Month: March 2023

Social Security will be insolvent even sooner than previously expected, with automatic benefit cuts now projected to occur in 2033, according to a new report released Friday by the program’s trustees.

The new projections underscore the limited time that’s available for policy makers to deal with the fiscal problems that are quickly rotting away America’s old-age entitlement program. The more quickly approaching insolvency date also draws a stark contrast with leaders of both major political parties—including President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.)—who have all, at times, promised not to touch Social Security during the ongoing negotiations over raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

Ignoring the ticking clock won’t make it run slower. In fact, Friday’s report shows that Social Security’s finances have gotten worse over the past year. The Trustees say that a combination of inflation and a worsening economic outlook for the coming years contributed to their more pessimistic projections.

If nothing changes, Social Security benefits will be subject to a 23 percent cut in a decade.

Though policy makers have been aware of the potential insolvency of Social Security for decades, it’s no longer a problem that will affect Americans in the distant future. It’s now something that will be a major disruption to many current workers nearing retirement and lots of the country’s current retirees.

Since any changes to shore up Social Security’s bottom line will likely require huge tax increases or changes to how benefits are paid, policy makers are also running out of time to implement those changes in ways that don’t cause major disruptions to the economy and Americans’ retirement plans.

“The Trustees continue to recommend that Congress address the projected trust fund shortfalls in a timely fashion to phase in necessary changes gradually,” acting Social Security Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi said in a statement accompanying Friday’s report. “With informed discussion, creative thinking, and timely legislative action, Social Security can continue to protect future generations.”

Sadly, there’s not much of any of those things in Congress these days. But creative thinking, in particular, is what Social Security needs. Much of the program’s fiscal strain is the result of America’s demographic changes since Social Security was created in 1935. Back then, the average life expectancy for Americans was 61. That means the average person died four years before qualifying for benefits. Now, with Americans living to an average age of 72 and older Americans being generally more financially well off than younger generations, Social Security operates like a perverse conveyer belt that transfers money from young workers to relatively wealthier retirees.

The most straightforward solution to Social Security’s problem is to raise the payroll taxes that fund the program to make up for the shortfall on the benefit side of the ledger. But that would only exacerbate the problem by placing a bigger burden on younger, generally poorer workers.

According to the report, Social Security could be kept afloat for the next 75 years by hiking the payroll tax by 4.15 percentage points in 2034 (or implementing a smaller increase sooner). The payroll tax is currently charged at a 16.5 percent rate, with employers and employees each covering half. That works out to a nearly 25 percent tax hike. Alternatively, the report says, benefits could be cut by about 25 percent.

It’s understandable why politicians are unwilling to choose between those equally unappealing options. But the current trend of ensuring—lying, really—to the electorate that nothing needs to be done must end.

There are some signs that it might. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R–La.) and Angus King (I–Maine), along with a small group of colleagues, are holding preliminary discussions about potential policy changes for Social Security. Semafor reported last month that the group is considering ideas like raising the retirement age to 70, changing the formula used to determine an individual’s benefit payments, and raising the cap on the payroll tax, among other things. Even though the group has not presented anything resembling a fleshed-out plan, they’ve already been attacked for allegedly leading a “trojan horse” attempt at cutting benefits.

That’s an indication of how fraught any attempt at staving off insolvency will be. Nonetheless, America needs a real conversation about Social Security’s future—about whether it makes sense for everyone over 67 to get benefits even if they’re wealthy, especially if it means a tax hike on current workers struggling to make ends meet.

The post Social Security Will Be Insolvent by 2033 appeared first on Reason.com.

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Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.

Last year, Brookside, Ala. became the poster child of policing for profit. The town relentlessly towed cars to extract fees and issued dubious traffic citations, without regard for public safety or constitutional rights. Town leaders boasted of their 600% revenue increase, almost all of which went right back to the police to buy expensive SUVs and other goodies. Last week, a federal court rejected the town’s and its towing-company partner’s effort to dismiss IJ’s class action, which demands accountability and the return of the town’s ill-gotten gains.

• Third Circuit: Even in New Jersey, you can’t sue scientists for libel just because they questioned how well your pharmaceutical works. Left unresolved is whether disparaging comments about the Jets are similarly non-actionable.
• On the cusp of Easter, the Fourth Circuit resurrects Bivens that it may redeem us from the (constitutional) sins of federal officials—at least if those officials are Park Police flexing against a Secret Service agent by blatantly violating his Fourth Amendment rights.
• After decades of confusion, the U.S. Supreme Court brought much needed clarity to First Amendment law by holding in Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015) that a law regulating speech is “content-based” and subject to strict scrutiny whenever the law’s application turns on what is being communicated. Then in City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising (2022), the Court was like “LOL, except for when what’s communicated is an off-premises advertisement.” Fifth Circuit: And thus, on remand, we apply intermediate scrutiny and affirm this content-neutral regulation that applies only to signs that contain a particular disfavored category of message. Dissent: This one should fail even intermediate scrutiny.
• After the Great Mississippi of Flood of 1927, the feds built a spillway 33 miles upstream of New Orleans. And lately, the spillway is getting pressed into service with much greater frequency, resulting in toxic algae blooms, beach closures, and harm to wildlife and industry in the Mississippi Sound. Fifth Circuit: Which does not give rise to a need for the Army Corps of Engineers to do a new environmental impact statement. The “true culprit for the plaintiffs’ environmental misfortunes is not the Corps or the Spillway, but the environment itself.”
• It is hard to win attorneys’ fees against the federal gov’t! Under the Equal Access to Justice Act, it’s not enough that a litigant prevail; he must also show that the gov’t’s position was not substantially justified. But “hard” does not mean “impossible,” as evidenced by this ruling from the Fifth Circuit, granting fees to a Cameroonian man whose testimony that he faced a credible fear of persecution if forced to return to Cameroon was deemed not credible based on documents never referred to at his hearing or entered into evidence. (Unfortunately, as last year’s merits ruling in his case notes, he has already returned to his home country, where both his father and brother were murdered by the government.)
• Fifth Circuit: If you show up to the DMV in a wheelchair because you suffer a medical condition that causes you to faint regularly, it does not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act for the DMV to request you get a doctor’s note before they will renew your license.
• The medical attention given to a Texas inmate who suffered a traumatic brain injury when the ceiling of the prison’s hog barn collapsed on his head was sufficiently prompt that qualified immunity is warranted, says the Fifth Circuit (noting that some claims are still a go in state court). Judge Willett, self-concurring: But let’s all take note of game-changing scholarship showing that qualified immunity was wrong the day it was invented. [Ed.: Absolute immunity not looking so hot either.]
• Disgruntled lawyers may grumble about a judge in private. Really disgruntled lawyers might even post disparaging Facebook comments on the judge’s personal Facebook page. Only super-mega-disgruntled lawyers, though, file First Amendment lawsuits against judges who block them from posting disparaging Facebook comments on the judge’s personal Facebook page. Fifth Circuit (unpublished): And that last kind loses.
• Columbus, Ohio detective: Given your fingerprints at the scene of an armed robbery, I’m going to get a search warrant and toss your dad’s house unless you start cooperating. Suspect: I’ll just confess then. District court: Confession suppressed. Sixth Circuit: Reversed. Coerced confessions are uncool (and unconstitutional), but this one wasn’t coerced.
• “[R]egardless of whether it is good public policy to use so many court resources and so handsomely reward litigiousness over annoyances that have been greatly diminished by changes in technology, the plaintiffs are entitled to use the law to enforce their right not to receive unsolicited faxes.” So says the Seventh Circuit, practically daring Congress to quit being a bunch of sissies and take on Big Junk Fax Law.
• Via the Seventh Circuit: In which the defendant’s connection to Jared Fogle isn’t even close to the weirdest part of the story, which for now results in a remand to determine whether Indiana State Police altered a search warrant to add “bestiality” before or after the judge signed it.
• After his indictment on drug conspiracy charges, man’s arrest warrant mysteriously vanishes from the FBI’s database. Human error? A technical glitch? Divine intervention? Eighth Circuit: We’ll never know. But what we do know is his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was not violated by the eight-month delay that resulted. Conviction affirmed.
• In 2016, federal probation officers search man’s Las Vegas home after he fails a drug test and find contraband. He spends 18 months incarcerated. And then the prosecution is dropped? And the officers knew all along he hadn’t failed the drug test? And they planted the contraband? Ninth Circuit (unpublished): Nobody is saying any of this ever gets to a jury. But we are saying this guy can keep trying for now. He had to wait until after the prosecution terminated in his favor to file some of these claims, so they are not in fact untimely.
• Hollywood Burbank Airport apparently wasn’t listening to the pre-flight safety demonstration because it’s been out of compliance with certain FAA standards since 1980. And attempts since then to get a new terminal off the ground have gone down in flames. The latest effort was cleared for takeoff by voters in 2016, and the pre-flight checklist (environmental review to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act) was completed in 2021. Ninth Circuit: We’re sending you back to the gate to do more studies on construction noise. Dissent: This is literally next to a highway that’s louder than any construction equipment. (Ed.: Is there a builder’s remedy for airports?)
• Self-described “person of extraordinary wealth” James Batmasian of Boca Raton, Fla. wants to give more of that wealth to charity, but is stymied by his 2008 conviction for failing to pay federal withholding tax, for which he served eight months in the slammer. Despite the governor of Florida having restored his civil rights in 2017 and President Trump having pardoned him in 2020, nobody wants his money! Will equitable expungement end this eleemosynary eschewal? Eleventh Circuit: Whether the expungement motion sounds in equity or the Constitution, we lack jurisdiction to hear it.

Michelle Przybocki has severe digestive issues, and it’s important for her to follow doctor’s orders and maintain what’s called a low-FODMAP diet, consisting of foods with ingredients that are easy to digest. But! She’s had a really hard time finding food that fits the bill, and it turns out the FDA and USDA make it illegal for producers to—perfectly truthfully—use labels like “low FODMAP certified” and “digestible.” Because those labels aren’t on the feds’ outdated list of pre-approved “nutrient content claims,” they are verboten. Which is not awesome for the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from digestive difficulties. Nor is it awesome for smaller producers like Ketan Vakil, founder of Gourmend Foods, who don’t have millions of dollars to spend years petitioning the feds to update the list. Click here to learn more about IJ’s latest case.

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

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The New York indictment of Donald Trump, which won’t be unsealed until he is arraigned early next week, reportedly includes “more than two dozen counts.” That’s a surprisingly large number if the case is based entirely on the $130,000 that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep her from talking about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump. The litany of charges reinforces the impression that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, is trying to justify this belated and dubious prosecution by transforming minor misconduct into a case that looks serious until you consider the underlying allegations.

According to reporting based on anonymous sources close to the investigation, Bragg is relying mainly on a state law that makes it a misdemeanor to falsify business records “with intent to defraud.” Trump, who reimbursed Cohen for the hush payment to Daniels, allegedly broke that law when his business misrepresented the reimbursement as payment for legal services under a nonexistent retainer agreement. If the Trump Organization recorded the payment in more than one document, those records could be the basis for several counts under this statute. But each of those counts would still be a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and/or up to 364 days in jail.

Falsification of business records becomes a Class E felony, punishable by up to four years in prison, when the defendant’s “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” This is where federal election law comes into play: Federal prosecutors argued that Cohen’s payment to Daniels amounted to an excessive campaign contribution, and he accepted that characterization in a 2018 plea agreement.

Since Cohen said he was acting at Trump’s behest, the implication was that Trump had solicited and accepted an illegal campaign contribution. Yet the Justice Department never prosecuted Trump for that alleged violation, even after he left office. In 2021, an evenly divided Federal Election Commission (FEC) declined to pursue charges against Trump, his business, or his campaign.

Federal prosecutors would have faced at least two daunting obstacles in trying to make a case against Trump based on the hush money payment. First, as former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith pointed out after Cohen’s guilty plea, “it is unclear whether paying blackmail to a mistress is ‘for the purpose of influencing an election,’ and so must be paid with campaign funds, or a ‘personal use,’ and so prohibited from being paid with campaign funds.” Smith argued that “the best interpretation of the law is that it simply is not a campaign expense to pay blackmail for things that happened years before one’s candidacy—and thus nothing Cohen (or, in this case, Trump, too) did is a campaign finance crime.”

The distinction between a personal expenditure and a campaign expenditure hinges on the question of whether Trump was trying to avoid publicity that could have hurt his chances of defeating Hillary Clinton or was merely trying to avoid embarrassment and/or spare his wife’s feelings. While the proximity of the payment to the election supports the first inference, convicting Trump of violating federal law would have required proving that hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt.

The difficulty of doing that was illustrated by the 2012 trial of former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who was accused of accepting several hundred thousand dollars in illegal campaign contributions from a wealthy supporter. Edwards used the money to hide an extramarital affair and the baby that resulted from it. Federal prosecutors argued that his intent was to avoid a scandal that would have compromised his campaign for his party’s 2008 presidential nomination.

Edwards argued that covering his mistress’s living expenses was a personal expenditure aimed at deceiving his wife, who was dying from cancer at the time. Jurors evidently favored that interpretation, because they acquitted Edwards of one charge while deadlocking on five others.

The other major challenge in proving a case like this is related to the ambiguity that the Edwards jury confronted: Prosecutors have to prove that the defendant “knowingly and willfully” violated federal election law. In Trump’s case, it is not clear that he had the requisite intent, because he seemed genuinely confused about what federal election law requires.

In addition to the count based on the payment to Daniels, Cohen pleaded guilty to causing an illegal corporate campaign donation by arranging for The National Enquirer to pay former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for her story about sex with Trump, which it kept under wraps. “Those two counts aren’t even a crime,” Trump told Fox News after Cohen’s guilty plea. He emphasized that he reimbursed Cohen with his own money, as opposed to campaign funds, which “could be a little dicey.”

Responding to those comments, CNN political correspondent Chris Cillizza observed, “What Trump doesn’t know about campaign finance law is, um, a whole lot.” But if Trump did not understand the law, which Smith argues is hazy on this point, and/or did not anticipate how federal prosecutors would interpret it, he did not “knowingly and willfully” violate it.

“With respect to both payments,” the sentencing memo in Cohen’s case says, “he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1″—i.e., Trump. But that does not necessarily mean that Trump understood the payments to be illegal, which would have required rejecting what a former FEC chairman describes as “the best interpretation of the law” and recognizing a distinction that Smith thinks is  “unclear” at best.

In short, federal prosecutors probably had good reasons for declining to charge Trump. Yet now Bragg is relying on that uncharged and unproven federal crime to prosecute Trump for a felony under state law. There are a couple of problems with that.

First, if Trump did not think he was violating federal law, it is hard to see how he could have falsified business records with the intent of concealing that crime. Second, it is not clear that a violation of federal election law counts as “another crime” under the New York statute.

The most promising basis for that claim seems to be Section 17-152 of New York’s election law, which says “any two or more persons who conspire to promote or
prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” Cohen and Trump are two people, and Cohen says they conspired to promote Trump’s election by paying off Daniels and arranging the National Enquirer payment to McDougal.

The Justice Department (and Cohen) described both payments as violations of federal election law. If that counts as “unlawful means,” the violation of Section 17-152 could qualify as the other crime that Trump allegedly was trying to conceal by falsifying business records.

“Under New York law,” Joshua Stanton and three other attorneys say in a recent Just Security essay, “‘unlawful means’ appears to be construed broadly—and is not limited to crimes….In a 100-year-old opinion, the state appellate court with authority over Manhattan ruled that ‘unlawful means’ as written in another statute does not necessitate ‘the commission of a crime.’ Instead, the court held that ‘unlawful means’ simply refers to conduct ‘unauthorized by law.'”

That definition, Stanton et al. say, “is consistent with what we would expect to find when construing the meaning of section 17-152.” According to the New York Court of Appeals, they note, undefined statutory terms “are generally to be given their ‘usual and commonly understood meaning,'” and “dictionaries are ‘useful guideposts’ in ascertaining that meaning.” They quote the Merriam-Webster definition of unlawful as “not lawful” or “illegal.”

Assuming that New York courts read “unlawful means” broadly, Section 17-152 could supply the underlying “crime” that elevates falsification of business records to a Class E felony. That would essentially mean transforming two misdemeanors (falsifying business records plus conspiring to promote someone’s election through “unlawful means”) into a felony. Based on the same assumption, Trump also could face separate misdemeanor charges under Section 17-152 for the Daniels and McDougal payments.

New York’s statute of limitations ordinarily requires that misdemeanors be prosecuted within two years and that Class E felonies be prosecuted within five years. But that law includes an exception for “any period following the commission of the offense during which…the defendant was continuously outside this state.”

Trump lived largely in Washington, D.C., during his presidency, and in 2019 he switched his official state of residence to Florida. In determining whether the prosecution can proceed, a 1999 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals indicates, the time that Trump spent in D.C. and Florida should be subtracted from the time that has elapsed since the Trump Organization misrepresented Cohen’s reimbursement.

Assuming that Bragg can get around the statute of limitations, the question remains: Why bring this case at all, let alone six years after the conduct underlying it?

There was nothing inherently criminal about paying off Daniels or McDougal. Those payments become criminal only by construing them as illegal campaign contributions. Although that is how federal prosecutors interpreted the law in Cohen’s case, they conspicuously declined to charge Trump under the same theory. Manhattan prosecutors under Bragg’s predecessor for years mulled the possibility of building a state case based on the same conduct and ultimately decided it would not fly.

Bragg’s reconsideration of that conclusion reeks of desperation to punish a reviled political opponent, which is exactly how Trump and his supporters are portraying it. When you decide to make history by prosecuting a former president, especially when that former president is seeking that office again by running against an incumbent who is a member of your own party, you had better have a solid case involving serious crimes. Bragg, who is relying on debatable facts, untested legal theories, and allegations that are tawdry but far from earthshaking, does not seem to have such a case.

“We’re going to indict a former President for, essentially, misdemeanor falsification of business records?” asks former Rep. Peter Meijer (R–Mich.), who voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot in 2021. “We’re crossing the Rubicon for that? That seems like f—ing weak sauce.”

The post The Shaky New York Case Against Trump Reeks of Desperation To Punish a Reviled Political Opponent appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Little v. Llano County, decided yesterday by Judge Robert Pitman (W.D. Tex.):

In early July 2021, prior to their appointment to the New Library Board, Defendants Rochelle Wells, Rhonda Schneider, Gay Baskin, and Bonnie Wallace were part of a community group pushing for the removal of children’s books that they deemed “inappropriate.” For example, these Defendants objected to two series of children’s picture books, the “Butt and Fart Books,” which depict bodily functions in a humorous manner in cartoon format, because they believed these books were obscene and promoted “grooming” behavior. Defendant Milum, the library system’s director, shared the complaints with the Commissioners Court {the municipal entity that controls the Llano County Library System}. Although several commissioners and librarians stated that they saw no problem with the books, Defendants Moss and Cunningham contacted Milum to instruct her to remove the books from the shelves.

By August 5, 2021, Milum informed Cunningham she would be deleting both sets of books from the catalog system. In the following months, other books, such as In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak and It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robbie H. Harris, were removed because of similar complaints: that they encouraged “child grooming” and depicted cartoon nudity. There was no recourse for Plaintiffs, or anyone else, to appeal these removals to the library system.

In Fall 2021, Wallace, Schneider, and Wells, as part of their community group, contacted Cunningham to complain about certain books that were in the children’s sections or otherwise highly visible, labeling them “pornographic filth.”  On November 10, 2021, Wallace provided Cunningham with lists, including a list of “dozens” that could be found in the library. The books labeled “pornographic” included books promoting acceptance of LGBTQ views. Other books in Wallace’s list of pornographic books [were] about “critical race theory” and related racial themes. In other communications, Defendants refer to them as “CRT and LGBTQ” books.  In the email, Wallace advocated for the books to be relocated to the adult section because “[i]t is the only way that [she] could think of to prohibit future censorship of books [she does] agree with.”

That same day, Cunningham and Moss ordered Milum, “[a]s action items to be done immediately,” to pull books that contained “sexual activity or questionable nudity” from the shelves …. On November 12, 2021, Defendants removed several books on the Bonnie Wallace Spreadsheet from the Llano Library Branch shelves, including, for example, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, and Spinning….

The physical books at issue in this case, although “available” for checkout are hidden from view and absent from the catalog. Their existence is not discernible to the public, nor is their availability. An injury exists because the library’s “in-house checkout system” still places “a significant burden on Library Patrons’ ability to gain access to those books.” …

The Supreme Court has recognized that public libraries should be afforded “broad discretion” in their collection selection process, in which library staff must necessarily consider books’ content. See U.S. v. Am. Library Assn., Inc., 539 U.S. 194, 205 (2003) (plurality). But this discretion is not absolute, and it applies only to materials’ selection. In fact, the Fifth Circuit, adopting the Supreme Court’s plurality in Pico, has recognized a “First Amendment right to receive information” which prevents libraries from “remov[ing] books from school library shelves ‘simply because they dislike the ideas contained in these books.'” Campbell v. St. Tammany Par. Sch. Bd. (5th Cir. 1995). “The key inquiry in a book removal case” is whether the government’s “substantial motivation” was to deny library users access to ideas with which [the government] disagreed.”

Here, Plaintiffs have sufficiently pled that Defendants’ conduct was substantially motivated by a desire to remove books promoting ideas with which disagreed. They plainly allege that Defendants removed, ordered the removal, or pursued the removal of the books at issue “because they disagree with their political viewpoints and dislike their subject matter.”

Defendants do not argue otherwise. Instead, they contend that Plaintiffs have not stated a claim because the removal decisions were “government speech to which the First Amendment does not apply.”  But as Plaintiffs’ note, the cases Defendants cite mostly involve the initial selection, not removal, of materials. See, e.g., Am. Library (“The principles underlying [the precedent] also apply to a public library’s exercise of judgment in selecting the material it provides to its patrons.”); PETA v. Gittens (D.C. Cir. 2005) (analogizing the discretion afforded to library’s book collection decisions to the commission’s art selection decisions). As the Fifth Circuit held in Campbell, removal decisions are subject to the First Amendment and are evaluated based on whether the governments’ “substantial motivation in arriving at the removal decision” was discriminatory. Here, Plaintiff has clearly pled that Defendants had this motivation.

Defendants contend that Campbell and Pico do not apply to this context because those cases dealt with book removals from public school libraries, which may be subject to unique constitutional rules…. [T]he Court agrees that the precedent indicates public school libraries are a unique environment for constitutional analysis. Campbell, Pico, and Chiras suggest that school officials’ discretion is particularly broad for book selection in public school libraries because of schools’ unique inculcative function. However, the right to access to information first identified in Pico and subsequently adopted by the Fifth Circuit in Cambpell has “even greater force when applied to public libraries,” since public libraries are “designed for freewheeling inquiry,” and the type of discretion afforded to school boards is not implicated.

Defendants, like other government officials implicated in maintaining libraries, have broad discretion to select and acquire books for the library’s collection. But the Fifth Circuit recognizes a First Amendment right to access to information in libraries, a right that applies to book removal decisions. Plaintiffs have clearly stated a claim that falls squarely within this right: that Defendants removed the books at issue to prevent access to viewpoints and content to which they objected….

And the district court went on to hold that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the claim, and therefore granted them a preliminary injunction; the full list of books that had to be reinstated consisted of:

a. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson;
b. Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan
Campbell Bartoletti;
c. Spinning by Tillie Walden;
d. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak;
e. It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health by
Robie Harris;
f. My Butt is So Noisy!, I Broke My Butt!, and I Need a New Butt! by Dawn
McMillan;
g. Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose, Freddie
the Farting Snowman, and Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts by Jane
Bexley;
h. Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings;
i. Shine by Lauren Myracle;
j. Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale by Lauren Myracle;
k. Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero; and
l. Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark.

(The court didn’t separately discuss the objections to the Butt and Fart books, which seemed to be less focused on viewpoint and more on perceived vulgar content.) Note that it’s unsettled whether viewpoint-based removals of books from school library shelves are constitutional—Board of Ed. v. Pico (1982) didn’t resolve the issue—but the Fifth Circuit has indeed held that such removals are unconstitutional. And if even school libraries can’t engage in such removals, the matter is even clearer as to public libraries, for the reason the District Court mentions.

Congratulations to Ellen Leonida, Matthew Borden, J. Noah Hagey, Sarah Salomon, Pratik Ghosh & Amy Senia (Braunhagey & Borden LLP) and Ryan Botkin, Katherine P. Chiarello & María Amelia Calaf  (Wittliff | Cutter PLLC), who represent plaintiffs.

The post Viewpoint-Based Removal of Books from Public Library Violated First Amendments, Holds District Court appeared first on Reason.com.

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With tuition rates increasing and college attendance rates declining, a new poll from The Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center suggests that Americans’ confidence in the value of a college degree is fading.

The survey shows a dramatic decline in the percentage of Americans who believe a four-year college degree is worth the costs. Only 42 percent of its respondents agreed that a “four-year college education is worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more income over their lifetime,” down 11 percentage points since 2013. Meanwhile, 56 percent of respondents—a leap of 16 percentage points since 2013—agreed that a college degree wasn’t “worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”

Suspicion of college education was highest among 18- to 34-year-olds, more than 60 percent of whom answered that a degree wasn’t worth the costs. While opinions in that age group hadn’t changed much since 2017, views of college declined dramatically among Americans aged 50 or older in that time. For those 65 and older, it dropped 12 percentage points—from 56 percent to 44 percent.

And the gender divide on this question seems to be closing. While women are still slightly more likely to say that a college degree is worth the costs, the rate of women agreeing that a college degree is worth it has declined by 10 percentage points since 2017.

The findings aren’t surprising. The rate of recent high school graduates attending college has been declining in recent years, with a 3.5 percentage point drop, the largest in 30 years, occurring from 2019 to 2020. While the rate of this decline has slowed, high school students are still increasingly wary of attending college after graduation, with many explaining their views by citing the high burden of post-college debt—and the existence of well-paying jobs that require only a high school diploma.

While the rate of college attendance has been declining, participation in apprenticeship programs has increased by more than 50 percent in the past decade. These programs give participants valuable skills that lead directly to well-paying jobs—and without burdensome student loan debt.

The post Poll: Most Americans Don't Think a College Degree Is Worth the Cost appeared first on Reason.com.

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