Month: April 2022

In Shanghai, which is three times the size of New York City, residents have been under strict pandemic lockdown since March 27 in some parts, and since March 31 in others, with no end in sight.

Having detected a huge surge in cases, with more than 20,000 new cases being found daily, Chinese authorities locked the city of 25 million down, forcing residents into situations of extraordinary deprivation and subjecting them to brutal containment and control measures. With residents unable to leave their houses, food supplies are dwindling, and government workers attempting to deliver supplies to homes and apartments, frequently failing to do so in a timely or consistent manner. People are running out of the medicines they need to stay healthy or alive. Some people experiencing medical emergencies, CNN reports, have died after being turned away; they were unable to access care without negative COVID tests. “We are not killed by Covid, but by the Covid control measures,” read a viral post on social media site Weibo.

Due to strict containment and isolation measures in place for COVID-positive people, some mothers report being forcibly separated from their COVID-infected children by authorities. Health authorities allege parents will be able to appeal this and seek permission (!) to accompany their COVID-positive children to hospitals and isolation wards. It is unclear how this will actually apply in practice and whether this will end the brutal measure of separating parents from their young, sick children.

“In this country it’s not the virus that scares us, but the chaotic anti-Covid measures that have caused risks to the well-being of the elderly, the children and companion animals,” Shanghai resident Lily Chen told Bloomberg. “I now realize we can only rely on ourselves—not the government—to protect our own families.”

A video that has gone viral in China shows one family in Shanghai being taken off to COVID quarantine as their pet corgi chased the van in pursuit of its people. They had ostensibly released the dog into the city, assuming possible survival, instead of letting it stay in the family home during the quarantine period (where it would die without care). The dog was promptly killed by a COVID prevention worker wielding a spade. (This is not the first time Chinese authorities have come under fire for brutal treatment of pets in pursuit of COVID containment.)

The great leap forward, from the discomfort of your own home. Hunger drives people crazy, how can this continue? https://t.co/i1wnRiwcg2

— Alex Turnbull (@alexbhturnbull) April 5, 2022

Those who do violate or attempt to violate state-mandated quarantine or lockdown are subjected to punishment, though it is difficult to know the full extent due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) aggressive censorship. In other cities like Shandong, which was also recently forced under lockdown, videos of harsh punishments have circulated:

Disturbing video of COVID volunteers forcibly shaving someone who stepped outside of the house in Heze, Shandong (山东省菏泽市鄄城县凤凰镇) pic.twitter.com/TI49QzRnqa

— Alexander Boyd (@alexludoboyd) April 5, 2022

(Some on social media site Weibo suggest that the above could be a parody, while others elsewhere note that “forcibly shaving only the left side” is a callback to “an insulting practice widely used during the Cultural Revolution.”)

All such measures are part of the CCP’s “COVID Zero” strategy, which aims to entirely eliminate COVID spread within China’s borders, often through imposition of aggressive regional lockdowns like the one seen in Shanghai, as well as strict border control and frequent testing. Only about half of China’s above-80 population is fully vaccinated, with Chinese vaccines proving less effective than their Western counterparts. It’s unclear what the death toll looks like as this COVID outbreak takes it course, and CCP-sourced numbers are notoriously unreliable.

What is clear is the degree to which residents of Shanghai are disturbed by the state of deprivation they’ve been forced to endure; an unusually high amount of government criticism has emanated from Weibo and other platforms, which are typically heavily censored. “We don’t want to starve to death,” chanted residents of one suburb.

“Control your soul’s desire for freedom,” one drone told them as it aerially broadcasted COVID control policies throughout the city, emblematic of how seriously CCP authorities take citizens’ concerns.

The post Under COVID Lockdown, Shanghai's People Are Running Out of Food and Meds While Pets Get Killed in the Streets appeared first on Reason.com.

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Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

New on the Short Circuit podcast: A special live edition on the D.C. Circuit with former D.C. Circuit clerks (as well as frequent Supreme Court arguers) Lisa Blatt, Kelsi Brown Corkran and Paul Clement.

• Cemetery company buys 180-acre property in Readington Twp., N.J. (that is zoned for cemetery use) and makes significant concessions to township officials: 73 acres to be available for public use, no herbicides or pesticides, preexisting buildings to be renovated, no headstones visible to passersby, and more. Officials: Yeah, but still. No permit for you. District court: A state law that says localities must consent to new cemeteries is unconstitutional because it gives officials “unfettered discretion” to reject applicants for any reason, including “cronyism, economic protectionism, ethnic or racial bias, or a preference for a particular religion.” Third Circuit (nonprecedentially): Reversed. The law gives discretion to local legislators—not police, judges, or juries—so it’s fine.
• After a trip to the Supreme Court, the question of whether Baltimore officials’ suit against 26 multinational fossil fuel companies over climate change (and attendant floods, heat waves, auto accidents, and power outages within city limits) will proceed in state or federal court returns to the Fourth Circuit. Which, over the course of 93 pages, reviews the defendants’ eight distinct arguments for federal jurisdiction and rejects all of them. To Baltimore City Circuit Court!
• After the Fairfax County School Board in Virginia eliminated standardized tests from the admissions criteria for the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, Asian-American enrollment dropped from an average of 71% to 54% for the class of 2025. District Court: Which violates equal protection. Fourth Circuit (with concurrence and dissent): The ruling is stayed pending appeal.
• Attorney Steven Biss is most widely known for filing frivolous lawsuits on behalf of former congressman Devin Nunes against, among others, The Washington Post, Esquire, CNN, and a Twitter cow. As a result, like the boy who cried wolf, judges tend not to give him the benefit of the doubt. But at least in this Fourth Circuit case, the trial court was wrong to impose Rule 11 sanctions against him; on the record before it, the district court could not have concluded that Biss’s arguments had “no chance of success” (even if the Fourth Circuit sympathizes with its frustration).
• When Defense Distributed put CAD files on the internet for a 3D-printable single-shot pistol back in 2013, the feds went after them for violating international arms-trafficking laws. Because nothing on the internet ever really goes away, the files remain widely available, even though Defense Distributed remains prohibited from sharing them. In the latest update to this First/Second Amendment saga, the Fifth Circuit (over a dissent) issues a rare mandamus order, instructing the district court to undo its partial severance and transfer of claims against the New Jersey AG to the District of New Jersey.
• The Federal Reporter abounds with ways lawyers can lose their cases. But district judges within the Fifth Circuit can lose cases too—in the sense of reassignment to different jurists. And if you preside over an antitrust case while criticizing antitrust law and suggesting that Standard Oil wasn’t a real monopoly …
• By a vote of 2 to 1, the Fifth Circuit dissolves a district court’s nationwide preliminary injunction of Executive Order 14043, which requires all federal executive branch employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Any employees who get fired for refusing the vaccine can ultimately be reinstated with backpay if the suit is successful, so they don’t face irreparable harm in the meantime.
• Man flees from police through several downriver Michigan communities, winds up in Detroit River (in January) and, after a bit of a struggle, submits to arrest. When he’s handcuffed facedown and no longer resisting, one or maybe two officers allegedly kick him in the face repeatedly, breaking his nose. Officer: Okay, but he said he couldn’t be 100 percent sure who kicked him. Qualified immunity? District court: Nope. Sixth Circuit: Nope (on jurisdictional grounds). Concurrence: Nope (on the merits).
• Landlord: Minnesota’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium prevented me from evicting a tenant who “operated a car and boat repair shop … in violation of city ordinances” and others who “threw raucous parties.” An unconstitutional taking? A Contract Clause violation? District court: Party on, raucous dudes! I’m throwing this complaint out. Eighth Circuit: Turn the music down at least. The complaint at least states a cause of action. Remanded.
• Randolph County, Mo. court clerk refuses to give 17-year-old an application to obtain judicial permission to get an abortion without notifying her parents. Can she sue the clerk? Clerk: The judge told me to do that! Eighth Circuit: If that’s so, the clerk is protected by quasi-judicial immunity, but the judge says he doesn’t remember the case and wouldn’t usually give such a direction. So (over a dissent) no QJI. And, because the right to apply for judicial permission for abortion without parental notice is clearly established, no qualified immunity either.
• Creighton University fraternity brothers get pledge black-out drunk and high on marijuana at chapter house and then leave him on campus at 1 a.m. He wanders into the dorm room of a random student and slashes her across the neck with a pocketknife. (She survives.) Can she sue the fraternity? The Eighth Circuit says no.
• Man steals pistol from his parents, starts driving from Wyoming to Washington, DC, with vague plan to shoot then-President Trump. When he reaches Nebraska, he abandons his plan, calls his dad, and accepts his dad’s advice to return home and seek psychiatric help. Yikes! He’s convicted (and sentenced to time served—20 months) of making a threat against the president based on hearsay testimony from medical staff about the phone call with his dad. Eighth Circuit: Doesn’t seem like this was the best use of prosecutorial resources, but the conviction stands.
• Oklahoma dental anesthesiologists sue the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry after their requests for specialty licenses are denied (they had wanted to use the licenses in advertisements). Tenth Circuit: But Oklahoma changed the law and the Board says it will now grant the licenses if the dentists reapply, mooting their prospective claims. As for their retrospective claims for damages, the dentists managed to waive all those arguments on appeal.
• After two Palm Beach County, Fla. firefighters are disciplined for criticizing their union’s executive vice president in violation of the department’s social-media policy, the fire fighters sue, alleging a variety of First Amendment theories. Eleventh Circuit: And their free speech and overbreadth claims can go forward. Their vagueness and free association claims, however, are out.
• Allegation: Without warning, Madison County, Ala. officer body slams suicidal, non-resisting veteran on his head, causing serious neck injury (requiring the surgical removal of a vertebra, insertion of a metal rod, and fusion of two remaining vertebrae). Eleventh Circuit: The excessive force claim against the officer should not have been dismissed. And, because the then-sheriff apparently never investigated or disciplined officers who used excessive force, the claim for supervisory liability shouldn’t have been dismissed either.

On Brittany Coleman’s 25th birthday, Brookside, Ala. police pulled her over for a bogus infraction. Then they handcuffed her and forced her to stand in the hot sun for no reason while they searched every nook and cranny of her car for over 30 minutes. Finding nothing, they falsely charged Brittany with marijuana possession as a pretext to tow her car. Even though the charge was dropped, she was forced to pay nearly $1k in towing fees and court costs—making her just one of thousands of victims of the police department’s predatory pursuit of profit. In 2020, the last year for which Brookside has made numbers available, the town got 49 percent of its revenue from fines and forfeitures—a more than 1,000% increase in such revenues since 2017. This week, IJ filed a class action. Read all about it in AL.com.

The post Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions appeared first on Reason.com.

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Republicans are reportedly fed up with The Walt Disney Company for its perceived “far-left activis[m]” and “giv[ing] in to the woke mob.” As a result, they are considering retaliating by refusing to legally extend copyright terms that would apply to Disney characters like Mickey Mouse. If allowed to lapse, Mickey would be in the public domain as soon as January 1, 2024.

Punishing a company for political speech is wrong and arguably an abuse of power. Instead, Republicans should allow the copyright to lapse because it’s simply the right thing to do, specifically when considering the constitutional purpose of copyright law.

As National Review reported Thursday, Republicans in the House of Representatives are looking to punish Disney for its recent opposition to Florida’s controversial Parental Rights in Education law. Detractors have referred to the bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in March, as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill for its admonitions against “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity…in a manner that is not age-appropriate…for students.” While Republicans insist that the law merely formalizes the common-sense principle that any talk about sex and sexuality should be conducted only with an appropriate audience, the vagueness of the wording threatens to stifle even the slightest mention of the topics in the classroom.

Disney, which runs its largest theme park in Florida, said nothing before the bill passed the state Legislature, which ironically led to widespread condemnation from Disney employees over the company’s silence. After the bill’s passage, Disney CEO Bob Chapek apologized for the company’s lack of response and stated that it was Disney’s wish that the law be repealed.

In response, House Republicans including Indiana’s Jim Banks and Ohio’s Jim Jordan are threatening to let Disney’s copyright on Mickey Mouse run out without passing any legislation that would lengthen copyright terms. Currently, the law stipulates that for works published before 1978, copyright lasts 95 years from the date of publication. Mickey’s first published appearance was the 1928 silent short Steamboat Willie, meaning his copyright term lasts until the end of its 95th year, 2023.

But copyright law was not always so generous. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to “secur[e] for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The first such law, the Copyright Act of 1790, established a period of 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14 if the author was still alive after the first period lapsed. When Walt Disney released Steamboat Willie, those terms had doubled to 28 years each, meaning that Mickey Mouse would become fair game by 1984. But Congress has since extended those terms twice—each time by 20 years, and each time right before Mickey’s copyright was set to lapse.

But allowing Disney, a worldwide mega-conglomerate, to hold onto the exclusive rights to one of its characters for decades upon decades, is antithetical to the purpose of copyright in the first place.

The Constitution’s stated purpose in allowing the establishment of copyrights was not to financially benefit publishers, but rather to “promote the progress of science and useful art.” In other words, copyrights were not intended to be century-long monopolies but to spur innovation. Keeping Mickey Mouse under the sole custody of one company, despite the fact that Steamboat Willie itself borrowed from films of its day, is completely contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, as well as free enterprise. Walt Disney was not guaranteed 95 years of exclusivity in 1928, and he still saw fit to release Steamboat Willie—clearly, the existing laws did not deter innovation in animation.

In 2012, Derek Khanna, a staffer with the House Republican Study Committee (RSC), drafted a memo that called for an overhaul of the U.S. copyright structure. Based on the premise that the U.S.’ copyright laws do not currently spur innovation, the document advocated for sharply limiting copyright terms, as well as expanding exceptions like fair use and lowering the punitively high dollar amounts that can be assessed for violations (the likes of which Disney jealously polices).

But the memo rankled lobbying groups for content-creating industries. The RSC retracted the memo within a day, and Khanna was fired. Ironically, the chairman of the RSC at the time was Jim Jordan, the Congressman who now attests that “Congress should not add to Disney’s 90+ years of federal copyright protection to incentivize its new far left agenda.” Ideally, Congress would not give any company 90 years of copyright protection, regardless of its political agenda. By singling out Disney for its political speech as the reason not to carve out further sweetheart deals for the entertainment industry, Jordan looks to be doing the right thing for seemingly corrupt reasons.

“I can’t think of an idea that’s so facially unconstitutional,” Khanna told Reason this week after the news broke. “[Jordan] is threatening to expire Disney—yes, copyright should expire, and that’s what the [RSC memo] said. But it was equal for everyone. I would never sanction this activity.”

The post In Threatening Disney Over Copyrights, House Republicans Are Right for the Wrong Reasons appeared first on Reason.com.

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