- “Per Hailey’s Law, Washington state police are required to impound a vehicle any time they arrest the driver for a DUI, regardless of whether the car is off the road or someone else can safely drive it away. But that violates the state’s constitution, explains the Washington Supreme Court, because warrantless seizures require individualized consideration of the circumstances. This law eliminates that individualized consideration, and the legislature cannot legislate constitutional rights away.” [Institute for Justice “Short Circuit” on Washington v. Villela, in which it signed on to (IJ signed on to an amicus brief; David Rasbach, Bellingham Herald)
- “The Great American Vape Panic of 2019 Is Producing Some Wild Lawsuits” [Alex Norcia, Vice; Priscilla DeGregory and Ben Feuerherd, New York Post]
- Federal judge rejects state’s challenge to SALT tax revisions, push to raise minimum legal age for marriage, aerial police surveillance in Baltimore, pension funding and more in my new Maryland policy roundup [Free State Notes] Yuripzy Morgan took time on her WBAL radio show to discuss my article on the Supreme Court’s consideration of job bias law and you can listen here;
- Great moments in reparations: candidates propose dropping cash from airplanes on neighborhoods that were redlined 50+ years ago. But mostly different people live there now [Robert VerBruggen, National Review; Andre M. Perry and David Harshbarger, Brookings Institution]
- Full Fifth Circuit should review ruling upholding Indian Child Welfare Act against constitutional challenge [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief seeking en banc reconsideration in Brackeen v. Bernhard; earlier]
- Bay Area: “Donor who gave $45K to elect sheriff got coveted gun permit from her office” [Josh Koehn, Matthias Gafni and Joaquin Palomino, San Francisco Chronicle; Santa Clara County, Calif.]
Posts Tagged ‘Washington state’
Climate change and energy roundup
- France and Sweden rapidly decarbonized their electric grid while continuing economic growth by going nuclear. Why don’t we? [Joshua Goldstein, Staffan Qvist and Steven Pinker, New York Times]
- Washington state appeals court rules “valve turner” activist entitled to present “necessity defense” arguing that “he had no choice but to break into a pipeline facility to save the planet from global warming” [Daniel Fisher, Legal NewsLine]
- Are Canadian climate suits losing steam? [Todd Shepherd, Free Beacon; Stewart Muir, Toronto Sun]
- On fuel blend mandates: “The only good reason for making corn into ethanol is for whiskey.” [Glen Whitman via David R. Henderson, EconLib]
- “Percolating in Washington State: Export-Terminal Permit-Denial Suit Implicates Federalism and Foreign Commerce” [Donald Kochan and Glenn Lammi, Federalist Society, related podcast]
- “Inflicting mass economic harm today in the hope of averting an unknown amount of environmental harm tomorrow is a leap of faith. … It’s not that the cities [filing climate suits] are necessarily wrong; it’s that they can’t know what they claim to know.” [Corbin Barthold, WLF]
“Sheriff Says Use of Camera to Zoom in on Defense Attorney’s Notes Was ‘Inadvertent'”
The courtroom camera in San Juan County, Washington “zoomed back out and then panned to the left to the defense counsel’s table and zoomed down directly on [her] yellow legal pad….” So why’d it do that? The sheriff appears to have argued that releasing the video in question “‘could expose weaknesses in court security,’ but it’s a little late for that. In any event, there is a more interesting question still to be answered, namely why the sheriff can control a courtroom camera from his office.” [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar]
Liability roundup
- A win for class action objector Ted Frank as Seventh Circuit allows him to challenge what he described as “objector blackmail” payments to other intervenors [Amanda Bronstad, National Law Journal, Pearson v. NBTY]
- City of Seattle pays $13 million to settle suit alleging negligent probation supervision of drunk driver [Jessica Lee, Seattle Times, Brian Flores, KCPQ, my 2005 take on Washington’s unique rules on sovereign immunity and more]
- “Family sues Dum Dum lollipop maker over son’s alleged choking incident” [Alexandria Hein, Fox News]
- Thanks to New York’s Scaffold Law, co-op and condo boards “can be held liable for millions of dollars in damages – even if the injured worker was drunk or failed to use safety equipment.” [Habitat mag] “Coverage for East Side Access [infrastructure project] has surpassed half a billion dollars” [Will Bredderman, Crain’s New York]
- As Brett Kavanaugh’s SeaWorld dissent shows, he’s a judge who takes assumption of risk seriously [ABA Journal, SeaWorld v. Perez]
- Twiqbal pleading standards continue to do good, this time in New York state courts [Drug & Device Law]
Social media liberty roundup
- “Congress is on the cusp of gutting Section 230. This is the threat we’ve always knew was coming” [Eric Goldman, R Street Institute/TechFreedom letter, Emma Llansó/CDT on SESTA, Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act]
- Psychiatrist sues to unmask author of 1-star review that caused him “extreme and constant distress” [Post and Courier]
- Judge: Loudoun County, Va. public official violated constituent’s rights by blocking him from “Chair Randall” Facebook page [Sydney Kashiwagi, Loudoun Times, Eugene Volokh, earlier on asserted First Amendment right not to be blocked or deleted on officials’ accounts]
- “Ominous: Canadian Court Orders Google To Remove Search Results Globally” [Daphne Keller/CIS via Volokh, EFF; decision defended by Neil Turkewitz, Truth on the Market]
- “Washington law bans repeated online posts intended to ‘embarrass’ anyone” [Eugene Volokh and second post on Rynearson/Moriwaki dispute]
- Blasphemy laws: Taimoor Raza becomes first person sentenced to death in Pakistan over Facebook posts [CNN]
December 28 roundup
- Washington Supreme Court: psychiatrist can be sued for failure to act when patient expressed homicidal thoughts, even though signs did not point to particular victim [Seattle Times, opinion in Volk v. DeMeerleer; compare Tarasoff duty-to-warn line of cases]
- University of Oregon, which suspended a law professor over an off-campus Hallowe’en costume, could use a refresher on free speech [Josh Blackman, Jonathan Turley, Hans Bader, Susan Kruth/FIRE, Eugene Volokh]
- Prenda Law saga continues: “Feds charge porn-troll lawyers in major fraud, extortion case” [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Joe Mullin/ArsTechnica, indictment, our past coverage including this on attorney Hansmeier’s branching out into ADA web-accessibility complaints]
- Alas, incoming Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been a big defender of civil asset forfeiture [George Will, syndicated/San Angelo (Tex.) Standard-Times]
- Oklahoma law will force restaurants, hotels among others to post signs aimed at discouraging abortion [AP, Eugene Volokh]
- Time to repeal the Community Reinvestment Act [Howard Husock]
Environment roundup
- Feinstein-Collins bill (“Personal Care Products Safety Act”) to regulate soap, lotions, and cosmetics is best left to swirl down drain [Eric Boehm/Reason, earlier, Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetics Guild and ICMAD (mid-sized and smaller companies), Modern Soapmaking, my appearance on KPCC “AirTalk”]
- Standing in the need of standing: federal judge denies motion to dismiss suit over global warming against federal government and business groups on behalf of 21 young persons and scientist James Hansen [Phuong Le, AP/ABC News]
- Seattle home buyers, it’s okay to choke a little at what your money could have bought in low-regulation Houston instead [Randal O’Toole, more] Land use regs impede economic mobility: you could have read it at Cato first [David Boaz]
- “Why Industrial Farms Are Good for the Environment” [Jayson Lusk]
- “Suit claiming air emissions that fall to the ground constitute hazardous waste under Superfund proves too ambitious even for the Ninth Circuit” [WLF’s summary of Kevin Haroff and Zachary Kearns, Marten Law]
- “State social justice groups did not feel consulted” in carbon tax proposal on Washington ballot, which failed [Coyote, AP/KIRO]
Teen shot by friend, survivors sue government
“The family of a 13-year-old boy fatally shot by a friend in a wooded area of Joint Base Lewis-McChord has sued the federal government, alleging a hole in the fence around the base contributed to his death.” [Tacoma News-Tribune]
Government buys billboards urging more power for government
Billboards in Washington state urging tougher environmental regulations on farmers were funded by (if this still comes as any shock) the federal taxpayers, through a grant program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And that wasn’t disclosed, although by agency rule it was supposed to be. [Don Jenkins, Capital Press] A few months ago EPA got caught illegally expending tax money to stir up pressure on Congress to support a wider interpretation of its own powers on the “Waters of the United States” rule. More on advocacy funding here.
Related, from way back in 1999, “Smart Growth at the Federal Trough: EPA’s Financing of the Anti-Sprawl Movement” by Peter Samuel and Randal O’Toole, Cato Policy Analysis #361:
The federal government should not subsidize one side of a public policy debate; doing so undermines the very essence of democracy. Nor should government agencies fund nonprofit organizations that exist primarily to lobby other government agencies. Congress should shut down the federal government’s anti-sprawl lobbying activities and resist the temptation to engage in centralized social engineering.
Campus climate roundup
- Some profs still deny: “The Glaring Evidence That Free Speech Is Threatened on Campus” [Conor Friedersdorf]
- Student demands at Western Washington University would “create an almost cartoonishly autocratic liberal thought police on campus” [Robby Soave] After University of Kansas professor tried awkwardly to discuss her own white privilege, students took offense and things haven’t gone well for her [Robby Soave: update, Althouse]
- Feds equivocate on whether notorious campus “Dear Colleague” letter has force of law [Hans Bader, CEI; George Leef, Pope Center; me on the letter in 2013]
- Yale expels the captain of its basketball team, and KC Johnson has some questions Minding the Campus, Academic Wonderland]
- I wanted to scream about insensitive canoe discourse in Canada and there was no one to hear me but the loons [CBC] And an instant classic: feminist glaciology framework for a more just and equitable science and “human-ice interactions” [Sage Journals; U. of Oregon, part of $412K NSF grant]
- Lose that worldview, citizen: attending public Oklahoma university requires “changing our worldview to accommodate others’ experiences of oppression.” [Audra Brulc via @DouglasLevene]