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.
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New on the Short Circuit podcast: Northwestern Professor Dan Rodriguez discusses his new book on the police power and why it ain’t everything.
- President issues executive order denying birthright citizenship for people born in the country while their parents were here illegally or temporarily. District court preliminarily enjoins the order, finding that state-plaintiffs are likely to succeed in arguing that the order violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which extends citizenship to “[a]ll persons born . . . in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The administration appeals, moving to stay the injunction pending litigation. First Circuit: Negative, the injunction holds. Motion denied.
- In 2020, Vermont Superior Court transitions to electronic filing. When filed documents are received, they’re reviewed to ensure they meet all filing requirements and don’t contain confidential information, after which they’re made available electronically. Courthouse News Service can’t abide that delay and sues, alleging the procedures violate their First Amendment right of access to court documents. Second Circuit: And it does seem like the process could be more narrowly focused on protecting confidential information than proper margin widths.
- 2012: New York woman pleads guilty to promoting prostitution. (Evidently this was big news a decade ago, though your correspondents confess to having no memory of it.) 2021: She asks the state trial judge to unseal various transcripts from her criminal case. The request is partly denied. She appeals. And, separately, files a Section 1983 suit in federal court against the state judge, asking the federal court to order the state court to release the transcripts. Second Circuit (2-1): Younger abstention!
- Violent, high-risk inmate is placed in a cell with low-risk pretrial detainee in Philadelphia jail. After telling a guard he’s going to kill his cellmate, the former proceeds to render the latter a quadriplegic. Third Circuit: “Not every jail tragedy makes a municipality liable. …”
- Myrtle Beach, S.C. bar owner challenges municipal ordinance that restricts the broadcasting of “obscene, profane or vulgar language from any commercial property” above certain volumes at certain times. The district court upholds the ordinance, concluding that the “vulgar language” prohibition applies only to speech that is constitutionally obscene. Fourth Circuit: But that ruling (1) isn’t binding on state courts, and (2) doesn’t make any sense.
- North Carolina man pleads guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, with a guideline sentencing range of 41-51 months. He’s sentenced to 114. Fourth Circuit: That was unreasonable. Dissent: Well, he did do an awful lot of stabbing while he was in pretrial detention.
- When you gaze down at a roll of 3M Scotch tape you probably don’t imagine that you’re staring into the eyes of an officer of the United States. Yet, according to the Fourth Circuit (over a dissent) that might be true in certain circumstances—or at least that the tape was following the orders of an officer—as it pertains to removal from state to federal court.
- “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!” is the warning no one gives in Chapter 1 of Bleak House. Apparently there was also an absence of such a warning in a dispute involving New Orleans breast surgeons, insurance companies, and a lawyer because the district court christened it “the Bleak House of arbitration.” Close to a dozen arbitration proceedings examined what seems to have been the same dispute resulting in four wildly inconsistent arbitration awards. Fifth Circuit: And the awards mostly stand, but it’s OK to have one more arbitration to rule them all.
- It may seem surprising that prosecutors felt the need to withhold Brady mater
Article from Reason.com
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