Among the scutwork I did as a baby lawyer trying to pay the rent was defend landlords who were charged with New York City building code violations. They were largely sitting ducks for the building inspectors, as no building could pass muster under NY’s codes. There were three reasons: the codes were byzantine and vague. Landlords were, on the whole, cheap and tried to do as little as possible.

But the third reason was the tricky one. Tenants. As one landlord explained to me back then, it’s not as if they take a dump in the hallway. It’s not as if they punch holes in the wall. It’s not as if they throw their garbage out an apartment window. Some tenants were fine, great even, but some tenants were awful and made life for other tenants awful. Some tenants paid the rent and others, well, didn’t. Some tenants terrorized other tenants and made their life a living hell, and the tenants who suffered looked to the landlord to fix it. Continue reading →

Before SJ, I wrote the occasional Letter to the Editor. Sometimes, I wrote on my own behalf, but mostly I wrote for the sake of others, often organizations with which I was involved because the “elected” leader* sucked at writing. It was my words above their name, because they could barely string two sentences together and didn’t want to look dumb.

Sometimes the letters were published. Other times not. That’s how letters worked. When I wrote for others, I put their ideas and thoughts into words for them. They weren’t always ideas with which I agreed, but hey, it was their letter and so it had to reflect their ideas. I was just the guy putting them to words. Some of the “leaders” for whom I did this were men. Some were women. My writing was no different based on the sex of the name below my words, but it wasn’t just the name that differed, but the ideas in the letter. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: In light of a significant ruling out of Michigan, Guy Hamilton-Smith has been kind enough to do a guest post.

Today marks the end–at least of a chapter–of a nearly decade-long legal saga over Michigan’s sex offender registry. Judge Robert Cleland, federal District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, granted that which the Michigan ACLU sought: a permanent injunction prohibiting a number of things, including the enforcement in toto of Michigan’s sex offense registration scheme to anyone who had committed an offense prior to 2011.

A bit of background. Four years ago, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Does v. Snyder (Does I) issued a stinging opinion striking down several aspects of Michigan’s registry as unconstitutional, capping litigation that originally began in 2012. Judge Alice Batchelder, one of the more conservative judges on the Sixth Circuit, offered the following in concluding that the registry was unconstitutional on Due Process and Ex Post Facto grounds: Continue reading →

Knowing that it was going to be a contender for Best Picture at the Oscars, Dr. SJ and I watched The Joker. Sure, we appreciated the acting, but neither of us liked the movie. We didn’t enjoy it. We wouldn’t watch it again. We wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. Had we not watched it, our lives would not have been any less “rich.”

Stories about dysfunctional people, miserable lives, unhappiness, seem to be of great interest. Why? Maybe people see themselves in these dysfunctional people, but I don’t. Asking around about something to watch, many people pointed at a series called “Fleabag.” about a miserable young woman who manages to find, if not create, problems wherever she goes. Is this you? It’s not me. It’s not Dr. SJ. It’s not our children. It’s not someone I would want to know, and it’s certainly not someone I want to watch on the television. Continue reading →

In a prepared statement, a former Harvard law student cum law clerk to the Ninth Circuit’s “Liberal Lion,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt, told her story.

Judge Reinhardt routinely and frequently made disparaging statements about my physical appearance, my views about feminism and women’s rights, and my relationship with my husband (including our sexual relationship). Often, these remarks included expressing surprise that I even had a husband because I was not a woman who any man would be attracted to. In that vein, Judge Reinhardt often speculated that my husband must be a “wimp,” or possibly gay. Judge Reinhardt would use both words and gestures to suggest that my “wimp” husband must either lack a penis, or not be able to get an erection in my presence. He implied that my marriage had not been consummated.

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In the scheme of stories about cops and a black guy, they’re often muddled by some conflicting facts, or at least colorable allegations, that blunt the fact that the primary cause of the cops’ conduct was the guy’s skin color. After all, if there’s any detail to latch onto that allows people to excuse what followed, some will. Sure, it works the other way as well, but that’s a point for another day.

No, black guys aren’t allowed to use race to excuse criminal conduct, which is what makes what happened to Eastern Illinois University’s Jaylan Butler significant.

Jaylan Butler and his teammates from the Eastern Illinois University swim team were at the end of a long day. After competing in a conference championship swim meet in South Dakota, they spent the bulk of Feb. 24, 2019, traveling back to Charleston, Ill., in a rented coach with their school logo plastered on the sides.

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The Fifth Circuit opinion by Judge Duncan was notable for the fact that it went out of its way to address the issue. It didn’t need to be done, but it was, almost as if it were an opinion in search of a case in which to issue it. But the contrast to the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Parents For Privacy v. Barr could not be more stark.

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal of an action alleging that an Oregon public school district violated Title IX, as well as the constitutional rights of students and of parents, when it allowed transgender students to use school bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers that match their gender identity rather than the biological sex they were assigned at birth.

No footnote dropped. No explanation needed. The transgender student identified as male and was referred to as “he” throughout. But what was even more curious a commitment was that the court refused to thread the needle of gender by finding that the student was born a female, whether by genitalia or genetics. Continue reading →

No one has the slightest clue how New York’s bail reform law is working as yet. Neither statistics nor anecdotes* prove anything. It’s far too early to make any determination. If there was a cause and effect connection, it wouldn’t be discernible so quickly. But since we all know correlation does not imply causation, the contention that crime has risen (January over January) since the bail reform law has gone into effect is more likely due to unseasonably warm weather this January than bail reform. And frankly, the new bail law didn’t really change all that much.

While the bail reform law enacted isn’t what I would have done, as one-size-fits-all laws are no more effective for the reformers than their tough-on-crime adversaries, it’s the law, for better or worse. Sure, it was “invented” in the middle of the night by legislators who have little clue how the legal system works and believed in fantasies, but then, it’s also not wildly out of sync with any other approach. Cutting a guy loose ROR who would have gotten $500 bail before just isn’t a big societal deal, except to the guy who can’t afford $500 bail. Continue reading →

It says so right in the headline, which may not have been written by the author but reveals much about the perspective:

UConn, in a compromise, will give a student it suspended in a sexual misconduct case a chance to defend himself

How nice of UConn to “compromise” by giving the male student a chance to defend himself.

In a compromise filed in U.S. District Court, the university agreed to allow the male student, identified in court as John Doe, to submit to its disciplinary process a second time, but unlike the first time, present a defense. The agreement applies only to this case.

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When they ran the early morning take-down of Roger Stone, weapons in hand and cameras on, heads spinned. After all, it was Roger Stone, the cartoon character political operative of the vuglar and amoral, but still, it was Roger Stone, who would have walked in to surrender upon request. What else would he do?

Sides shifted, paradigms went spiral and schadenfruede became the flavor of the day. Roger Stone will do that to people. Trump will too. And damn if they didn’t do it again.

In an extraordinary decision overruling career lawyers, the Justice Department recommended an unspecified term of incarceration for Mr. Stone instead of the prosecutors’ request of a punishment of seven to nine years. The move coincided with Mr. Trump’s declaration on Twitter early Tuesday that the government was treating Mr. Stone too harshly.

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