Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal
New on the Short Circuit podcast: Can an AI be an “author” under copyright law?
- Your summarist (who has never been an employment lawyer) didn’t know that the Equal Protection Clause might constitutionalize protections against a hostile gov’t work environment. So color me even more surprised that a drug-court judge’s allegedly “creepy” conduct toward a court counselor wouldn’t even receive qualified immunity. You learn something new every day! (The First Circuit opinion is here.)
- New Jersey bars out-of-state wine retailers from shipping to locals unless they open a Jersey storefront and buy from in-state wholesalers. New York wine retailer sues under the dormant Commerce Clause. Third Circuit: The Garden State’s rules help it trace booze, recall tainted stock, and bust shady operators. Cheers, Jersey.
- Does a law that bars people from speaking for pay trigger First Amendment scrutiny? You might think so, and so does the Third Circuit (and so does IJ, which urged this result in an amicus brief).
- When federal criminal defense lawyers think there are no non-frivolous arguments to be made on appeal, they can file an “Anders brief” saying as much. But the brief has to explain why there aren’t any good arguments—a requirement that leads to a really bad day for this Third Circuit attorney, who, after first moving to withdraw and then later filing what he called a “notice of retirement,” finally filed an Anders brief that was so “woefully inadequate” that the panel . . . well, it was a bad day.
- Your summarist (who has never been an oil-and-gas lawyer) didn’t know that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management even exists. The Short Circuit newsletter really is educational! Anyway, the bureau promulgated a rule, about who pays to decommission oil rigs, that the Gulf states sued about. Can the American Petroleum Institute intervene to defend the rule? Fifth Circuit: The feds can do that just fine by themselves. So no.
- The difficulty in parsing this unpublished Fifth Circuit opinion—in which every judge voted for a different set of outcomes, so the panel majority varies with the defendant officers—probably shouldn’t obscure that it’s ultimately about whether “[l]ocking [the plaintiff] in a hot prison shower for thirty hours, while ignoring his pleas for food, water, and cleaning supplies, as he passed out next to his own vomit, urine and excrement, clearly violated his Eighth Amendment rights.” Great job, Texas.
- Muslim man in Michigan prison asks for halal meals. He’s told to request vegan meals and then maybe later he’ll get to move on to halal-compliant meat. But he’s denied because a prison official saw him eat some sausages and a bunch of meat-flavored ramen and decided he’s not all that religiously serious. Sixth Circuit: And it really doesn’t matter because, among other reasons, he can’t get damages under RLUIPA.
- In other Sixth Circuit news, those guy
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