From around the internet

Free Speech, Civility

I wrote last week about Federal Judge Kyle Duncan’s visit to Stanford University Law School. Judge Duncan was invited to speak at the school by the student Federalist Society, but was shouted down by protesting students and administrators. The law school dean ultimately apologized to Judge Duncan. Then, yesterday, the dean released a letter announcing changes at the law school. The dean’s letter asserts that the disruption of speakers will not be tolerated. It also makes clear that the university’s DEI mission means a commitment to “free expression of all views.” Further, the dean announced that. going forward, the school’s committment to DEI will not take the form of political activism. Finally, the dean has placed the DEI administrator who participated in the disruption on leave, and is mandating training for the entire student body on how to behave. It is refreshing that an adult has entered the room here. Let’s hope this serves as an example to other institutions. You can read the entire letter here.

More Free Speech

Joe Kennedy was a high school football coach that would pray on the fifty yard line after games. After some time, students and others began to join him. The prayer was voluntary, never formalized or mandated. Nonetheless, the high school terminated Kennedy for the activity. He filed suit, and in June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court rule that the school violated the coach’s free speech rights and wrongfully terminated his contract. Now, Coach Kennedy has reached a 1.75 million dollar settlement with the school. An expensive lesson in free speech you can read more about here.

Judicial activism, statutory construction

A New York law that has been on the books since 1890 has been reinterpreted by a New York trial level court in a way that may have a substantial impact on businesses. The 1890 law provided that businesses must pay “manual workers” on a weekly basis. The law defines “manual worker” as anyone making less than $900 per week who performs “physical labor,” which is defined as standing up more that 25% of the time. Apparently, the weekly pay requirement has been followed by almost no business. A construction worker sued and the court found that the business employing her was not following the weekly pay law. Fine. However, the court went further to create a remedy not found in the statute. The court ordered that the business must pay double the wages to the employee for all the pay that came in greater than weekly increments. If this case stands as precedent, hundreds of thousands of employers statewide may be required to pay their manual workers double pay going back six years. This would obviously bankrupt most of those businesses. Perhaps the New York appellate courts will reject the judicial activism here, adopt a textualist approach, and prevent the implosion of the business community. Stay tuned. You can read more about the case here.