Law Commons^™

Justice Kennedy's Big New Idea, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In a 2015 case, the Supreme Court held that plaintiffs could bring disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act (the "FHA"). In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy relied heavily on the text and supporting case law interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act ("Title VII") and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (the "ADEA '). Without explicitly recognizing the powerful new idea he was advocating, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion radically reconceptualized federal employment discrimination jurisprudence. This new reading of Title VII and the ADEA changes both the theoretical framing of the discrimination statutes and greatly expands their scope. …

The Supreme Court Acknowledges Congress’ Authority To Confer Informational Standing In Spokeo, Inc. V. Robins, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins does not fully resolve when an intangible injury such as a defendant’s misreporting of a plaintiff’s personal information is sufficient to constitute a “concrete injury” for Article III standing. However, the Spokeo decision makes clear that Congress has a significant role in defining intangible injuries for Article III standing beyond what was considered an injury under the American or English common law. Some commentators had thought Spokeo might overrule the Court’s prior decisions in Akins and Public Citizen, which both held that a plaintiff may have standing based solely upon …

Guns, Sex, And Race: The Second Amendment Through A Feminist Lens, Verna L. Williams

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article uses a recent move on the part of feminist legal advocates-social justice feminism ("SJF')--to explore the contours of the Second Amendment. Feminist legal theory, specifically SJF, reveals that the Second Amendment and attendant societal understandings ofthe right to keep and bear arms played a role in establishing and reproducing white male dominance. Understood in this way, the Court's decisions in Heller and McDonald reinforce structural oppression under the guise of promoting individual rights. To make that case, this article proceeds in four parts. Part I briefly addresses the question of why a feminist lens is useful in this …

The Antidemocratic Sixth Amendment, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Criminal procedure experts often claim that poor people have no Sixth Amendment right to choose their criminal defense lawyers. These experts insist that the Supreme Court has reserved the Sixth Amendment right to choose for the small minority of defendants who can afford to hire counsel. This Article upends that conventional wisdom with new doctrinal, theoretical, and practical arguments supporting a Sixth Amendment right to choose for all defendants, including the overwhelming majority who are indigent. The Article’s fresh case analysis shows the Supreme Court’s “no-choice” statements are dicta, which the Court’s own reasoning and rulings refute. The Article’s new …

Standing To View Other People's Land: The D.C. Circuit's Divided Decision In Sierra Club V. Jewell, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In its divided 2014 decision in Sierra Club v. Jewell, the D.C. Circuit held that plaintiffs who observe landscape have Article III standing to sue in federal court to protect those views even if they have no legal right to physically enter the private property that they view. The D.C. Circuit’s decision could significantly enlarge the standing of plaintiffs to sue federal agencies or private parties over changes to private lands that the plaintiffs have no right to enter. Because the Supreme Court has inconsistently applied both strict and liberal approaches to standing, it is difficult to predict how it …

Does United States V. Windsor (The Doma Case) Open The Door To Congressional Standing Rights?, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In rare cases, a President refuses to defend a statute he believes is unconstitutional. The law is unclear whether Congress or either House of Congress has Article III standing to defend a statute that the President refuses to defend. In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court in 2013 addressed the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The Obama Administration took the middle position of not defending DOMA, but still enforcing it despite its view that the statute was unconstitutional to assist federal courts in reviewing the constitutionality of the statute. It was unclear whether an appeal was …

The Long-Term Implications Of Gonzaga V. Doe, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

State and local governments are often responsible for disbursing federal medical, educational, and welfare benefits. What happens when they deny or revoke them unfairly? Some recipients have used 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as a way to enforce the underlying statutes. The Supreme Court decision in Gonzaga University v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273 (2002), made this more difficult. In doing so, the Court adopted stringent rules for the use of § 1983 to enforce any federal laws, including the nation’s civil rights laws.

Retaliation And The Reasonable Person, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

When a worker complains about discrimination, federal law is supposed to protect that worker from later retaliation. Recent scholarly attention focuses on how courts limit retaliation claims by narrowly framing the causation inquiry. A larger threat to retaliation law is developing in the lower courts. Courts are declaring a wide swath of conduct as insufficiently serious to constitute retaliation.

Many courts hold that it is legal for an employer to threaten to fire a worker, to place the worker on administrative leave, or to negatively evaluate the worker because she complained about discriminatory conduct. Even if the worker has evidence …

Prudential Standing Doctrine Abolished Or Waiting For A Comeback?: Lexmark International, Inc. V. Static Control Components, Inc., Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Lexmark International, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., Justice Scalia writing for a unanimous Court partially achieved his goal of abolishing the prudential standing doctrine. First, the Court concluded that the zone of interests test concerns whether Congress has authorized a particular plaintiff to sue and is not a prudential standing question despite several Court decisions classifying it as such. However, there is a continuing controversy in the D.C. Circuit about applying the test to suits by competitors, especially in environmental cases. The better approach is to allow competitor standing in at least …

The Tort Label, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Courts and commentators often label federal discrimination statutes as torts. Since the late 1980s, the courts increasingly applied tort concepts to these statutes. This Article discusses how courts placed employment discrimination law within the organizational umbrella of tort law without examining whether the two areas share enough theoretical and doctrinal affinities.

While discrimination statutes are torts in some general sense that they do not arise out of criminal law and are not solely contractual, it is far from clear that these statutes are enough like traditional torts to justify the reflexive and automatic use of tort law. Employment discrimination statutes …

Let's Pretend Discrimination Is A Tort, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In the past decade, the Supreme Court has repeatedly invoked tort common law to interpret federal discrimination statutes. During this same time period, the Supreme Court increasingly invoked textualism as the appropriate methodology for interpreting these statutes. One immediate effect of these two trends - tortification and textualism - is to restrict discrimination law by tightening causal standards.

This Article explores how interpreting discrimination statutes through the lenses of tort law and textualism can expand, rather than restrict, discrimination law. It assumes that courts will continue to characterize discrimination statutes as torts and as deriving from the common law, despite …

Fakers And Floodgates, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

There has always been the possibility of judicial skepticism about employment discrimination claims. Recently, the Supreme Court made this skepticism explicit. In University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, the Supreme Court expressed concern about fake claims and floodgates of litigation. It then used these arguments to tip the substantive law against retaliation claims. This article responds to this explicit skepticism about discrimination claims. First, it shows that the Court created reasons to limit retaliation claims that are not tied to congressional intent. Second, the factual claims that the Court makes are not grounded in evidence, and available information …

Torts And Civil Rights Law: Migration And Conflict: Symposium Introduction, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Curiously, the connection between civil rights and civil wrongs has not been a topic that has captivated the attention of large numbers of legal scholars over the years. The distance that has developed between the two fields likely reflects their placement on opposite sides of the public-private divide, with Title VII and other anti-discrimination statutes forming part of public law, while torts is a classic, private law subject. To compound the division, both subjects are to some extent still under-theorized. Employment discrimination scholarship is often caught up in the process of analyzing the doctrinal implications of the latest Supreme Court …

Realizing Padilla's Promise: Ensuring Noncitizen Defendants Are Advised Of The Immigration Consequences Of A Criminal Convictions, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

On March 31, 2010 the United States Supreme court decided Padilla v. Kentucky and created a Sixth Amendment duty for defense attorneys to advise defendants of the immigration consequences of a criminal conviction. While Padilla answered the broad question of whether there is a duty to advise a defendant under the Sixth Amendment, it left many questions unanswered. One critical inquiry is how defense attorneys and the courts will determine what advice concerning the immigration consequences of the criminal conviction will satisfy defense counsels’ Sixth Amendment duty under Padilla.

This Article discusses the potential detrimental impact of Padilla’s ambiguous holding …

Advising Noncitizen Defendants On The Immigration Consequences Of Criminal Convictions: The Ethical Answer For The Criminal Defense Lawyer, The Court, And The Sixth Amendment, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article discusses the tension between the Sixth Amendment analysis by courts on the issue of immigration consequences of criminal convictions and the moral and ethical duties that an attorney owes his noncitizen client. Under the majority of jurisdictions, federal circuit and state courts hold that there is no duty to advise on this issue because they are deemed to be “collateral”. However, a growing number of these jurisdictions have begun to find a Sixth Amendment violation for failure to advise. These jurisdictions have created a Sixth Amendment duty only when: 1) the attorney “knew or should have known” the …

What Best To Protect Transsexuals From Discrimination: Using Current Legislation Or Adopting A New Judicial Framework, S. Elizabeth Malloy

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article specifically examines the issues and controversies that transsexual individuals have encountered as a result of their lack of protection under anti-discrimination laws, particularly the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VII. Part I is an overview of our society's binary sex/gender system and how this system serves to exclude and disenfranchise transsexuals. Part II examines the relationship between disability law and transsexuals, both explaining why they were excluded from the ADA and how state disability laws have provided more protection. Part III discusses how transsexuals have fared under a Title VII sex discrimination approach. This section also …

Mental Health Courts And Title Ii Of The Ada: Accessibility To State Court Systems For Individuals With Mental Disabilities And The Need For Diversion, S. Elizabeth Malloy

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Access to the judicial system, a fundamental right that has paramount importance in our society, can often present obstacles to people with disabilities in a variety of significant ways. Yet Title II mandates that state and local judicial facilities be accessible to individuals with disabilities. Recent shifts in paradigmatic approaches to special populations such as drug offenders and offenders with mental disabilities have lead to the creation of mental health courts specifically designed to address the needs of the persons with mental disabilities in order to avoid incarceration. Early outcomes in states like Ohio suggest mental health courts may better …

Attorney-Client Privilege When The Client Is A Public Official: Litigating The Opening Act Of The Impeachment Drama, Timothy K. Armstrong

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The divided panel decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in /n re Lindsey, 158 F.3d 1263 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 466 (1998), represented a dramatic shift in that court's thinking on the question whether the attorney-client privilege protects what a government official says to his agency's counsel in confidence. Although the court of appeals in at least four previous decisions had held that a government agency client holds the same privilege any other client would under like circumstances to communicate with counsel in private, the Lindsey court took a quite different view.