Category: reason

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to reject a Republican immigration bill backed by President Donald Trump.

The bill needed 218 votes to pass. Just 121 representatives voted yes, while 301 voted no, including 112 Republicans. No Democrats supported the bill.

The legislation was widely seen as a compromise bill, as it included elements meant to appease both conservative and moderate Republicans. In addition to allotting $25 billion for construction of Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, the bill would have limited both legal and illegal immigration. It also would have provided a path to citizenship for beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and ensured that undocumented families caught trying to cross into the U.S. aren’t separated.

Although the bill had the official support of the White House, Trump sent mixed signals about whether he really thought it was worth passing. Last week, the president said Republicans were “wasting their time” on the legislation. But in a Wednesday-morning tweet, he backed the bill.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II, IN THEIR AFTERNOON VOTE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE. PASSAGE WILL SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS = CRIME. WIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2018

Despite Trump’s endorsement, it came as no surprise that the bill failed to make it through the House. The legislation was not expected to garner any support from Democrats, meaning that moderate Republicans and conservatives would have had to come together to ensure its passage. And even if it had passed the House, the bill likely would have died in the Senate.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R–Wis.) said Tuesday that if the legislation failed to pass, Republicans would attempt to propose a new bill focused on family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border. But with lawmakers set to return home Thursday for the July recess, a timetable for that legislation is unclear.

It was the second time in recent days that a Republican immigration bill didn’t make it through the House. Last week, legislation sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R–Va.) was shot down in a vote of 193 to 231. That bill was seen as much more conservative than the one lawmakers rejected on Wednesday.

In a highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling, Janus v. AFSCME, the nation’s high court said public-sector employees can no longer be forced to pay dues to unions to cover activities in connection with compensation, workplace rules, and related issues. The plaintiff in the case, Mark Janus, is a state employee in Illinois who objected to having $50 taken out of his paycheck and given to a union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. The ruling affects workers in the 20 states that had not yet banned the practice.

The decision is being hailed by a wide variety of pro-business groups and many libertarians as a victory for economic freedom and freedom of association. But its long-term impact is not clear.

About 35 percent of public-sector workers belong to unions, a figure that hasn’t changed much in the last 25 years. “Unions are probably right to be worried about losing dues-paying members in the aftermath of the Janus ruling,” writes Reason‘s Eric Boehm, who has covered the story closely. “An analysis by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, a union-backed think tank, estimates that 726,000 workers nationally would stop paying dues if they had that choice. The loss of union members and their dues could be particularly challenging in blue states, according to the IEPI report. Public-sector union membership would decrease by an estimated 189,000 members in California, 136,000 members in New York, and 49,000 members in Illinois.”

In the newest Reason Podcast, I talk to Boehm about the ruling and its possible implications for public-sector workers, unions, and taxpayers.

Back in February, I talked with Mark Janus about why he brought his lawsuit, what it’s like to be at the center of a major Supreme Court case, and more. Listen here.

Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes. Listen at SoundCloud below:

Audio production by Ian Keyser

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Voters in Oklahoma passed one of the country’s broadest medical marijuana ballot measures on Tuesday. But late Tuesday night, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin released a statement suggesting she will work with legislators and state officials to roll back some of the initiative’s provisions.

State Question 788 (S.Q. 788), which makes Oklahoma the 30th state to legalize medical use of marijuana, has faced staunch opposition since qualifying for the ballot in June 2017. Law enforcement groups and other opponents spent “roughly half a million dollars [on] television ads seeking to undermine support for medical marijuana,” Marijuana Majority’s Tom Angell reports.

“This state question creates a special class of citizen out of those who obtain a medical marijuana license,” Pawnee County Sheriff Mike Waters told Tulsa’s ABC affiliate last month. “It does not make sense that an 18-year-old can go to a veterinarian, say he gets headaches, and then be given a two-year license to carry enough marijuana for 85 joints.”

But the efforts of anti-cannabis groups failed to deter voters, who approved S.Q. 788 on Tuesday by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. As a result, Oklahoma has “one of the broadest medical marijuana measures to be adopted by any state,” says Mason Tvert, communications director at the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).

Despite promising to “respect the will of the voters in any question placed before them to determine the direction of our state,” Fallin’s election-night statement hints that the victory could be short-lived. “As I mentioned in previous public comments, I believe, as well as many Oklahomans, this new law is written so loosely that it opens the door for basically recreational marijuana,” Fallin’s statement says. “I will be discussing with legislative leaders and state agencies our options going forward on how best to proceed with adding a medical and proper regulatory framework to make sure marijuana use is truly for valid medical illnesses.”

According to MPP’s Tvert, Fallin isn’t blowing smoke. “Because it is an initiated statute and not a constitutional amendment,” Tvert explains in an email, “lawmakers and regulators will have a lot more flexibility during the implementation process. Making changes or repealing the statute will only require a simple majority in the Legislature, whereas changing or repealing a constitutional amendment would have required approval from the voters in addition to majorities in both legislative chambers.”

Under S.Q. 788, license applicants are not limited by a list of disorders, and they need only a recommendation from “an Oklahoma Board certified physician,” according to the referendum language (that would seem to preclude veterinarians, contrary to Sheriff Mike Waters’ claim). The possession and growing allowances are generous. A person with a medical marijuana license can legally possess up to three ounces “on their person” and grow up to six mature and six immature plants at home, where they can possess up to eight ounces of buds as well as an ounce of concentrate and 72 ounces of edibles. The initiative states that Oklahoma must recognize medical marijuana licenses granted by other states, and it allows cities and counties within Oklahoma to pass local ordinances raising the possession and cultivation limits above those established in the state law.

S.Q. 788 is a little more restrictive when it comes to commercial licenses. Growers, processors, and retailers cannot sell company ownership stakes in excess of 25 percent to non-Oklahoma residents, and a felony criminal history is grounds for rejecting an application. The entire text of the initiative can be read here.

While some of these provisions are likely to be rolled back by Fallin and her allies in the legislature, MPP’s Tvert doesn’t see them scrapping the law altogether. “It would be a huge political mistake for them to openly defy the voters by repealing the law or implementing it in a way that clearly defies voters’ intent,” he says. “Legislators should look to other states that have adopted similarly expansive laws for lessons on implementation. The Legislature should establish a system that best reflects the intent of the voters, and the voters clearly intended to establish a system that provides safe, legal, and reliable access to medical marijuana for patients who would benefit from it.”

Amid a sweeping plan to overhaul the structure of the federal government, the Trump administration is calling for the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. It’s an idea whose time has come.

The USPS is hemorrhaging money, with over $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and “no clear path to profitability without reform,” according to President Donald Trump’s document itself. With the advent of email and related technologies, the first-class mailing services provided by the USPS are being used less and less. The number of first-class letters sent has fallen by more than half since 2005, giving the state-run monopoly dim financial prospects. In the last four years alone, the USPS took a combined loss of $18.9 billion.

The 132-page government reform proposal reveals only limited information about President Donald Trump’s intentions regarding the postal service, although it’s clear that privatization is his ultimate goal. The plan suggests two possible avenues of market-oriented change: private management with federal regulatory oversight or selling off the postal service in its entirety, either through an initial public offering (IPO) or a direct sale.

The proposal hints that an IPO may prove difficult to achieve given the postal service’s current condition, since few investors are likely to be interested in a highly unprofitable, bureaucratic mess. It says a sale would likely require changes and restructuring to first net a profit. Selling the USPS would also mean that the federal government would have to absorb its debt and unfunded liabilities. While these concerns are valid, an IPO is still feasible. Cornell University economist Richard Geddes found that a USPS IPO could raise as much as $40 billion.

Apart from raising money for the government, an IPO would have considerable advantages. Liberalization would grant the USPS greater flexibility in making business decisions, such as determining wages and benefits. Relief from regulatory and political pressure would enable the operation to make changes more rapidly and as necessary, increasing its efficiency.

The case for privatization is strong, but it there are political hurdles. Postal unions are vehemently opposed to losing generous federal benefits and are not stingy with their political contributions. The USPS employs more than half a million people, which means change will have real political consequences.

Opponents of denationalization say the experience of European countries illustrates the drawbacks of free enterprise: higher prices, lower wages, and mass layoffs. But those prospects reflect the economic bubble in which government-run postal services operate.

The USPS currently is free from any real competition (in the provision of first-class mail, at least), and its prices are largely unresponsive to demand, leading to an inefficient allocation of resources. Opening the postal services to more competition would reduce these inefficiencies.

If prices for first-class postal services go up after privatization, that means the USPS was holding prices below market levels. If jobs and wages are cut, that means the USPS was avoiding changes that would have made its operations more efficient.

It’s clear that the solution to the postal service’s ills is more capitalism. The president seems to understand that. He has signed an executive order establishing a task force to identify “reform consistent with this reorganization proposal.” Its report, which will be available by August 10, should outline pragmatic steps toward demonopolizing the postal services.

Two Tennessee sheriff’s deputies face federal charges in connection with a 2016 incident, captured on surveillance videos, in which they used a stun gun on a teenager tied to chair at the Cheatham County jail. In one video, he is tased four times for a total of 50 seconds.

Jordan Elias Norris, who was 18 at the time, was arrested in November 2016 for marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession, weapon possession, and theft under $500. According to a lawsuit he filed in 2017, Norris suffered more than 40 pairs of Taser burns. “I’ll keep on doing that until I run out of batteries,” Cpl. Mark Bryant allegedly told Norris. Bryant and two other deputies were placed on leave after the incident, which was referred to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

On Tuesday, Don Cochran, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, announced indictments against Bryant and Sgt. Gary Ola. Bryant is charged with deprivation of rights and obstruction of justice. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison on the first charge and up to 20 years on the second. Ola is charged with making false statements to the TBI and the FBI. If convicted, Ola faces up to five years in prison. Ola was still employed with the Cheatham County Sheriff’s Office when the charges were announced. Both men were arrested on Tuesday. The other two deputies initially placed on leave were not listed. Ola became involved later during the investigation.

“They abused him and they tortured him, and then lied about it,” Norris’ stepfather, Tony Chapman, said yesterday. When he first saw his stepson’s burns, Chapman told reporters, he sided with the deputies, assuming Norris was fighting back. His perception changed after he saw the surveillance videos.

Chapman suspects the officers’ actions contributed to his son’s death. Norris, who dropped his lawsuit after receiving a settlement, died in March at the age of 19. An autopsy found that he died from a suspected overdose. But Chapman notes that the autopsy also found damage to the right ventricle of Norris’ heart, which may have been a factor in his death.

“We’re talking about a young, healthy 18-year-old when these tasings happened,” he said. “Absolutely no doubt in my mind that this tasing incident damaged his heart.”

A 2017 report from Reuters documented fatal Taser abuse behind bars:

Reuters identified 104 deaths involving Tasers behind bars, nearly all since 2000—10 percent of a larger universe of more than 1,000 fatal law enforcement encounters in which the weapons were used. Some of the in-custody deaths were deemed “multi-factorial,” with no distinct cause, and some were attributed to pre-existing health problems. But the Taser was listed as a cause or contributing factor in more than a quarter of the 84 inmate deaths in which the news agency obtained autopsy findings.

Like Norris, more than two-thirds of the inmates in the cases that Reuters reviewed were immobilized by officers before they were tased. Only two of the inmates were armed.

“Professional speech” receives the same First Amendment protection as other kinds of speech, the U.S. Supreme Court reiterated Tuesday. In a decision dealing with California’s “crisis pregnancy centers”—which encourage women to give birth rather than seek abortions—SCOTUS found that the state can’t compel these centers to alert clients about state-assisted abortion options, thereby rendering California’s “Reproductive FACT Act” unconstitutional.

The law, which combines the charged issues of abortion and religious liberty, split conservatives and liberals on the Court (and in the public) along predictable lines. But while the Court’s decision isn’t likely to have much effect on abortion access or freedom of conscience, it could have major implications for state regulation across a wide range of situations and industries.

“The majority’s view, if taken literally, could radically change prior law,” warns Justice Stephen Breyer in a dissent joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

In holding that California’s rules for crisis pregnancy centers are unconstitutional content-based regulations, SCOTUS may have paved the way for successful challenges to what Breyer et al. call “ordinary social and economic regulation.”

Professional Speech Is Still Free Speech

The crux of yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling is that California’s Reproductive FACT Act violates the First Amendment. “Governments must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy writes in a concurring opinion.

Passed in 2015, the FACT Act is aimed at crisis pregnancy centers—defined by California legislators as “pro-life (largely Christian belief-based) organizations that offer a limited range of free pregnancy options, counseling, and other services to individuals that visit a center”—as well as other organizations that offer family planning services. Under the law, all such entities licensed by the state as medical facilities must provide patients with information about state-assisted prenatal care, contraception, and abortion services. Centers that are not licensed to offer medical care are required to disclose that status on site and in all advertisements.

Two California pregnancy centers, one licensed by the state and one not, and an organization representing crisis pregnancy centers argued that the law violated their First Amendment rights. After a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the law, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra.

Yesterday the Court held that requiring licensed clinics to provide information about state pregnancy and abortion services is indeed an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech. Content-based speech regulations are unconstitutional unless the government can prove that they serve a “compelling government interest” and that they have been narrowly tailored, meaning they don’t sweep too widely and do not impose a burden greater than necessary to achieve the government’s goal.

In this case, “licensed clinics must provide a government-drafted script about the availability of state-sponsored services,” including “abortion—the very practice that petitioners are devoted to opposing,” Justice Clarence Thomas notes in the majority opinion, which was joined by Kennedy, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. Such a burden is hard to justify as necessary to achieve California’s goal of publicizing state services, the Court concluded.

The 9th Circuit decided that California did not have to satisfy this test because it was regulating “professional speech,” which enjoys less protection under the First Amendment. “But this Court,” Thomas writes, “has not recognized ‘professional speech’ as a separate category of speech. Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals.'”

Who Are You Calling a Professional?

The Supreme Court “has afforded less protection for professional speech in two circumstances,” Thomas writes. But “neither [circumstance] turned on the fact that professionals were speaking” (emphasis mine), as opposed to some other sort of speaker. Rather, the speech in question either conveyed “factual, noncontroversial information” or constituted professional conduct that only incidentally involved speech.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, for example, the Court upheld a Pennsylvania regulation requiring doctors to tell abortion patients about “the nature of the procedure, the health risks of the abortion and childbirth, and the ‘probable gestational age of the unborn child,'” as well as provide details about state services for new parents. Planned Parenthood sued on free speech grounds, but SCOTUS sided with the state, saying the rule was merely part of obtaining informed consent for a medical procedure.

“For constitutional purposes, [the law is] no different from a requirement that a doctor give certain specific information about any medical procedure,” the Court held in Casey. And speech that is “part of the practice of medicine” is “subject to reasonable licensing and regulation by the State.”

In the present case, by contrast, the compelled speech “does not facilitate informed consent to a medical procedure,” Thomas says. “In fact, it is not tied to a procedure at all. It applies to all interactions between a covered facility and its clients, regardless of whether a medical procedure is ever sought, offered, or performed.”

Nor is the regulation a particularly effective way of accomplishing the state’s goals, Thomas suggests. California said the FACT Act was aimed at ensuring that low-income women would find out about state-sponsored services. But “assuming that this is a substantial state interest,” Thomas writes, the law “is not sufficiently drawn to achieve it,” as it excludes community clinics, rural health centers, federal health centers, and all sorts of spaces where low-income women receive care.

In any event, California certainly could find other ways to inform low-income women about its services, the Court concludes, suggesting it mount a public information campaign or “even post the information on public property near crisis pregnancy centers.” The state said this was not a viable option, since previous advertising campaigns did not generate much of a response. Thomas suggests the lack of response could be due to a lack of interest or a poorly designed advertising message, as opposed to an inadequate medium.

Thomas argues that upholding California’s law could encourage speech restrictions that go far beyond the abortion issue. “Professional speech” is “a difficult category to define with precision,” he writes, and “as defined by the courts of appeals, the professional-speech doctrine would cover a wide array of individuals,” including truck drivers, bartenders, and barbers. Basically, the lower courts have said a line of work becomes a “profession” when the state decides to require a license for it. “But that,” warns Thomas, “gives the States unfettered power to reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by simply imposing a licensing requirement.”

Viewpoint Discrimination?

When it comes to unlicensed crisis pregnancy centers, the burden is on California “to prove that the unlicensed notice” it would require “is neither unjustified nor unduly burdensome,” writes Thomas. “It has not met its burden.”

California’s stated reason for this part of the FACT Act was to make sure pregnant women “know when they are getting medical care from licensed professionals.” But during oral arguments, the state’s lawyers contradicted this justification, saying pregnant women entering these facilities generally know they are not places for professional medical care. The centers do offer free access to pregnancy tests and other attractive (nonmedical) services, such as religion-based counseling and a free store with gently used baby clothes.

Making such centers post “a government-scripted, speaker-based disclosure” on site and in all advertisements (regardless of what else they do or don’t say) “unduly burdens protected speech” by “impos[ing] a requirement that is wholly disconnected from California’s informational interest,” the Court says. Furthermore, Thomas observes, the fact that the rule applies to pregnancy clinics but not family planning centers casts doubt on California’s claim that it is not discriminating based on viewpoint.

In his concurring opinion, Kennedy underlines that point, writing that it does “appear that viewpoint discrimination is inherent in the design and structure” of the FACT Act. Kennedy continues (citations omitted):

This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression. For here the State requires primarily pro-life pregnancy centers to promote the State’s own preferred message advertising abortions. This compels individuals to contradict their most deeply held beliefs, beliefs grounded in basic philosophical, ethical, or religious precepts, or all of these. And the history of the Act’s passage and its underinclusive application suggest a real possibility that these individuals were targeted because of their beliefs.

The California Legislature included in its official history the congratulatory statement that the Act was part of California’s legacy of “forward thinking.” But it is not forward thinking to force individuals to “be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view [they] fin[d] unacceptable.” It is forward thinking to begin by reading the First Amendment as ratified in 1791; to understand the history of authoritarian government as the Founders then knew it; to confirm that history since then shows how relentless authoritarian regimes are in their attempts to stifle free speech; and to carry those lessons onward as we seek to preserve and teach the necessity of freedom of speech for the generations to come.

‘Many Ordinary Disclosure Laws’ Could Be Deemed Unconstitutional

Although the majority’s opinion seems to side with the anti-abortion movement, it could spell trouble for the “informed consent” laws that pro-life activists favor, such as the law that spawned Planned Parenthood v. Casey or laws requiring that women seeking abortions hear about adoption options. Thomas et al. suggest these situations are different, as women come to the pregnancy centers to hear options about their pregnancy, not get a medical procedure. But Breyer’s dissent makes a convincing argument that this distinction is not relevant.

“No one doubts that choosing an abortion is a medical procedure that involves certain health risks,” writes Breyer. “But the same is true of carrying a child to term and giving birth,” which is why “prenatal care often involves testing for anemia, infections, measles, chicken pox, genetic disorders, diabetes, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, preeclampsia, and hosts of other medical conditions.” And “childbirth itself, directly or through pain management, risks harms of various kinds,” including a risk of death 14 times as high as the risk associated with abortion.

Breyer argues that the implications of the Court’s decision go far beyond abortion and reproductive care. “Because much, perhaps most, human behavior takes place through speech and because much, perhaps most, law regulates that speech in terms of its content, the majority’s approach at the least threatens considerable litigation over the constitutional validity of much, perhaps most, government regulation,” he writes. “Virtually every disclosure law could be considered ‘content based,’ for virtually every disclosure law requires individuals ‘to speak a particular message.'”

The dissenting justices see that as an undesirable and dangerous development. But libertarian-leaning people might take comfort in their analysis of the majority’s opinion. Breyer et al. suggest that the Court’s ruling could spell the end for all sorts of state-mandated disclosures. “Many ordinary disclosure laws would fall outside the majority’s exceptions for disclosures related to the professional’s own services or conduct,” Breyer writes. That means many ordinary disclosure laws could be declared unconstitutional.

“Historically, the Court has been wary of claims that regulation of business activity, particularly health-related activity, violates the Constitution,” Breyer says. For more than 100 years, “ordinary economic and social legislation has been thought to raise little constitutional concern.”

“Using the First Amendment to strike down economic and social laws that legislatures long would have thought themselves free to enact will, for the American public, obscure, not clarify, the true value of protecting freedom of speech,” the dissenters warn. But perhaps the majority decision simply paves the way to an understanding of free speech that does not yield so easily to the government’s whims.

It’s the end of an era at the U.S. Supreme Court. Today Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement.

In a letter sent this afternoon to President Donald Trump, Kennedy announced that “effective July 31 of this year,” he will “end his regular active status as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.” “Please permit me by this letter,” Kennedy wrote, “to express my profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret, and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.”

Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, Kennedy’s impact on American law and politics has been almost beyond all reckoning. From the battles over gay rights, abortion, and affirmative action, to the clashes over gun control, campaign finance, and health care reform, Kennedy’s fingerprints are everywhere. He is perhaps the single most influential jurist alive today and he will surely go down in American legal history as one of the most influential justices to serve on the high court.

Perhaps his most notable contribution came in the area of gay rights. Kennedy is and will remain a hero to many for his authorship of all four of the Supreme Court’s great decisions affirming the fundamental rights of gay people. In Romer v. Evans (1996), Kennedy led the Court in overturning a Colorado constitutional amendment that barred state officials from taking any action designed to protect gays from discrimination. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Kennedy led the Court in overturning that state’s ban on “homosexual conduct.” In United States v. Windsor (2013), Kennedy led the Court in invalidating a central part of the Defense of Marriage Act. Finally, in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), he led the Court in recognizing a constitutional right to gay marriage.

On the hot button issue of abortion, Kennedy managed to alternately hearten and dispirit both sides of the debate. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Kennedy joined the plurality opinion which is widely credited with saving Roe v. Wade from being overturned. Casey reaffirmed that abortion is a fundamental right and held that state regulations many not “impose an undue burden on the right.” Yet in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), Kennedy wrote the majority opinion upholding the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act signed by President George W. Bush. More recently, Kennedy joined Justice Stephen Breyer’s opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), which held that Texas exceeded its lawful regulatory power when it imposed certain onerous health and safety restrictions on abortion clinics and providers.

As a moderate conservative with liberal tendencies, Kennedy often found himself casting the tie-breaking vote in such closely divided cases. That gave him tremendous influence over the direction of American law.

That influence came with a certain price. Over the years, Kennedy has been denounced by every major faction in American politics. In conservative circles, for example, he has been keelhauled as a reckless judicial activist who “invented” a right to gay marriage. Liberals, meanwhile, have burned him in effigy as the unwitting mouthpiece for corporate oligarchs thanks to his majority opinion in the Citizens United case. And among libertarians, Kennedy has been damned as the fair-weather federalist who torpedoed the rights of local medical marijuana users in favor of a federal drug control scheme. Libertarians will also point out that Kennedy joined the majority opinion that unleashed the forces of eminent domain abuse in Kelo v. City of New London (2005).

To say the least, Kennedy’s jurisprudence defies easy categorization. Legal scholars will be arguing about it for a long time to come.

Kennedy’s retirement comes at a loaded moment in American politics. As things stand now, Senate Republicans have the votes—but just barely—to approve whatever nominee President Trump puts forward as a replacement. But what if the Republican ranks don’t hold?

And then of course there are the Democrats, who will undoubtedly mount a massive political attack on whatever nominee Trump puts forward.

In short, thanks to Kennedy’s retirement, all hell is about to break loose.

Anti-development activists in San Francisco are raising an increasingly ridiculous set of objections to prevent the owner of a laundromat in the city’s Mission District from converting his building into an apartment complex.

When Reason last spoke with Robert Tillman in February, the city of San Francisco was demanding that he study the historical significance of his coin-operated laundry before he be allowed to demolish it and put up a 75-unit, mixed-use housing development.

Tillman consented, paying $23,000 for a 135-page report which determined, several months later, that his property was not in fact a historic resource. In a sane world Tillman would be allowed to proceed with his project. In San Francisco, he is now being asked to perform yet another study, this time to measure the effect of shadow on a nearby school.

“You could just as easily ask me to do a study on the breakfast eating habits of the kids, or whether the building might affect their texting use,” says Tillman.

Two shadow studies have already been conducted, finding that Tillman’s project, if built, would cast shadow on a quarter of the playground of the nearby Zaida T. Rodriguez school for two hours a day.

According to Mission District activists from the city-recognized Latino cultural district Calle 24 however, neither study spent enough time considering the developmental impacts of asking children to spend recess in the shade.

“We know that the children will be forced to play in the shadows,” said one impassioned activist at a recent public hearing on the project. “Whatever damage that is done to these children by the project will be permanent, irreversible, and detrimental.” Said another, “we need housing, but let’s get busy and creative. This project is not creative. It’s not even respecting shadows.”

In June these activists filed an environmental appeal asking for the third shadow study.

Last Tuesday, the city’s Board of Supervisors led by Supervisor Hillary Ronen (D–Mission District) sided with these activists, mandating that another study be done before Tillman be allowed to proceed with building an otherwise zone-compliant housing project that would create 75 apartment units in a city suffering from a severe housing shortage.

“If what they want to do is say ‘ah well we want to actually delay your project while we do another study, my answer is no,” he tells Reason. “My answer is I’m going to court.”

Tillman says that this latest delay is a violation of the laws governing the environmental review process in San Francisco, and that he plans on suing. On his side are the very bureaucrats tasked with reviewing and approving his project.

The environmental review process Tillman went through is governed by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which requires that new developments like his be studied for any potential environmental impacts they might have.

The list of possible impacts is long, as is the CEQA review process itself. This is especially true in San Francisco, where local law requires additional impacts be studied beyond what is demanded by state law. Making the process longer still is the ability of parties to appeal an environmental review they feel did not significantly examine this or that impact.

For the last six months Tillman has been delayed by these appeals, the first one demanding that potential historic impacts be studied more thoroughly, and second asking the same of potential shadow impacts.

The problem is that the shadow Tillman’s theoretical apartments would throw off is not an impact either CEQA or San Francisco law requires him to study.

According to the city’s Planning Department, shadow is only considered an environmental impact when it might fall on a public park maintained by the city’s Parks Department. Since the previous two shadow studies performed on Tillman’s project found that his project would only cast shadow on the nearby Zaida T. Rodriguez school playground owned by the city’s school district, he is not required to mitigate this impact.

For this reason, the Planning Department recommended that Calle 24’s appeal be rejected.

Nevertheless Ronan pushed her colleagues to accept the appeal, arguing that the Zaida T. Rodriguez playground could be made accessible to the general public at some point, thus warranting further shadow study.

“What they did is they basically made up a CEQA effect out of whole cloth,” says Tillman, who was left flabbergasted by the Board of Supervisors decision.

The endless series of studies he’s been forced to complete, he maintains, has a lot more to do with extracting concessions from him than it does with any actual concern about shadows.

Notably the San Francisco Unified School District—whose kids are supposedly at risk from additional shadows—did not sign on to Calle 24’s appeal. Tillman says no one from the Zaida T. Rodriguez school has ever brought up any concern about shadows from his project.

“What they want to do is use the pressure of the delay to force me to sell below market value which I’m not going to do,” says Tillman. “It’s kind of the old-time equivalent of ‘nice little project you got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.'”

Tillman says he would be willing to sell his land, but only for fair market value.

Mission activist groups opposed to Tillman’s project have been explicit about their desire to turn his laundromat into an affordable housing project. This includes the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA)—a non-profit affordable housing developer—which wrote in a 2016 blog post, “it was good news to hear Tillman express that he would consider selling his property to the City, so that the latter could then designate it for 100 percent affordable housing. The bad news was Tillman’s price of $250,000 per unit”—a price they are unwilling to pay.

Tillman says that on the morning of last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors hearing where the CEQA appeal against his project was considered, he received a phone call from Ronen asking him once again if he’d be willing to sell his land. He said yes on the condition that he be paid fair market value for it. He then spoke with a representative from Calle 24 where a similar conversation played out; Tillman expressing openness to selling his land but Calle 24 not willing or able to pay his asking price.

Having reached an impasse, Calle 24 representatives lined up before the Board of Supervisors several hours later to denounce the shadow impacts from Tillman’s project, and the Board, led by Ronan, voted to delay his project.

These kinds of delays have proven effective in shaking down other Mission developers. For instance, about a block from Tillman’s laundromat is the site of a planned 157-unit housing development being built by apartment developer Lennar Multifamily Communities. In order to get approval for its project Lennar—that had already been hamstrung by delays—hammered out a deal with Calle 24 and Ronen to rent out 25 percent of its new apartment units at below market value, and pay $1 million to Calle 24.

So far Tillman has refused to bend. He says that because he owns his land outright, and still has a profitable business in the laundromat, it is cheaper for him to go through litigation. As a one-off developer, he is less concerned about pissing off the powers that be.

Indeed, isolated from the typical pressures faced by more professional developers, Tillman has almost become a housing activist in his own right. The experience however has left him jaded about his or anyone’s ability to chance San Francisco’s steadfast refusal to allow people to build housing for those who want to live there.

“There actually was a time when I could change things. I’ve come to the conclusion that I won’t, so many I’m just trying to get my project through,” he says.

In that sense at least he is optimistic. The city attorney must provide Tillman with the legal reasoning for the latest delay within a month. Once that is unveiled, Tillman says he’ll file his lawsuit, and could expect a decision by March 2019.

Provided the court sides with him, he will at last be allowed to begin construction.

For nearly a decade, on precisely 10 different occasions, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) concluded that so-called bump-fire stocks on AR-15s and similar rifles are legal under federal law. Bump-fire stocks use the gun’s recoil to increase the rate of fire.

But then came the October 2017 mass shooting of concert attendees in Las Vegas, where police said the shooter possessed bump fire stocks, writes Declan McCullagh.

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Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has asked one of my favorite data-slingers Max Roser share three facts about global trends that everyone should know. Roser is the proprietor of the fantastic data aggregation website OurWorldInData. If you have been reading Reason, you already know these facts about the positive global trends for humanity. The amazing thing is how bleak many people believe the future for humanity is. This is largely because, as Roser notes, “One key reason why we struggle to see progress in the world today is that we do not know how very bad the past was.”

Here are the three facts about global trennds did Roser choose to highlight for Gates:

Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year.

Roser adds that just because the world is in a much better place now does not mean that we can sit back and relax. While the number of child deaths is falling; there were 3.5-times as many child deaths 50 years ago. But child deaths are still extremely common; 11 children are dying every minute.

Fact #2: Since 1960, the fertility rate has fallen by half.

Roser notes, that “improvements in conditions for women and the health of children have driven a rapid reduction in fertility rates across the world. In fact, the global fertility rate has halved in the last 50 years, from more than 5 children per woman to fewer than 2.5 children. The world population growth rate has also halved in the last 50 years and is just above 1 percent. That trend suggests that rapid population growth is coming to an end in this century.

Fact #3: 137,000 people escaped extreme poverty every day between 1990 and 2015.

Roser points out that “in 1990, 1.86 billion people were living on less than 1.90 international-dollar per day—more than every third person in the world. Twenty-five years later, the number of people living in extreme poverty has more than halved to 706 million, every tenth person.

Of course, readers of Reason know that the rates of child mortality, total fertility, and absolute poverty have all been falling for decades.

For more fact-filled information on global trends, you should also check out the superb site Human Progress.

Finally, I will also immodestly mention that all of that data on global trends and much more is available in my book The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century.

Check out my 11-minute talk on “The Amazing and Abundant Future” at the Voice & Exit conference.