David Carrillo co-writes for The Sacramento Bee, April 5, 2018 Since then the already overworked and underfunded court has struggled to make ends meet with only six members. It has been forced to draft pinch hitters from the Court of Appeal, drawing those justices away from their own heavy dockets. Governor Brown, can we please […]
Trump renews attack on Shaaf for ICE warning: ‘Something should happen there’
Charles Weisselberg quoted by San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 2018 Two Bay Area law professors told The Chronicle last month that Schaaf’s warning about the ICE operation was so vague that it would probably not put her in jeopardy of being charged with obstruction. It might be different if she gave particular people specific details […]
Panera’s data breach puts attention on risks of loyalty programs
Christopher Hoofnagle quoted by The Washington Post, April 4, 2018 “Security is difficult and expensive, and no one wants to do it,” Hoofnagle said. “There’s the miracle of making it possible that you can order a sandwich [online]. That’s hard enough! And then people come along and say, ‘What about security?’”
EPA wants to make your cars dirtier and more expensive to drive
Ethan Elkind writes for ColoradoBoulevard.net, April 3, 2018 If EPA is successful in rolling back these standards, the agency will undermine the fight against climate change, increase toxic air pollution and attendant public health impacts, cost drivers money in terms of having to buy more gasoline for the same amount of driving, and diminish U.S. […]
Supreme Court shields a police officer from being sued for shooting a woman in her front yard
Erwin Chemerinsky quoted by Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2018 Erwin Chemerinsky … said Monday’s decision is part of a trend. “In case after case involving excessive police force, the Supreme Court is finding for the police and keeping juries from ever being able to decide if the police acted impermissibly. This contributes significantly to […]
Did Shulkin get fired or resign? This is why it matters.
Anne Joseph O’Connell quoted by Politico, March 31, 2018 O’Connell said she believes the law does in fact apply to firings and she listed several potential hurdles to mounting a serious legal challenge. Among them: finding somebody who has been injured by a decision made by the acting secretary and convincing a court that the […]
California has a controversial plan to solve its housing crisis. Drivers aren’t going to like it.
Ethan Elkind quoted by Mother Jones, March 30, 2018 Elkind sees displacement as an inevitable product of the state’s housing shortage. “We don’t have a lot of great options given how badly we’ve under-produced housing relative to population and job growth in the state,” he says. Without taking some sort of action, “this problem is […]
Remembering Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the Ninth Circuit’s ‘liberal lion,’ and my friend
Erwin Chemerinsky writes for The Sacramento Bee, March 30, 2018 He was a judge whose opinions consistently protected civil rights and civil liberties; he usually favored the individual over the government and the government over business. More subtly and more importantly, it was a judicial philosophy based on the view that the Constitution embodies a […]
Marin County judge overturns previous decision barring lethal injections, executions won’t resume soon
Jen Moreno quoted by Daily Journal (registration required), March 29, 2018 “Given the fact that Morales is still ongoing and has to be resolved, and also seeing the Masters case, I don’t know that this changes the status quo of where things are in California right now. … While certainly the Sims opinion was one […]
Stephen Reinhardt, ‘liberal lion’ of the 9th Circuit, dies at 87
Erwin Chemerinsky quoted by Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2018 “He was a giant not just on the 9th Circuit but within the law,” UC Berkeley law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said. “He also was a judge with a particular vision of the law, based on enforcing the Constitution to protect people.”