Chief Judge Kozinski skewers Guam lawyer
Guam has created a political process that only allows Chamorros – and their ancestors — to vote on Guam independence. This is a blatant attempt to restrict the right to vote on the basis of ancestry,...
View ArticleWill the Supreme Court finally get to rule on disparate impact?
Will the third time be the charm for having the U.S. Supreme Court decide whether disparate impact discrimination claims are allowed under the Fair Housing Act? Later this month, on September 29th,...
View ArticleFederal courts expanding disparate impact analysis in recent Voting Rights...
Here on the Liberty Blog, we have often posted about the perils of “disparate impact” laws; that is, laws that allow courts to find illicit discrimination in a facially neutral action without any...
View ArticleSupreme Court to decide if the Fair Housing Act allows disparate impact claims
Today the Supreme Court announced it would accept review in the case Texas Dept. of Hous. & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project on the one issue that has escaped resolution by the...
View ArticleNR-PLF Supreme Court preview event: fish and raisin jokes, and some serious...
National Review/Pacific Legal Foundation’s “first annual” preview event on Monday of the Supreme Court’s term was a great success, as reflected by the live coverage and two re-broadcasts by C-SPAN....
View ArticleWhy the Colbert Report is wrong about friend-of-the-court briefs
Various news and entertainment outlets have questioned the usefulness of friend-of-the-court briefs (also known as amicus briefs) at the Supreme Court. Both the New York Times and the Colbert Report...
View ArticleBrown signs bill that purports to overturn Schuette
Ten days ago, Governor Brown signed AB 2646 into law. The stated purpose of the statute is return the law to where it was before the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Schuette v. BAMN — the case...
View ArticleIs the denial of preferential treatment discrimination?
One group in the State of Washington thinks so. White female contractors are threatening to sue that state’s department of transportation if they aren’t given preferential treatment based on their...
View ArticleWhat can Moneyball teach us about the debate over racial preferences?
Some things are accepted as so obvious that people rarely ask whether they are true. Take baseball for example. There used to be a time when fans and managers alike hyped up a pitcher as a “winner,” a...
View ArticleMoneyball Sentencing
University of New Mexico School of Law Professor Dawinder Sidhu has an excellent article available at SSRN about the criminal justice’s system increasing use of statistics to predict a defendant’s...
View ArticleDemocracy, distrust, and the Schuette dissent
Today is Election Day. As Justice Sotomayor noted in her dissent in Schuette v. BAMN, “we are fortunate to live in a democratic society. But without checks, democratically approved legislation can...
View ArticleCan noncitizen votes decide U.S. elections?
The heated debate over voter fraud and illegal voting has largely occurred without reliable data on the extent of the problem, but that may be changing in part with a new academic study on noncitizen...
View ArticleFederal judge calls out HUD; strikes down disparate impact regulations
This week a judge from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated disparate impact regulations promulgated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The regulations...
View ArticlePresident’s weekly report — November 7, 2014
Property Rights — Coastal Land Rights Victory We received a mixed, but largely favorable opinion from the federal trial court in Sansotta v. Town of Nag’s Head. This is the case where the town refused...
View ArticlePresident’s weekly report — November 14, 2014
Clean Water Act This week, we submitted comments on the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA’s proposed rule redefining the term “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. The rule, if...
View ArticleElite universities sued over race-based admissions
Yesterday, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina were sued over their race-based admissions practices. The complaints (here and here) describe, in detail, the divisive use of race at...
View ArticleMake the Fair Housing Act fair: Remove disparate impact
On October 2, 2014, the United States Supreme Court granted review in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. When it did, the Court made it clear...
View ArticlePresident’s weekly report — December 5, 2014
Property Rights — The Public Trust Doctrine like The Blob? PLF attorneys filed an amicus brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals in Kramer v. City of Lake Oswego—a case in which two public access...
View ArticlePresident’s weekly report — December 12, 2014
Property Rights — California Coastal Commission The California Coastal Commission has never been happy with our 1987 victory in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission where the United States Supreme...
View ArticleHow would you avoid disparate impact liability?
Disparate impact theory tells employers that they have broken the law when a concededly neutral hiring practice produces too many employees of one race and not enough of another. Let’s say you’re an...
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