With the academic year over or nearly over at campuses around the country, college and university administrators would be wise to use the summer months to review and revise their policies for addressing protests so as to avoid the sorts of clashes and crackdowns we witnessed over the last couple of months. In a column on this site last month, I identified a key question that the law has not yet fully resolved: to what extent, if any, does the obligation under federal Title VI to avoid creating a hostile environment for students who feel targeted by protests require colleges and univer ..read more

On May 16, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the notion that the way the operations of the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau (CFPB or Bureau)—a powerful regulatory agency created by Congress to protect fair treatment of consumers after the 2008 Financial Crisis—are financed runs afoul of the so-called Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. That Clause, housed in Article I, § 9, provides in relevant part that “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” Challengers to the CFPB argued that because, under the Dodd-Frank statute creatin ..read more

The United States Supreme Court has gone rogue. Evidence for that proposition is abundant. Progressives rail against what is going on in our nation’s highest court. They are right to do so. But they have yet to develop a plan for reining in the Court and for protecting its institutional integrity. While it is clear that the Court’s attack on abortion rights has mobilized voters, progressives need to use the power at their disposal to deal with a Court in which Justices seem impervious to reason and intent on acting in an imperious and imperial manner. The evidence that the Court ..read more

On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) into law. This bipartisan law provides long overdue protection for people who work while pregnant and need workplace accommodations due to the physical and mental effects of pregnancy. Although there has been some protection against pregnancy discrimination in federal law since 1978, this bill fills a gap in the law that had left many workers without necessary, though often minor and costless, accommodations. Under the new law, pregnant workers are entitled to reasonable accommodations necessitated b ..read more

On May 13, the New York Timespublished a story about discrimination in jury selection in death cases that was shocking, but not surprising. The story recounted longstanding efforts by prosecutors in Alameda County, California, to prevent people from serving as jurors in death penalty cases based on their race, gender, and religion. Last month, a federal judge ordered an inquiry into those allegations. As the Times explains, “The inquiry, which may involve as many as 35 cases from as far back as 1977, is just getting underway. But the district attorney’s office says it has already fo ..read more

On May 8, Alabama’s Republican Governor Kay Ivey set a date for the state’s second execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Her office announced that Alan Eugene Miller would be put to death sometime within thirty hours after 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 26, 2024. The governor’s action followed a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court granting the state attorney general’s request for permission to set Miller’s execution date. Miller was convicted and sentenced to death in July 2000 for killing three men in a workplace shooting. If Alabama goes forward with its plan, it will be Miller’s ..read more

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has long been campaigning to be Donald Trump’s running mate in the upcoming presidential election, so it was hardly surprising that she recently released a book. Politicians seeking higher office frequently write (or have ghost-written for them) memoirs filled with cliches, heartwarming stories of the adversity they supposedly overcame, and the lessons that those experiences taught them (typically in the form of more cliches). What was surprising was that Noem’s new memoir includes a vignette that could well end her Vice Presidential aspirations: she ..read more

As the current Supreme Court term approaches its final stretch, all eyes are on the blockbuster cases. By the time it adjourns this summer, the Court will have decided cases involving the prosecution of former President Donald Trump (and therefore the path of the next presidential election), the scope of the administrative state, and other consequential and controversial issues, including another case about the legality of abortion. Amid the tumult, it’s easy to overlook the “ordinary” cases before the Court. As Civil Procedure professors, we were intrigued by the Court’s dispositio ..read more

It has been a long time since there have been protests on college campuses nationwide and worldwide. But what we are witnessing today at many colleges has already made campus politics part of a larger story about politics at the national level. On campus, protests about the ongoing war in Gaza, the plight of the Palestinian people, and responses to those protests are posing a severe challenge for university leaders. For example, at Emory University in Atlanta, the faculty senate voted “no confidence” in the university president after police were called to break up an encampment. W ..read more

Debates about the permissibility of protests on college campuses today seem fixated on the notion of violence. Protestors say that campus authorities have no business imposing discipline or involving police to make arrests insofar as the protestors are (in their view) doing nothing more than engaging in peaceful (that is, non-violent) protest. University administrators, by contrast, defend their actions to restrict the protests and protestors as being necessary and proper to assure the safety of students, faculty, and staff. The two sides seem to agree that openly violent protests—t ..read more