Articles Posted in 2011

Earlier this week, a panel of Ninth Circuit judges held in Diaz v. Brewer that an Arizona bill withdrawing health benefits for domestic partners of state employees violated the federal Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

The state originally offered these benefits to spouses of state employees, but in April 2008 expanded coverage to include both same-sex and different-sex domestic partners. In September 2009, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that restricted benefits once again only to (different-sex) spouses. Several state employees whose same-sex partners would lose their much-needed health benefits if the bill went into effect brought this suit to enjoin the governor and relevant state officials from implementing the new law. Represented by Lambda Legal—the largest legal organization working for the civil rights of LGBT people—the employees challenged the law as violating the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

As readers of this blog, you probably already know that we at Justia are big fans of universal citation. With that said, I wanted to give you all a heads up that Courtney, in continuing to fight that good fight, has written a great piece on the topic which is now up  on Cornell’s VoxPopuLII blog. In it, she generally discusses media neutral citation and more specifically provides details of the work we’ve been doing here in applying universal citation to Justia’s corpus of state codes.  Head on over and check it out!

Additional Links & Resources

UniversalCitation.org – current movement to provide the organizational infrastructure needed to facilitate the adoption and use of a uniform set of media and vendor neutral citations that can be used for all American court decisions.  This site also has links to lots of great resources on the history and work that’s been done in the field so far.

Here is a rundown of August’s highest scoring lawyers on Justia Legal Answers, along with a look at which Onward blog and Facebook posts readers viewed the most.

Justia Legal Answers’ Top 10 Legal Answerers for August 2011

1. Francis M. Boyer, 2,311 points, 48 answers
2. Mark A. Siesel, 801 points, 16 answers
3. Terrence Rubino, 775 oints, 24 answers
4. Milan Marinkovich, 600 points, 12 answers
5. Robert Neal Katz, 551 points, 11 answers
6. Andrew Bresalier, 400 points, 8 answers
7. Dheeraj K. Singhal, 330 points, 14 answers
8. Andrew John Hawes, 310 points, 7 answers
9. Cynthia Jean Nelson, 250 points, 5 answers
10. Donald Joseph Quinn, 250 points, 5 answers

As Hurricane Irene moves up the East Coast, we thought it might be useful to pull some resources for those folks living in the projected path of the storm. To all our Justia friends & family in Irene’s way, we hope she weakens, veers off “to the right” and that all you’ll be doing at most during the storm is mixing up a batch of these. Best of luck and batten down the hatches!

Federal Resources

Hurricane Resource Center– from FEMA

• FEMA on Facebook
• FEMA on Twitter

The National Flood Insurance Program

• National Flood Insurance Program Insurance Agent Locator – from Floodsmart.gov
• National Flood Insurance Program Laws & Regulations
  • 42 USC Chapter 50 National Flood Insurance
  • 44 CFR Chapter 1 Emergency Management and Assistance
• FEMA Flood Insurance Library

Ready.gov — Resources and steps to take to protect yourself, your family and property.

NOAA – National Hurricane Center

U.S. Coast Guard

Some government authorities in the United States and abroad want to criminalize the use of social media, concluding that by taking a blunderbuss approach to outlawing conduct, more crimes will be prevented. The problem with this strategy is that it appears to be largely based upon an unfounded fear of the unknown.

Recently, when a ‘flash mob’ allegedly robbed a 7-Eleven in Maryland, one report concluded, without any proof, that the crime was committed by “a large group of people coordinated by Twitter or other social media.” CNN quickly joined in and repeated a Maryland policeman’s unsubstantiated allegation that although investigators still “‘can’t confirm how this (robbery) was organized’, [they] believe the Internet was involved.”

In the next few weeks, children throughout the Golden State will bid farewell to the unstructured freedom that summer affords as they head back to rule the corridors and classrooms of their local schools. For public school teachers, the new school year offers a respite from this summer of discontent. The continuing recession has thinned their ranks a bit, leaving many feeling beleaguered by layoffs and budget cuts. Additionally, the effort to identify underperforming teachers by parsing standardized testing data seems to assign all of the blame for failing students on the teachers alone.

Of course, the teachers, who serve on the instructional front line, are the most visible faces in the educational system. But, we should not forget the men (and women) behind the curtain: the members of the state senate and assembly.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reported last month that a class action suit against legal forms provider Legal Zoom survived a motion for summary judgement and will proceed to trial in a Missouri federal court. In rejecting the defendant’s motion, Judge Laughrey allowed the plaintiffs to move forward with their complaint that consumers have been harmed by the company’s unauthorized practice of law in the state.

For an overview of the litigation and the recent order, see Venkat’s post on Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog. We’ve pulled the filings on Justia Dockets, and you can follow the case there.

Last Friday, Governor Brown signed California Assembly Bill 141 into law. AB 141 formalizes long-standing informal rules banning the use of social media and electronic devices (including smart phones) by jurors to discuss or research cases. As well, the bill forbids jurors from using electronic or wireless devices to contact court officials. While existing laws require a court to remind and admonish jurors to refrain from conversing about a case during trial, the bill:

[W]ould require the court, when admonishing the jury against conversation, research, or dissemination of information pursuant to these provisions, to clearly explain, as part of the admonishment, that the prohibition applies to all forms of electronic and wireless communication. The bill would require the officer in charge of a jury to prevent any form of electronic or wireless communication.

Beginning in January, if a juror disobeys such an admonishment, he or she will face contempt of court charges.

While Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2 is the eighth and final film in the Harry Potter Series, its theatrical release does not signal the end of Pottermania. Instead, fans can continue enjoying the magical world of Harry Potter through Pottermore, an online interactive reading experience by J.K. Rowling.

Last week, Potter fans, such as myself, scrambled at all hours of the night to get one of the coveted 1 million early access slots to the new site, which is due to open in October.

Last November, I wrote Introduction to Wizarding Law to celebrate the arrival of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 1. I had fun writing the article and received some great comments (including some from a professor teaching a college class on the very topic), so I decided to write a follow-up now as the movie series winds down and Pottermore begins.

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS. If you are waiting to read the book or see the movie, don’t read on.

It’s a bad week for government documents. OMB Watch recently reported that the House voted to cut funding to the Government Printing Office. This comes as no surprise, given the recent budget drama, and it’s not likely to get a lot of mainstream attention with looming cuts to entitlement programs and the military funding.

It’s important for those of us that advocate for government transparency and open access to take note, however. The GPO is the office tasked with preserving and disseminating federal documents. Cuts to its budget means less access to the law for people who can least afford to pay for it.