Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Appeals Court Decisions
Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
New cert petition: Does the Supreme Court want to overturn Kelo v. New London? We’re asking them to overturn Kelo v. New London. Swear to heck. Click here to learn more.
New on Unpublished Opinions, IJ’s roundtable podcast: Is a pun worth keeping if you have to explain it in a footnote? Plus, other weighty jurisprudential questions.
New on the Short Circuit podcast: UCLA’s Joanna Schwartz and Kasia Wolfkot of the Brennan Center talk with IJ’s Anya Bidwell about civil rights reforms at the state level.
- Sometimes our creations escape our control—sometimes our monster pushes a little girl into a well or our dinosaurs eat the guy from Seinfeld—but this is not the case with Pennsylvania’s Joint Underwriting Association, which, holds the Third Circuit, is purely a creature of the state and thus incapable of either asserting constitutional claims against its creator or (one assumes) devouring any beloved character actors.
- Following a trial, jury finds that Pennsylvania prison guard twice sexually abused a prisoner. It awards $20k in compensatory damages for each assault, $25k in punitive damages for the first one, and $200k in punitive damages for the second. Guard: Maybe it was a different guard who did the assaulting. And the punitive damages are too punitive. Third Circuit: No and no. The jury could reasonably have concluded that you were the guy who did the assaulting. And given that you repeated your “egregious behavior,” it sure seems like these punitive damages are needed to deter future wrongdoing. (Fun fact: The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office appears to take a decidedly more . . . nuanced view of reprehensibility for prison guards found liable for sexual abuse (“Reprehensibility has to be considered on a spectrum . . . .”) than it does for elderly widows facing forfeiture of their homes because their sons sold $190 worth of weed (“Including a claimant’s culpability as a specific consideration in the [Excessive Fines Clause] balancing test is not only contrary to established precedent, it is illogical.”).)
- South Carolina ACLU wants to record and publish an interview with a death row inmate, but the South Carolina Department of Corrections forbids “personal contact” interviews with inmates, including those by telephone (exchanging letters is fine, though). ACLU-SC challenges the prohibition as a violation of the First Amendment. Fourth Circuit: The press has no special right of access to prisoners that is not enjoyed by the public generally, and the ACLU doesn’t dispute that the inmate is unavailable to the public. Case dismissed.
- This unpublished per curiam opinion from the Fifth Circuit—affirming a denial of qualified immunity—gives no hint of the outrageous allegations in the case (which involve the innocent plaintiff being tackled and hogtied for meeting the description “Hispanic male”). For the full scoop, you’ll have to check out the district court opinion.
- Maverick County, Tex. judge, who is presiding over a meeting of the county commissioners, orders resident removed for speaking out of turn (though it’s unclear that she did). On the judge’s say-so, the resid
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