Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
New on the Short Circuit podcast: Lawyers and bond hearings in the wrong order, plus, in #12Months12Circuits, we hit the Sixth.
- Puerto Rico went through a special sort of bankruptcy to sort out its debt problems via a court-approved restructuring plan. Now, it asserts that claims against individual police officers for violations of constitutional rights are barred by the plan because the gov’t has to defend those suits and can choose to indemnify the officers. First Circuit: The plan does not purport to extinguish these civil-rights claims, and it’s dubious it could discharge them even if it tried.
- Buffalo: We had to demolish this building on an emergency basis because it was an abandoned drug den on the verge of collapse. Property owner: Was not. Second Circuit: And this, children, is what we call a fact dispute. To the jury it goes!
- Second Circuit: FTX CEO SBF SOL.
- The Secretary of Interior orders the removal of certain exhibits from the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park that are inconsistent with the administration’s “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.” (They were about slavery.) Philadelphia sues. Third Circuit: But the APA bars the city’s claims.
- The Castro-led gov’t stole the trademark for Havana Club rum from its rightful owner, first registering it with the U.S. in 1976. It dutifully renewed the trademark every ten years, as required, until the Dept. of Treasury refused to issue a license for the 2006 renewal (which the D.C. Circuit upheld as constitutional in 2011). Treasury takes an about face in 2016 and retroactively authorizes the decade-old renewal. Bacardi (which bought the rightful owner’s interest in the trademark): Wait just a minute, that registration lapsed, there’s no time travel! Fourth Circuit: Ah, but there is.
- Fairmount Heights, Md. officer arrests teen, impounds her car, coerces her into having sex at police facility where he’s not supposed to take arrestees, gives car back. He’s convicted in state court (of having sex with a person in custody) and sentenced to time served. He’s also convicted in federal court (of filing a false report) and sentenced to three years of probation. Fourth Circuit (unpublished): And by god, he’s going to serve that probation.
- Would-be short-term rental owners: Our properties are near high-traffic, commercial areas in a vacation town that has hundreds of other short-term rentals. We wouldn’t be a nuisance, and indeed the city itself found we wouldn’t harm the public. We should be allowed to operate. Fifth Circuit: Ah, but the record shows some neighbors didn’t want that. [IJ filed an amicus brief urging a different course.]
- Sixth Circuit: If there is one consistent American truth, it is that we are as a people deeply skeptical of unaccountable bureaucrats wielding unchecked power against helpless citizens. That is what happened to this scrappy entrepreneurial plaintiff, who nonetheless totally loses.
- While serving 35-year sentence, Kalamazoo, Mich. drug dealer develops meningitis that leaves him partially blind and paralyzed from the waist down. Compassionate release? District court: Nope, might not be safe for the public to let him out. Sixth Circuit: Yeah, you gotta be nicer to prison nurses. Affirmed.
- For decades, elected Illinois county coroner keeps several skulls as trophies, including from a murdered high-school student. Student’s family sues the county, alleging that violated the Constitution. Seventh Circuit: What the coroner did was so wrong it also violated state law—and that means you can’t sue the county because it couldn’t have been the county’s policy to violate state law. Dissent: That is crazy. He was the elected official with ultimate authority over handling bodies; his actions were the county’s policies. [For the story of Justice Frankfurter’s color-of-law shenanigans being smuggled into municipal liability, we heartily recommend this episode and this episode of this podcast we made.]
- Though they are not in its path, Jacksonville, Ark. officers shoot, kill would-be thief driving truck away from them at low speed. Eighth Circuit: No QI. Nothing in the video blatantly contradicts the district court’s finding that there are factual disputes that can only be resolved by a jury.
- The thing to know about water law in the western half of this country is that most of the rights were doled out ages ago. So it goes with the Klamath River basin, some 12,000 square miles of interconnected waters and wilderness areas in California and Oregon. The feds blessed an initiative in 1905 to appropriate the water for irrigation purposes, subject to several tribes that held senior rights to certain waters. The feds’ efforts, which have recently devastated endangered fish the tribes rely on, must comply with the Endangered Species Act, says the Ninth Circuit (over a dissent). And also this isn’t a judicial taking because the court isn’t actually adjudicating any water rights (that happened long ago).
- Georgia law lets certain incumbent elected officials run “leadership committees” that are exempt from campaign finance limits. Sounds fishy. But is the appropriate remedy to enjoin the leadership committees? Eleventh Circuit: It is. Dissent: Plaintiff should sue the state to prevent it applying limits to him, not try to impose limits on campaigns.
- “Keying” is a “long-standing practice” in the football program at Piedmont High in Alabama. Players “key” “younger male players by forcing a car or truck key into a player’s anus and twisting it.” Eleventh Circuit (over a partial dissent): Case undismissed!
- Two brothers leave gym dressed in gym clothes around 3 a.m. and walk through empty parking lot to their cars in the next lot. They are not inclined to stop and explain themselves to a Miami-Dade, Fla. officer, leading to body slams and tasings. Eleventh Circuit (2024, unpublished): Some claims proceed. Eleventh Circuit (2026, unpublished): We’re not going to recant what we said earlier.
- And in en banc news, the Ninth Circuit will reconsider its decision that it likely violates the First Amendment for Washington state to (arguably) prohibit a Christian ministry from exclusively hiring coreligionists who share its beliefs about marriage and sexuality for non-ministerial roles.
And in white whale news, we are pleased to announce that Hawai’i has repealed its requirement that natural hair braiders obtain a full-blown cosmetology license just to braid hair. Way back in 1991, IJ’s first ever lawsuit was a challenge to the very same requirement in the District of Columbia. Indeed, back then all 50 states (plus D.C.) required something along the lines of 1,500 hours of cosmetology training, almost none of it even tangentially relevant to braiding. Today, 14 lawsuits—and a whole lot of grassroots activism—later, no jurisdiction requires a full-service license. Hawai’i was the last. Maika’i loa!
The post Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal appeared first on Reason.com.
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