The facts of Corbitt v. Vickers were sufficiently straightforward that they could be easily summed up.

On July 10, 2014, Vickers and other officers “participated in an operation to apprehend a criminal suspect, Christopher Barnett, whom [plaintiffs] ha[d] never met.” The operation
spilled over onto Plaintiff-Appellee Amy Corbitt’s (“Corbitt”) property after Barnett “wandered into the area.”

Why he was a suspect is unclear, which matters since it reflects on the possibility of a threat to the police. After all, if they were seeking Barnett because he failed to pay 100 parking tickets, it’s different than if he was a suspect in a violent murder. Continue reading →

For any parent of a high school senior going to college, the joys of FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, are swiftly learned. The questions include not only the inchoate college student’s information, but mom’s and dad’s as well. A lot of it. All kinds of financial and personal information of the sort they couldn’t get without a warrant. Some might even call it “intrusive.”

If you want student aid for your kid, which could mean tens of thousand of dollars, there isn’t much of a choice. Tell the government what it wants to know, or you get squat. Of course, you might get squat anyway, but you have to be in it to win it.

Texas is making FAFSA mandatory, joining Louisiana as the second state to do so.

Completing the form is a leading indicator of college enrollment. And there’s ample evidence that more financial aid is associated with outcomes like college completion. Actually achieving big gains in FAFSA completion, though, requires significant investment and outreach by schools and state officials.

Continue reading →

When the newly-formed Knight Institute decided to bring suit against Trump for blocking people on Twitter, it struck me as the clickbait of lawsuits. It would bring attention to Knight Institute, for sure, but the problem itself was unserious. Trump blocked people on Twitter? Big deal.

The workaround was easy enough to read his twits*, so no one was seriously precluded from seeing anything Trump twitted. As for the interactive aspect, there are a million random people hate-replying to Trump’s bizarre twits. One hundred, even ten thousand, more or less wouldn’t make a difference. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, so much as a tempest in a Twitterpot. De minimis non curat lex.

But the case was brought, and Trump lost. The case was appealed, and Trump lost again, this time in the Second Circuit. The ruling held that an account that might otherwise be personal became a government account based on its use for that purpose, turning the account into a “public forum.” Continue reading →

The editorial barely bothers with the requisite “alleged,” and goes from there to assume every awful thing possible about Jeffrey Epstein, his unnamed conspirators and Alex Acosta.

Even in the relatively sterile language of the legal system, the accusations against Mr. Epstein are nauseating. From “at least in or about” 2002 through 2005, the defendant “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls,” some as young as 14 and many “particularly vulnerable to exploitation.” The girls were “enticed and recruited” to visit Mr. Epstein’s various homes “to engage in sex acts with him, after which he would give the victims hundreds of dollars.” To “maintain and increase his supply of victims,” he paid some of the girls “to recruit additional girls to be similarly abused,” thus creating “a vast network of underage victims.”

*** Continue reading →

Back when the call was to end discrimination in public accommodations, Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted.

All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

But that was when the law sought to remove a detriment based on race imposed on black and brown people by white people. Even though it applies with equal force when the sides change, despite the fashionable redefinition of discrimination applying only when it’s the privileged doing the dirty to the oppressed, the law still prohibits discrimination based on race, no matter who is doing the discriminating and who is taking the hit. Continue reading →

When the prosecutor won’t, who will? Criminal law reformers took their battle away from the courts, then the legislatures, and found a relative sweet spot by electing reform “prosecutors” to office. It was a brilliant move, really, as the race for District Attorney was never particularly sexy, people didn’t have strong feelings and a small, highly motivated group could basically seize power. They did in Philadelphia when they elected criminal defense lawyer Larry Krasner.

Since his election, Krasner has proven to be the real deal, implementing his reforms such as declining to prosecute laws with which he disagrees and trying to stem mass incarceration by using alternatives. The issues about his use of authority aside, it was a fascinating experiment testing whether the historic tough-on-crime approach that produced Prison Nation was necessary to protect people, or whether it was a hugely destructive force, particularly to the poor and minorities who suffered the brunt of the system’s brutal force.

The Pennsylvania lege decided to pull the rug out from beneath Krasner. Continue reading →

Senior District Judge Glen Conrad stopped the bleeding for the moment, which was obviously a good thing.

In an unusual sex-discrimination lawsuit, a federal judge barred the University of Virginia from having a hearing for a former student accused of rape, as a consequence of which his degree might be withheld, saying the institution might not have authority to punish him for the alleged incident that occurred off campus.

There are three facts to note here. First, the accused student had completed his studies and was all but done, awaiting commencement ceremonies and receipt of his diploma. Second, the alleged non-consensual sex occurred two years earlier. Third, the purported “victim” wasn’t a student and the sex occurred off-campus. Continue reading →

It’s a bold move. The first time anyone tries a new legal approach is, almost invariably, a bold move. The law likes precedent, the comfort of knowing that somebody already signed off on something, whether it’s teeth marks as admissible forensic science evidence despite it being neither science nor evidence, or an individual cause of action brought on behalf of a group of students. A class action.

Andrew Miltenberg already had two cases on his plate with Michigan State. That’s the same school that concealed Larry Nasser’s abuse of female athletes for decades. Unsurprisingly, the taint, not to mention the liability, of Nasser caused Michigan State to overcompensate by crafting Title IX procedures certain to damn any male accused of any sexual misconduct. See? We’re the good guys now!

From an inquisition by investigators, who are supposed to be neutral but instead dedicate themselves to “trauma informed” ideology, building the case of the accused’s guilt, demanding a defense before disclosing the accusations, to the denial of a live hearing and deprivation of the right to cross-examine, the process at Michigan State was carefully calculated to bring a smile to then-DoE Office of Civil Rights bureaucrat Catherine Lhamon’s face, prevent her from eliminating its federal funding and appeasing her vicious appetite to ruin a school that gave the accused a tenth of a chance. Continue reading →

The allegations are awful, using underage homeless girls as sex slaves. The bold-faced names like Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Dersh, are salacious. Even the federal prosecutor, Alex Acosta, then United States Attorney for Southern District of Florida, is now Secretary of Labor under Trump. There is no quarter for billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested as his private plane arrived at Teterboro Airport on a sealed indictment from the Southern District of New York.

That makes this the perfect case to do the damage.

Who would be so disgusting as to come to Epstein’s defense, which by current definition means that one approves of his conduct, every allegation of which must be taken as true. Everybody knows it, as the current right to believe, combined with the duty to believe, makes his guilt beyond question. Continue reading →

Some will recall the questions posed by a committee of our best and brightest senators to Facebook’s Zuck. It was high comedy, between the righteous indignation of angry speechifiers and the cluelessness about tech that could have been explained by their grandchildren, if they bothered to ask.

And yet this donkey show has given rise to nonpartisan consensus: regulate the internet!

Tech regulation may be the only thing on which a polarized Capitol Hill can agree. “We should be suing Google and Facebook and all that, and perhaps we will,” President Trump recently declared. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, has made the breakup of tech companies a central plank of her campaign. Even Silicon Valley-friendly contenders like Pete Buttigieg have called for curbs on the industry’s power.

On one side of the equation is whether Trump or Warren will do a better job micromanaging the internet. The answer, obviously, is the person you prefer will do good, while the other person will be horrible. Which is which varies. But everyone believes they should be in control. Continue reading →