Short Circuit

Tragedy and comedy, from the Fifth Circuit and then from the Tenth. First, Patrick Jaicomo of IJ describes how the police in Laredo, Texas mistakenly shot an innocent man. The plaintiff, who was hit in the abdomen but lived, was escaping a house where the real suspect was terrorizing his family. He grabbed the suspect’s gun, ran out of the house, held the weapon above his head and screamed “I’m not the shooter!” However, a cop claimed he didn’t hear the man and shot anyway. Patrick explains the court’s analysis and why it concluded this was not a Fourth Amendment violation—and why he sees a lot wanting in that conclusion. Then comes the comedy. IJ’s Sophia Henderson details how a library in Lawrence, Kansas instituted a policy of no signs inside the building. A patron objected and did so by holding signs—a few signs, some mere pieces of paper but one being a flag. The library repeatedly called the police and the patron make a federal case out of it. The Tenth Circuit concluded that there was no First Amendment violation. Sophia tells us that perhaps that’s the right outcome but she and the others nevertheless have questions. Sophia also provides to our YouTube viewers pictures of the actual signs from the opinion. Finally, for fans of fonts and typesetting there’s a closing discussion on why Times New Roman is terrible. Martinez v. Hinojosa Spiehs v. Morgan

Florida, man. Always fun when we touch base with the latest culture war issues in the Sunshine State. Which usually means we’re talking about the Eleventh Circuit. Which is what IJ’s Keith Neely does concerning the “Stope Woke Act,” the state’s attempt to prohibit the endorsement of certain “woke” views in, as applied in this case, its public universities. The court ruled the law was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination when it comes to higher education. To get there, though, it had to weave its way through a confusing and somewhat contradictory set of cases about government speech, government employee speech, and academic freedom. After that we move to the Fourth Circuit where some Georgetown law students scored a victory for a Jamaican immigrant who tried to appeal an administrative decision but couldn’t because the court’s online docket system wouldn’t work and the clerk at the filing window wouldn’t take his papers. Ben Marsh of IJ, himself a Georgetown grad, details how the court ruled that such behavior isn’t on the due process up-and-up. And for fans of “where are they now,” we end with some updates on cases from Short Circuit’s past. Burey v. Blanche Pernell v. Comm. of the Fl. Bd. Ed. Jouppi v. Alaska

If you like stories of co-workers showing up at your door at night and threatening you and your family then we have the episode for you. This happened to a federal employee in Virginia. Shaken by the experience, he and his family then sued. The thing is, because his co-workers were also federal employees, and the threats seemed to be work related, he had to use the Federal Tort Claims Act. As IJ’s John Korevec explains, that meant he had a lot of roadblocks. And while some of those roadblocks knocked out some of the claims in the lawsuit, according to the D.C. Circuit some of them survived. It’s another piece in the puzzle about how the FTCA does not allow for a lot of justice—but does let some through at times. Then Prashanta Augustine of IJ takes us out to the Tenth Circuit for a ruling on Presidential powers. Recent administrations have gone back and forth on expanding and retracting areas of federal land to be “national monuments” under the Antiquities Act. Can those decisions be challenged in court? The feds claimed sovereign immunity. But the Tenth Circuit, in a case involving the Grand Staircase and Bear’s Ears national monuments, found an exception for “ultra vires” acts. That raised all kinds of tricky (and interesting!) problems involving equitable relief, jurisdiction, and the Presidency. NOTE: After we recorded this episode the Trump Administration once again retracted the size of these monuments, mooting the Tenth Circuit matter as it currently exists but allowing for all kinds of exciting new litigation where the sides are flipped. He v. Rubio Garfield County v. Trump Update on the national monuments since we recorded