Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
Victory! Earlier this year, IJ sued Oregon agricultural officials for requiring small dairy farms with only a handful of animals to install unnecessary and ruinously expensive industrial-grade wastewater management systems—a favor to big dairy farms that wanted to put their smaller competitors out of business. This week, we’re happy to announce that the Oregon Dept. of Agriculture has rewritten its rules so that the requirement applies only to medium and large operations. Click here to learn more.
- Prediction market company Kalshi wants to list futures contracts on which party will control Congress, but CFTC prohibits the contracts as against the public interest. District court: CFTC decision went beyond its statutory authority, Kalshi can go ahead. CFTC: Can we have a stay pending appeal, lest these contracts corrupt the election? D.C. Circuit: No dice. The “question on the merits is close and difficult,” but the CFTC doesn’t have any good evidence that listing these contracts will cause harm while we consider the appeal.
- New Jersey resident worked for DraftKings, whose HQ is in Massachusetts. But then he headed west to join competitor Fanatics in California. DraftKings: Hey, that violates your noncompete! Ex-employee: Too bad I’m in California now, which bans noncompetes! DraftKings: But the noncompete says Massachusetts law controls and we’re suing you there! District court: Hard to argue with that. No working for a competitor for a year after quitting. First Circuit: You know, noncompete law could be a lot worse than it is in Massachusetts. Affirmed.
- Residents of Buffalo, N.Y. can judge for themselves whether then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” initiative turned that town around or shoveled taxpayer dollars into a Josh Allen-sized boondoggle. But some of the characters involved in one arm of the project can breathe easier as the Second Circuit vacates their convictions for wire fraud and conspiracy (but not making false statements) pursuant to their 2023 trip to SCOTUS.
- Now-former principal at school with mostly black and Hispanic students criticizes the NYC Dept. of Education for funding only half as many sports teams as the predominantly white school that shares the same Brooklyn campus. Soon after, she finds herself under investigation over an anonymous (and apparently baseless) complaint that she had tried to recruit students to a communist organization. Can she sue the Dept. for violating Title VI? Second Circuit: Sure can. Case undismissed.
- Bloomberg and Dow Jones & Co. file FOIA requests with the U.S. Postal Service, seeking disclosure of aggregated, anonymized change-of-address data to produce reports about movement trends in the United States—data that reporters have obtained in the past. USPS: We were actually hoping to license that data as part of a commercial product that costs $277k for four years of access, so we’re withholding it under a FOIA exemption. Second Circuit: Which they are allowed to do. The Postal Reorganization Act contains a FOIA exemption for “information of a commercial nature.”
- Unarmed teen passenger flees 2018 traffic stop on foot; a Louisiana state trooper shoots him in the back at point-blank range, paralyzing him
Article from Reason.com
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