- In separate incidents, public universities (Rutgers and the University of New Mexico, respectively) discipline a professor and a med student over vulgar and inflammatory political postings on their personal Facebook pages. First Amendment trouble [FIRE on Rutgers case; Eugene Volokh: Rutgers, UNM cases]
- Defend someone who’s facing Title IX charges, and you just might yourself find yourself facing Title IX charges too along with the withholding of your degree [ABA Journal on Yogesh Patil case; Drew Musto, Cornell Sun (19 Cornell law profs write to president to criticize withholding of Ph.D.); Scott Greenfield]
- Social justice bureaucracy within University of Texas might be bigger than some whole universities [Mark Pulliam] “Ohio State employs 88 diversity-related staffers at a cost of $7.3M annually” [Derek Draplin, The College Fix]
- “Male, pale and stale university professors are to be given ‘reverse mentors’ to teach them about unconscious bias, under a new [U.K.] Government funded scheme” [Camilla Turner, Telegraph]
- “Wow, this is truly astounding. A *published* paper [on gender differences in trait variability] was deleted and an imposter paper of same length and page numbers substituted to appease a mob.” [Theodore P. Hill, Quillette, as summarized by Alex Tabarrok] Reception of James Damore episode on campus: “[T]hose of us working in tech have been trying to figure out what we can and cannot say on the subject of diversity. You might imagine that a university would be more open to discussing his ideas, but my experience suggests otherwise.” [Stuart Reges, Quillette]
- Speak not of oaths: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is latest public institution to require diversity statements of all faculty, staff applicants [Rita Loffredo, The College Fix] Harvard students “will be required to complete a Title IX training module to enroll in fall 2018 classes” [Jamie D. Halper, Harvard Crimson]
Posts Tagged ‘Texas’
Opioids roundup
- Prisoners die of drug overdoses at a high rate in their first week after release. That’s in part a prohibition-related problem [Jeffrey Miron, Cato]
- “Drug testing kits can detect the presence of fentanyl and other contaminants — but in many places, including Illinois, they are classified as illegal drug paraphernalia.” [Steve Chapman]
- “Hospitalized Patients Are Civilian Casualties in the Government’s War on Opioids” [Jeffrey A. Singer, Cato, more]
- Texas: “Opioid lawyers pumped $110K into LaHood’s campaign after Bexar County DA hired them” [David Yates, Southeast Texas Record] “State senator working with Watts on home turf opioid lawsuit, lawyers billing Hidalgo County $3,800 an hour” [SE Texas Record]
- “Cities Vs. States: A Looming Battle For Control Of High-Stakes Opioid Litigation” [Daniel Fisher on Tennessee AG’s intervention]
- All 50 states have now adopted prescription drug monitoring programs, but do they work as intended? [Jeffrey Singer, Jacob Sullum]
Medical roundup
- “Trump Joins Campaign To Force Big Pharma To Pay for Opioid Crisis” [Ira Stoll] “Records show all-out, unsolicited attorney scramble to sign up Texas counties for opioid litigation” [David Yates, Southeast Texas Record] “Plaintiff Lawyers See Nationwide Settlement As Only End For Opioid Lawsuits” [Daniel Fisher, LNL/Forbes] “Leading Opioid Litigation Firm Becomes a Top Donor to McCaskill Leading Up to Report’s Release” [Ethan Stoetzer, Inside Sources]
- NYT columnist David Leonhardt pens column urging cutting back on sweets as a political gesture against “attempts to profit off your body,” and others push back [Ira Stoll; Tamar Haspel, citing this 2016 piece on how the science is more complicated]
- “Study: Medical Expenses Cause Close to 4% of Personal Bankruptcies—not 60%” [Michael Cannon, Cato; earlier here, etc., related here]
- Genetic engineering of animal life: “How the FDA Virtually Destroyed an Entire Sector of Biotechnology” [John Cohrssen and Henry Miller, Cato “Regulation”]
- “Very cheap (tobacco) products should no longer be available.” Why should you get to decide that for other people? [John Stossel, Reason]
- Lawyer ads scare patients out of taking needed medication [download Cary Silverman, U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform via John O’Brien, Forbes]
Texas battles foster care decree
Do teenagers have a constitutional right to drivers’ education as a part of substantive due process? That’s one question raised by a hard-fought battle over federal judge Janis Jack’s virtual takeover of the Texas foster care system. The state has strongly pressed its defense, and the Fifth Circuit has stayed Jack’s injunction. As with earlier ventures into institutional reform litigation in such fields as school finance and busing, special education, and prison reform, the case raises separation of powers issues by transferring the power of the purse into judicial hands and delegating essentially legislative powers to special masters and, implicitly, to private advocacy lawyers who drive the process. [Mark Pulliam/Law and Liberty, first and second parts; Robert T. Garrett, Dallas News; more on foster care, institutional reform litigation and its frequent result, consent decrees]
Environment roundup
- Texans tangle over municipal ordinances requiring preservation of trees on private land [Mindy Fetterman, Huffington Post]
- WOTUS, SCOTUS, and POTUS: “The Supreme Court wrestles again with the Clean Water Act’s due process deficit” [Jonathan Wood, earlier]
- Florida turned land into bird sanctuary without owners’ consent. As compensation it gave them “points.” Takings review needed [Ilya Shapiro and Meggan DeWitt, Cato on Ganson v. City of Marathon and Trevor Burrus’s first official brief] Alas, SCOTUS has denied certiorari on two other property rights cases, 616 Croft Ave. v. City of West Hollywood and Wayside Church v. Van Buren County;
- “How Suburban Parking Requirements Hold Back Downtown” [Nolan Gray, Market Urbanism]
- “Does the Constitution Provide a Substantive Due-Process Right to a Stable Climate System?” [Andrew R. Varcoe, WLF]
- Short Circuit: “Does Texas’ delegation of its eminent domain power to private pipeline companies violate the Due Process Clause? Probably not, according to this Fifth Circuit panel.” [John Ross, Short Circuit, on Boerschig v. Trans-Pecos Pipeline]
States’ boycotts of states, cont’d
“California state university researchers are banned from using funds to travel to Texas to study Harvey’s aftermath.” — Joshua McCabe on Twitter. The guidelines from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra do cite the legislature’s allowance of a number of narrow exceptions including travel that is “required…for the protection of public health, welfare, or safety, as determined by the affected agency.” The cited project, however, might not make it past that tough standard, given that it is possible in principle to wait and study flood aftermaths in some other place that (unlike Texas) is not under legislated California sanctions.
All of which should remind us that boycotts of states by other states 1) operate like internal trade barriers; 2) do not do much for national unity. See earlier posts from April 2015 (would Constitution provide any remedy if states closed state university systems to residents of “bad” states?); April 2016 (logic of lifting sanctions against Cuba extends to sanctions against Texas and North Carolina).
Police roundup
- “My dad was a cop. He despised the bad guys. But he always told me, ‘we’re the good guys and people should always know the difference.'” [Rep. Eric Swalwell on Twitter, Daniel Dale/Toronto Star on President’s “You can take the hand away, okay?” remarks about handling of suspects in custody; reactions from IACP and rounded up at NYT; related Caroline Linton, CBS News on Suffolk County, N.Y. police department]
- New legislation in Texas, pushed by police unions, authorizes special courts for cops, guards, and first responders who seek to blame misbehavior on job-related mental conditions [Jolie McCullough/Texas Tribune via Radley Balko]
- Providence has bad habit of ticketing drivers over parking practices you’d assume were legal [Susan Campbell/WPRI, Scott Shetler/Quirky Travel Guy, 2011]
- Boston cop to be reinstated with five years’ back pay after nearly choking unarmed man to death; victim, a corrections deputy, had settled with city for $1.4 million [Boston Herald via Jonathan Blanks] Camera saves footage from 30 seconds before activation button pushed: “Baltimore is reviewing 100 cases after video leaks appearing to show police planting drug evidence” [Veronika Bondarenko/Business Insider, Justin Fenton and Kevin Rector/Baltimore Sun] What’s it take for cops to get disciplined, anyway? [Jonathan Blanks on Fort Worth, Tex. whistleblowing case]
- From the Des Moines Boy Police to D.A.R.E.: America’s long history of enlisting kids as cops to watch peers, family [Joshua Reeves, Reason]
- Among the public policy involvements of the Fraternal Order of Police: arguing in the Bank of America housing-disparate-impact case for more bank liability to municipalities over lending practices [Liz Farmer, Governing]
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]
Don’t
Things attorneys really should know without having to be told: “Lawyer indicted for filing lawsuits without clients’ knowledge” [Brownsville Herald, Insurance Journal, Texas Department of Insurance on hailstorm suits]
June 21 roundup
- “Law Professors: Three Centuries of Shaping American Law”: The Economist favorably reviews new Stephen Presser book;
- Profile of Texas Supreme Court notes that its members regularly face opposition at election time from alliance of plaintiffs’ bar with some social conservatives [Mark Pulliam]
- 10 lawyers, 6 others charged in alleged workers’ comp fraud scheme targeting Latinos in California [Associated Press]
- Employee’s ADA case against Novartis backfires, court orders her to pay nearly $2 million; her attorney quit case after discrepancies in her background were discovered [Kathleen O’Brien, NJ.com]
- To protect the children, feds ban a product one of whose functions is to keep drugs out of hands of children [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
- Budget choices and trade-offs faced by advocacy groups don’t give them constitutionally required standing to sue [Daniel E. Jones and Archis Parasharami, WLF]