, founder of Above the Law and longtime friend of this site, who’s on ventilation in a New York hospital with a COVID-19 diagnosis [New York Law Journal, his Twitter and Facebook posts]
  • Emergency measures have a way of bleeding into later policy: “Politicians Declare Eviction Moratoriums To Combat Coronavirus. Will They Give Up That Power After the Virus Fades?” [Christian Britschgi]

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March 4 roundup

  • Educated Canadian circles have politely indulged theories about how indigenous sovereignty is purer and more legitimate than so-called settler government. Ten thousand land acknowledgments later, comes the reckoning [J.J. McCullough, Washington Post] Read and marvel: “As lawyers and legal academics living and working on this part of Turtle Island now called Canada, we write to demand…” [Toronto Star; similarly, David Moscrop, Washington Post]
  • Plaintiff’s lawyers in talc case played footsie with Reuters reporters: “Judge Sanctions Simmons Hanly for ‘Frivolous’ Disclosure of Johnson & Johnson CEO’s Deposition” [Amanda Bronstad, New York Law Journal]
  • Bernie Sanders’ disastrous rent control plan [Cato Daily Podcast with Ryan Bourne and Caleb Brown] Housing construction unwelcome unless public? Vermont senator boosts opposition to East Boston plan to build mix of 10,000 market and affordable new homes on defunct racetrack [Christian Britschgi]
  • Happy to get a request from Pennsylvania to reprint and distribute my chapter on redistricting and gerrymandering, found on pp. 293-299 of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers (2017). If you’re interested in the topic, check it out;
  • Family courts deciding the future of a child commonly don’t take testimony from foster carers. Should that change? [Naomi Schaefer Riley/Real Clear Investigations, quotes me]
  • Supreme Court will not review Ninth Circuit ruling that Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits city of Boise from enforcing law against homeless encampments when there are insufficient beds available in shelters [Federalist Society teleforum and transcript with Andy Hessick and Carissa Hessick]

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Some election results

* As expected, Democrats took over both houses in the Virginia legislature, sweeping the D.C. and Richmond suburbs where they successfully nationalized the issues. Virginia has been a badly gerrymandered state, which figured as an issue in the campaign. Now that they are fully in charge of the process, Virginia Democrats will need to decide whether they actually believe in moving toward neutral and impartial redistricting methods that take the power of line-drawing out of the hands of interested parties.

* New York City voters overwhelmingly approved a proposal to adopt ranked choice voting (RCV) in primary and some other elections. While I know this isn’t a universally shared view, I see a lot of merit in ranked choice voting and look forward to seeing more large jurisdictions experiment with it.

* Jim Hood, whose doings as Mississippi Attorney General have long furnished grist for this blog, looks to have fallen short in his bid for Mississippi governor.

* The “crime victims’ rights” package known as Marsy’s Law was on the Pennsylvania ballot. My piece on why it’s a really, really bad idea.

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Labor and employment roundup

  • Democratic contenders’ platforms on employment issues: Sanders still gets out furthest to left but Warren, Buttigieg, and O’Rourke giving him some serious competition [Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox]
  • Occupational licensure: more states embrace reform [Eric Boehm] Bright spots include Colorado (Gov. Jared Polis vetoes expansion) and Pennsylvania (recognition of out-of-state licenses) [Alex Muresianu and more] Connecticut catching up on nail salons, in a bad way [Scott Shackford]
  • “Trump’s Labor Board Is Undoing Everything Obama’s Did” [Robert VerBruggen, NRO] A theme: to protect employee freedom of choice [Glenn Taubman and Raymond J. LaJeunesse, Federalist Society]
  • Mistaken classification of a worker as an independent contractor, whatever its other unpleasant legal implications for an employer, is not an NLRA violation when not intended to interfere with rights under the Act [Todd Lebowitz; Washington Legal Foundation; In re Velox Express]
  • Modern employers need to watch out for their HR departments, says Jordan Peterson [interviewed by Tyler Cowen, via David Henderson]
  • Despite effects of federal pre-emption, state constitutions afford a possible source of rights claims for workers [Aubrey Sparks (Alaska, Florida constitutions) and Jonathan Harkavy (North Carolina), On Labor last year]

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October 2 roundup

  • Supreme Court should step in to protect freedom of association against California’s push to obtain donor identities for controversial groups [Ilya Shapiro and James Knight on Cato certiorari amicus brief in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra, earlier]
  • Civil liberties implications pretty dire if taken seriously: “Trump White House Mulls Monitoring the Mentally Ill for Future Violence” [Cato Daily Podcast with Julian Sanchez and Caleb Brown]
  • Online platform liability: “all the ignorance about and hostility toward Section 230 of late has been infecting the courts.” Take for example the Ninth Circuit [Cathy Gellis, TechDirt]
  • New book (not seen by me) by Bruce Cannon Gibney, The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System, draws a favorable review from Tyler Cowen and a less favorable one from Mark Pulliam;
  • The loophole that lets 3.1 million persons — even millionaires — collect SNAP benefits even though they wouldn’t otherwise meet eligibility standards, and why some state agencies are fine with this [Angela Rachidi and Matt Weidinger, AEI]
  • Mark your calendar for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Nov. 16: I’ll be a featured speaker (as will author Dave Daley) at “Reclaiming Our Democracy: The PA Conference to End Gerrymandering” [Fair Districts PA]

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Pennsylvania special: muzzle a critic for about $300

“Pennsylvania offers the flimsiest of SLAPP protections, something [Joe] Schiavo discovered firsthand when he served as vice chair of the Old City Civic Association’s zoning committee.” The civic association often took a role in development controversies, and after facing repeated (though unsuccessful) lawsuits from developers and owners, was dropped by its insurance carrier and decided to disband. “‘For the cost of a filing fee, probably less than $300, they actually shut down the civic association,’ Schiavo said of the organization’s litigious opponents. (The fee for a non-jury trial complaint in Common Pleas Court is $333.)” Among others who’ve used Pennsylvania law to go after critics: prominent politicians. [David Gambacorta, Allentown Morning Call/Tribune News Service]

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Medical roundup

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Environment roundup

  • EPA confirms the view of its peer agencies around the world: glyphosate weed killer, found in Roundup, is not a carcinogen [Tom Polansek, Reuters, earlier, more]
  • Mayor Bulldozer? Critical look at Pete Buttigieg’s push to tear down hundreds of vacant dilapidated South Bend homes and fine the owners [Henry Gomez, BuzzFeed; see also Chris Sikich, Indianapolis Star]
  • “Why Trump should call off the EPA’s latest assault on NYC” [Nicole Gelinas, New York Post; $3 billion to revamp and cover over a Yonkers reservoir]
  • “‘High-yield’ farming costs the environment less than previously thought – and could help spare habitats” [Cambridge University]
  • Is clarity finally coming on the scope of federal control of local surface waters? [Jonathan Adler on Trump administration “Waters of the United States” regulation; Tony Francois, Federalist Society on prospects for “navigable waters” at the Supreme Court]
  • “New Jersey Court Strikes Down Use of Eminent Domain to Take Property to “Bank” it for Possible Future Use” [Ilya Somin] Pennsylvania law promoted as fixing blighted neighborhoods used to steal people’s homes [Eric Boehm]

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April 17 roundup

  • Estonia introduces artificial intelligence algorithms to adjudicate small claims disputes [Eric Niiler, Wired]
  • “The Connecticut Ruling: Another Attempt to Blame the Gun for Gun Crime” [Joyce Lee Malcolm, Law and Liberty on 4-3 Connecticut Supreme Court ruling finding state consumer law not preempted by federal PLCAA (Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act)] “But will the Supreme Court allow Connecticut to circumvent federal law?” [Scott Greenfield] Remington will seek certiorari review at U.S. Supreme Court [Dave Collins, AP/WTIC]
  • In Pennsylvania, there’s “a feeling that law firms can get judges fired” after a worker’s comp judge who angered “one of the state’s most politically connected law firms…quickly lost her job” [William Bender, Philadelphia Daily News]
  • Nanny staters vs. comptroller’s moves to modernize alcohol marketing regulation, no action on Sixth District gerrymander, Angelos asbestos bill tripped up, critics are right to oppose push to abolish child-abuse statute of limitation, heads should roll in business lobby after minimum wage fiasco, and more in a Sine Die (end of legislative term) roundup at my Maryland blog Free State Notes;
  • “Harm Reduction: Shifting from a War on Drugs to a War on Drug-Related Deaths,” videos of Cato Institute conference with Jeffrey Singer, Maia Szalavitz, Ed Rendell, Clark Neily, Jeffrey Miron, Michael Cannon, and others [parts one, two, three, four, Jeffrey Singer overview blog post] and related Cato podcasts with Daniel Ciccarone on prohibition as crisis driver, Scott MacDonald on heroin-assisted treatment, Darwin Fisher on supervised injection, and Adrianne Wilson-Poe on cannabis and opioid overdose;
  • “How Are State Supreme Court Justices Selected?” [Federalist Society Policy Brief video with Chris Bonneau and Brian Fitzpatrick]

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