Month: April 2022

From Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald (S.D.N.Y.) in today’s opinion in Filsoof v. Cole:

As the Court’s rulings demonstrate, these [discovery] motions would have been unnecessary if counsel had conducted themselves in a more professional manner. The inclusion of any kernel of a meritorious argument in the briefing was in danger of being obscured by the amount of irrelevant invective. Indeed, the constant bombardment of the Court with such irrelevant invective makes defendant’s frequent refrain about the imposition on counsel’s time and his client’s resources ring hollow. P

For an earlier admonition from Judge Buchwald in the same case, see here.

The post "The Need to Maintain Objectivity and a Professional Distance from [One's] Clients" in Court Filings appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/qf2seEp
via IFTTT

Meet Aella, the daughter of evangelical Christians from Idaho who were so poor they couldn’t always put food on the table.

A former factory worker who never graduated college, she became one of the most successful performers on the adult subscription site OnlyFans, sometimes taking home over $100,000 a month on the platform. She still does one-on-one appointments but only with clients who can afford to pay her current rate of $3,000 an hour.

These days, Aella is known for her forays into data science, oddball social media polls, sexy and silly personal moments on Twitter, and using her giant platform to spread hot libertarian takes, such as declaring, “I like capitalism.”

“I am not okay with you making laws that prevent me from doing what I feel is good for me,” Aella tells Reason. An outspoken defender of sex worker rights, she compares her current life to what it was like at the age of 19, when she would wake up at 4:30 a.m. to go do repetitive tasks on an assembly line in a windowless factory, often putting in over 50 hours a week.

“Why do people talk about survival sex work but not like…survival factory work or survival burger flipping?” she wonders. Yes, there’s exploitation in sex work, but “decriminalizing sex work would let workers actually go get police help if they needed it.”

Even before she got rich and famous, back when she was “scraping change off the ground to eat,” Aella says she still “had libertarian-leaning economic views.”

Reason‘s Liz Wolfe met up with Aella at her home in Austin, Texas, for a wide-ranging conversation about everything from how sex work made her a better data scientist to why many successful practitioners in her industry are selling not only sex but also the personal connections that so many of us are missing in our lives.

Today’s sponsor:

• CrowdHealth is an alternative way to pay for your health care with no surprise bills and no doctor networks. Use the promo code REASON and get three months for just $99 a month.

The post Aella: Libertarian Sex Worker Turned Data Scientist appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/xrtoUOJ
via IFTTT

From Christian Action League of Minn. v. Freeman, decided last week by the Eighth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Jonathan Kobes, joined by Judge Raymond Gruender:

Minnesota Statute § 609.748(2) allows victims to obtain restraining orders against their harassers…. CAL is a non-profit run by Ann Redding that opposes pornography and sexual exploitation. Its roughly 150 members advocate against sexually oriented publications. One of those publications was City Pages, a Minneapolis newspaper owned by the Star Tribune. Since 2010, CAL has publicly opposed companies that advertise in City Pages. CAL’s members believe that, since City Pages runs advertisements for sexually oriented businesses, companies that advertise in City Pages are tacitly endorsing those businesses. CAL primarily advocates through postcards, letters, and emails directed at City Pages‘ advertisers.

R. Leigh Frost is a lawyer who advertised her firm in City Pages. After Redding noticed one of Frost’s advertisements, she sent Frost a postcard asking her to stop buying ad space. The card said, “Porn tears families apart. City Pages promotes strip clubs and porn. As a woman, are you ok with that?” Not long after, Frost’s firm received an email and another postcard expressing the same sentiment.

Despite Frost asking CAL to stop contacting her, she received yet another postcard about a week later. Fed up with CAL’s messages, Frost filed a petition for a harassment restraining order (HRO) under Minnesota Statute § 609.748(2), which provides that “[a] person who is a victim of harassment … may seek a restraining order.” Among other things, it defines harassment as “repeated incidents of intrusive or unwanted acts, words, or gestures that have a substantial adverse effect or are intended to have a substantial adverse effect on the safety, security, or privacy of another, regardless of the relationship between the actor and the intended target.” The day after Frost filed her petition, a state court judge issued an HRO against CAL. A few months later, the parties settled and the state court vacated the HRO.

CAL sued Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County Attorney, seeking “declaratory relief and a permanent injunction prohibiting Freeman from prosecuting any HRO under the Statute.” The Eighth Circuit concluded that CAL’s speech is clearly protected by the statute—and thus that any future HROs barring repetition of CAL’s speech would be unconstitutional—but also held that this was so clear (despite the state court’s having issued an HRO in the past) that CAL lacked standing and thus no formal declaratory judgment or injunction would be issued:

The plain text of the Statute is ambiguous as to whether it criminalizes CAL’s speech. CAL wants to repeatedly contact, via email and postcards, companies who support sexually oriented businesses. The Statute prohibits “harassment,” which includes “repeated incidents of intrusive or unwanted acts, words, or gestures that have a substantial adverse effect … on the … privacy of another, regardless of the relationship between the actor and the intended target.” CAL argues that this language criminalizes its plan to persuade advertisers to boycott City Pages. If that’s true, then CAL has been injured because the Statute has chilled its arguably constitutionally protected speech.

Freeman, however, argues that postcards and emails to advertisers don’t have a “substantial adverse effect … on the safety, security, or privacy of another.” He claims that “[c]onduct that is only offensive, argumentative, or inappropriate,” like CAL’s, “does not constitute harassment.” If Freeman is correct, then the Statute doesn’t criminalize CAL’s conduct, and CAL doesn’t have standing. Because either interpretation is plausible, the Statute is ambiguous….

[T]he constitutional savings canon, which dictates that “[a] statute must be construed, if fairly possible, so as to avoid not only the conclusion that it is unconstitutional, but also grave doubts upon that score[,]” … strongly supports Freeman’s interpretation that CAL’s speech isn’t criminalized by the Statute. CAL wants to write advertisers to encourage them to stop supporting sexually oriented businesses—what the Supreme Court has dubbed “core political speech.” Accordingly, adopting CAL’s interpretation would require us to cast doubt on the constitutionality of the Statute. This factor weighs heavily in favor of Freeman’s interpretation that the Statute doesn’t prohibit CAL’s speech.

The noscitur a sociis canon also supports Freeman’s interpretation. This canon, often expressed as “a word is known by the company it keeps,” dictates that we should “avoid ascribing to one word a meaning so broad that it is inconsistent with its accompanying words.” This is sometimes also referred to as the “word-association canon.” For instance, a statute covering “motor vehicles, motorcycles, industrial and construction equipment, [and] farm tractors” would not cover electrical wiring, even though that is technically “industrial equipment.”

This canon suggests that we should narrowly interpret the Statute’s definition of “harassment.” Harassment is defined as:

(1) a single incident of physical or sexual assault, a single incident of harassment under [Minnesota’s stalking statute], a single incident of nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images under [Minnesota’s revenge porn statute], or repeated incidents of intrusive or unwanted acts, words, or gestures that have a substantial adverse effect or are intended to have a substantial adverse effect on the safety, security, or privacy of another, regardless of the relationship between the actor and the intended target;

(2) targeted residential picketing; and

(3) a pattern of attending public events after being notified that the actor’s presence at the event is harassing to another.

The items listed before repeated unwanted words—sexual assault, stalking, and revenge porn—make CAL’s emails and postcards look trivial by comparison. When considering the examples surrounding “repeated … unwanted acts [or] words … that have a substantial adverse effect … [on] privacy,” it’s clear that the Minnesota legislature only meant to capture truly egregious conduct, not the political speech that CAL engages in. In short, stalking and a few political postcards are not birds of a feather.

Finally, … [i]n Dunham v. Roer (2006), the Court of Appeals of Minnesota held that the Statute’s definition of “harassment” does not include constitutionally protected speech. It reasoned that “the language of the statute is directed against constitutionally unprotected ‘fighting words’ … ‘true threats’ … and speech … that … is in violation of one’s right to privacy.” As a result, the court held the Statute to be narrowly tailored and constitutional. Because “state appellate court decisions are highly persuasive and should be followed when they are the best evidence of state law,” this weighs heavily in favor of Freeman’s interpretation.

We are convinced that the Minnesota Supreme Court would not interpret the Statute’s definition of “harassment” to cover CAL’s speech. As a result, nothing CAL wants to do is criminalized by the Statute—it is free to encourage advertisers to oppose sexually oriented businesses….

Chief Judge Lavenski Smith dissented:

I agree with the majority that the Statute is ambiguous. An admittedly ambiguous statute together with solid evidence that the statute has been construed—by a court—to forbid the conduct in question should suffice to show that such conduct is “arguably” proscribed by the Statute. Here, Redding and CAL have demonstrated that the Statute has in fact been construed to proscribe their conduct. Surely, this showing clears the relatively low hurdle needed for standing.

Finally, injury-in-fact in the context of a First Amendment pre-enforcement challenge equates to “[r]easonable chill.” Were Redding and CAL “objectively reasonable” in refraining from their intended course of conduct? As they had recently been restrained by court order imposed under Minnesota Statute § 609.748, their decision to chill their speech would seem to meet that test.

The majority responded to the dissent thus:

The dissent argues that even if CAL’s conduct isn’t prohibited by Minnesota law, CAL still has standing to sue because it was previously subject to an HRO. There’s certainly intuitive appeal to that argument. After all, the fact that a statute has been enforced against someone in the past can give rise to an inference of future enforcement.

Nevertheless, … here there is binding Minnesota caselaw holding that the Statute doesn’t apply to speech like CAL’s. See Dunham (“[T]he harassment statute only regulates speech or conduct that constitutes `fighting words,’ `true threats,’ or substantial invasions of one’s privacy.”).

The only person who has obtained an HRO against CAL is R. Leigh Frost, who is not a party to this litigation…. Because there is no allegation that the Hennepin County Attorney has ever enforced the Statute against CAL’s speech or similarly protected speech—or has any plans to do so in the future—CAL lacks standing.

Here is an excerpt from County Attorney Freeman’s brief that discusses the “privacy” question:

Second, the communications did not have a substantial adverse effect on Frost’s privacy. The communications from CAL and Redding were sent only to the addresses that Frost Law Firm publicly advertised. Frost Law Firm’s City Pages ad included the law firm’s business address, phone number, and public website, and the website contained an email address for the firm. The postcards from CAL and Redding were sent to Frost Law Firm’s business address, and the email was sent to Frost Law Firm’s business email.  CAL and Redding did not send any communications to Frost’s home or to her family, friends, or clients.  Moreover, the communications did not contain personal or sensitive information about Frost or Frost Law Firm.

The post Continuing to Send Unwanted Political Mailings to a Business Isn't "Harassment" Under Minnesota Law appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/eUhIBwy
via IFTTT

Nearly three-fifths of Americans had been infected by the COVID-19 virus at least once as of February, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The results, which are based on seroprevalence research involving blood samples from all 50 states, indicate that infection prevalence varied widely across age groups: It was about 75 percent for children 11 and younger, 74 percent for 12-to-17-year-olds, 64 percent for 18-to-49-year-olds, 50 percent for 50-to-64-year-olds, and 33 percent for Americans 65 or older.

This study suggests that roughly 192 million Americans had been infected as of February, more than twice the number of cases that had been reported at the time. Based on the number of COVID-19 deaths recorded at the end of February, that estimate implies an overall U.S. infection fatality rate (IFR) of about 0.5 percent, which is substantially lower than the estimates used in early epidemiological models that projected as many as 2.2 million COVID-19 deaths in the United States, more than twice the current total. At the same time, the implied IFR is much higher than the estimates suggested by early seroprevalence studies in California and Florida.

Is 0.5 percent in the right ballpark? That depends on how well the CDC study measured the prevalence of infection. But it is also important to keep in mind that infection fatality rates can vary widely over time as the mix of patients changes, treatment improves, and vaccination becomes increasingly common; across age groups, since the risk for older people is vastly higher than the risk for younger people; and across locations with different demographics, patient characteristics, and health care capacities.

The blood samples for the CDC study were drawn for diagnostic purposes unrelated to COVID-19, and the researchers looked for anti-N antibodies, which are produced in response to infection but not in response to the vaccines approved for use in the United States. The New York Times reports that the study “used a test sensitive enough to identify previously infected people for at least one to two years after exposure.”

The researchers note four limitations: “First, convenience sampling might limit generalizability. Second, lack of race and ethnicity data precluded weighting for these variables. Third, all samples were obtained for clinical testing and might overrepresent persons with greater health care access or who more frequently seek care. Finally, these findings might underestimate the cumulative number of SARS-CoV-2 infections because infections after vaccination might result in lower anti-N titers, and anti-N seroprevalence cannot account for reinfections.”

Those limitations suggest that the total number of infections may be higher than the CDC’s estimate. The Times reports that “some scientists said they had expected the figures to be even higher, given the contagious variants that have marched through the nation over the past two years.” If the gap between reported cases and total infections is bigger than the CDC’s results suggest, that would imply a lower overall IFR.

In any case, a nationwide IFR estimate for a particular period of time obscures factors that have a big impact on the danger posed by COVID-19. In light of those factors, any single IFR estimate is apt to be misleading. Instead of trying to estimate the one “true” IFR, it makes more sense to recognize that there are many IFRs, contingent on time, location, and demographic variables.

In a January 2021 Bulletin of the World Health Organization article, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis reported that the IFRs implied by seroprevalence studies “tended to be much lower than estimates made earlier in the pandemic.” But he also noted that “the infection fatality rate is not a fixed physical constant,” and “it can vary substantially across locations, depending on the population structure, the case-mix of infected and deceased individuals and other, local factors.”

Although it has long been clear that COVID-19 fatality rates are strongly correlated with age, the magnitude of the differences remains astonishing. According to the CDC’s “best estimate,” the IFR for people 65 or older is 9 percent, 4,500 times the IFR for children and teenagers (0.002 percent). A Lancet analysis published this month found that “age-specific IFR estimates form a J shape, with the lowest IFR [0.002 percent] occurring at age 7 years.” The estimated IFR “increas[es] exponentially” with age: from about 0.06 percent for a 30-year-old to 1 percent for a 60-year-old and 20 percent for a 90-year-old.

Parents of children who are not yet eligible for vaccination may be reassured by the CDC’s estimate that 75 percent of kids younger than 12 already had been infected by February. “That so many children are carrying antibodies may offer comfort to parents of those aged 5 and under,” the Times says, “since many may have acquired at least some immunity through infection.” But the most reassuring thing about the risk that COVID-19 poses to children in that age group is that it has always been tiny: According to the Lancet study, the IFR ranges from 0.002 percent for 5-year-olds to 0.005 percent for 1-year-olds.

That same study found that “all-age COVID-19 IFR varied by a factor of more than 30 across countries and territories during the pre-vaccine era.” The countries with the highest rates as of July 15, 2020, were Portugal (2.1 percent), Monaco (1.8 percent), Japan (1.8 percent), Spain (1.7 percent), and Greece (1.6 percent). When the researchers adjusted for age demographics, Portugal and Spain were still in the top five, but the other three countries were replaced by Peru, Oman, and Mexico.

“Because IFR is strongly related to age,” the authors report, “population age structure accounted for nearly three-quarters of variation in IFR estimates for in-sample countries on July 15, 2020.” But even when that factor was taken into account, “many North American and European countries continued to have high IFRs despite having greater access to health-care resources.” The researchers say possible explanations include “high SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates in the care home population of some locations” and “a higher prevalence of comorbidities that increase the severity of COVID-19 disease.”

The IFRs implied by CDC seroprevalence research conducted around the same time likewise varied widely across states, ranging from 0.1 percent in Utah to 1.4 percent in Connecticut. As with the international comparisons, age demographics probably explain much of the variation (the median age in Utah is substantially lower than the median age in Connecticut), but other factors (such as preexisting medical conditions) may also be important.

The Lancet study, which covered 190 countries and territories, also found that IFRs fell over time. Adjusted for age demographics, they ranged from 0.17 percent to 1.16 percent on April 15, 2020, and from 0.12 percent to 0.77 percent on January 1, 2021. The median IFR fell from 0.54 percent to 0.35 percent during that period. The age-standardized IFR for the United States, according to these estimates, fell from 0.73 percent to 0.43 percent.

IFRs were dropping well before vaccines were widely available, which may reflect a combination of shifting patient characteristics, improved treatment, and naturally acquired immunity. “The evidence suggests that a range of improvements in clinical management have contributed to substantive improvements in clinical outcomes that are likely to decrease the IFR over time,” the researchers say.

Vaccination, which dramatically reduces the risk of life-threatening symptoms, can be expected to push IFRs down further, although age still seems to be the most important predictor of infection outcomes. As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted in September, “a Financial Times analysis found the COVID-19 mortality risk is about equal for vaccinated 80-year-olds and unvaccinated 50-year-olds, while an unvaccinated 30-year-old has less chance of dying than a vaccinated 45-year-old.”

The post A CDC Study Suggests Three-Fifths of Americans Have Been Infected by the Coronavirus appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/iGb6YJI
via IFTTT