Blog
Obama Administration Discards Reporting Requirements in Obamacare
The Obama administration has illegally discarded the reporting requirements mandated by the 2010 healthcare law, which were designed to prevent countless billions of…
Blog
French Cheese Ban: An Attack on “Scientific Principles” in Violation of Treaties Protecting International Trade?
Earlier, we wrote about the U.S. government's de facto ban on the commonplace, perfectly healthy, normal-smelling French cheese mimolette (which I once confused with…
Cato
Banning Fancy French Cheese
I’m no cheese connoisseur. . .But I understand that some people have more refined tastes, and they feel very strongly about the issue. And they…
Blog
Another Federal Appeals Court Rules against Obama Administration’s Contraceptive Mandate
Contraceptives are easy to obtain, and forcing employers to include a broad array of contraceptives in employee health insurance makes as little sense as forcing…
Blog
Federal Regulations Make Americans 75 Percent Poorer
"Federal regulations have made you 75 percent poorer," and as a result, "U.S. GDP is just $16 trillion instead of $54 trillion," says an…
Blog
President Repeats False “Equal Pay” Statistic Claiming Women Earn 77 Percent of What Men Do
President Obama repeated a myth about equal pay and pay discrimination, as the economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth notes at RealClearMarkets: Last week in the…
Blog
Obamacare and Activist State Courts Drive Up Health Plan Costs
The so-called rate shock from Obamacare has hit Ohio. The state’s Department of Insurance announced last Thursday that the average individual-market health insurance premium…
Blog
Legal Ignorance of the Day: Federal Officials Seek to Restrict Religious Speech and “Hate Speech”
To be appointed to a Justice Department position in the Obama administration, you may need to satisfy various ideological litmus tests. But apparently…
Legal Brief
CEI v. Social Security Administration – June 6 Complaint
Full Document Available in PDF Plaintiff COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE (“CEI”) for its complaint against Defendant SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (“SSA”), alleges as follows:…
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Education Department Can’t Ban Speech
As a former Education Department lawyer, I share George Will’s dismay that the Education Department is now pressuring colleges to ban speech such as sexual…
Blog
Wisconsin Town Criminalizes Parents for Kids’ Bullying and Offensive Speech
Law Professor Eugene Volokh has an interesting post on a Wisconsin town's "bullying" ordinance, which criminalizes speech by minors as "bullying" or "harassment" if…
Long Island Newsday
Colleges Paranoid Over Sexual Speech
As a former U.S. Education Department lawyer, I largely agree with Cathy Young's criticism of the department for demanding that colleges treat as "sexual harassment"…
Legal Brief
CEI v EPA – May 29 Complaint
The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed suit in federal court to compel the Environmental Protection Agency to turn over text message records of Gina McCarthy, Assistant…
Blog
Education Department Attack on Free Speech and Due Process Criticized in Washington Post, Chronicle, and Other Papers
Earlier, I wrote about a recent letter from the Education and Justice Departments demanding that the University of Montana define as a reportable "sexual…
Washington Post
‘Alice in Wonderland’ coercion
Hans Bader, a former OCR lawyer now with the limited-government Competitive Enterprise Institute, notes that this “Alice in Wonderland” — “sentence first, verdict afterwards” —…
Blog
IRS Political Harassers Could Theoretically Be Fired, as Required by 1998 Law
Earlier, I wrote about how, thanks to civil-service regulations, it is hard to fire government employees for misconduct, despite often-ignored Constitutional provisions, such…
Wall Street Journal
Letter to the Editor: When the First Amendment Is Repealed by Bureaucrats
Greg Lukianoff is right to criticize the Education Department for illegally trying to abolish the requirement that comments must be offensive to a "reasonable person"…
Blog
Anti-Business and Anti-Freedom: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
In the American Spectator, CEI Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray and Geoffrey McLatchey explain why the Senate should be skeptical of the United Nations Convention…
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Dark Cloud Over Academic Freedom: How the Education Department Would Limit Dating
Recently the Education Department issued a controversial "blueprint" for dealing with sexual harassment that could expose colleges that follow it to First Amendment lawsuits and…
Washington Times
Letter to the Editor: Free Speech Isn’t Harassment
The Washington Times rightly criticizes the Obama administration for demanding unconstitutional college speech codes (“Repealing free speech,” Comment & Analysis, May 17). The…
Blog
Firing Government Employees Is Too Hard; the Constitution Intended for It to Be Easier
It's hard to get rid of a career bureaucrat, even at the managerial level. "After you've been here for a year, it's easier to kill…
Blog
Legal Fallacy Underlies Defense of IRS Harassment by Progressives
Progressives such as those at the Daily Kos are arguing that it would have been just fine to for the IRS to investigate all groups…
Citation
Obama administration demands that colleges adopt unconstitutional speech codes
The Justice Department and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights have now effectively defined dating and flirting as “sexual harassment,” in addition to demanding…
Blog
Obama Recess Appointments Violate Constitution; Another Appeals Court Rules Against the NLRB
Another federal appeals court has ruled that President Obama's so-called "recess appointments" to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional because the Senate was not…
The Atlantic
No Sex Talk Allowed: What’s wrong with the Obama administration’s definition of sexual harassment
"Federal government mandates unconstitutional speech codes at college and universities nationwide," the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) accurately…
Blog
IRS Investigated Groups for Teaching about the Constitution
The IRS didn’t just investigate groups based on their perceived political views, but also targeted groups for “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights”…
Blog
Federal Title IX Enforcers Effectively Define Dating and Sex Education as “Sexual Harassment”
No one would believe you if you made this up, but it's now actually happened: The Justice Department and the Education Department's Office for Civil…
Blog
Youth Unemployment Is at Highest Sustained Level Since World War II
Real youth unemployment is at 16.1 percent, the highest sustained rate since World War II. As the non-partisan youth advocacy group Generation Opportunity notes,…
Blog
First Amendment Menace: Obama Administration to Expand Americans with Disabilities Act over Websites?
Can websites be forced to change to accommodate the disabled -- by using "simpler language" to appeal to the "intellectually disabled," or by making…
Blog
Historian: Housing Nominee Mel Watt Helped Spawn the Subprime Crisis
In the Daily Caller, historian and presidential biographer Charles C. Johnson writes that “Housing nominee Mel Watt helped create the…
Blog
Obama: A Sweet Pension for Himself, But Not For America’s Savers or Investors
In The Washington Post, Allan Sloan points out that while President Obama wants to cap American citizens' IRAs at $3 million or substantially…
Reason
Democratic Nativist (Yes, Such a Creature Exists) Strikes At Nikki Haley
Every good liberal knows that GOP is the party of bigoted, narrow-minded “knaves and fools” that is in every way morally inferior to the noble…
The American Spectator
Financial Experts: Dodd-Frank Exacerbates Instability
These were the standout insights from a panel discussion hosted by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on April 11. The gathering focused on the Financial…
Legal Brief
CEI v. EPA Region 9 – May 2 Complaint
Full Document Available in PDF 1) This is an action under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552, to…
Washington Post
Letter to the Editor: Getting the history of the Voting Rights Act right
Gary May’s diatribe against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia displayed the historical ignorance he inveighed against [“Scalia vs. the Voting Rights Act,” Sunday Opinion,…
Blog
U.S. Government Bans French Cheese Based On Food Prejudices
The U.S. government is banning a standard, normal-smelling French cheese based on its own squeamishness. The cheese in question is Mimolette, a commonplace,…
Overlawyered
NYT Breaks Open Pigford Case, Cont’d
Hans Bader wonders whether the Obama administration might have avoided going down the embarrassing settlement route had it taken more seriously the Supreme Court’s 2001…
Blog
New York Times: Obama Administration Discrimination Settlement Was “Magnet For Fraud” That Enriched Trial Lawyers
A page 1 New York Times story today describes how the Obama administration, despite opposition from civil servants, radically expanded a legal settlement that…
Blog
Obama’s Controversial Nominee For Labor Secretary To Be Voted On
Cato Institute attorney Ilya Shapiro wrote Tuesday about “Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights who personifies . . . this…
Blog
Lawsuits Over “Customary International Law”: A Menace To Free Speech, Our Liberties, Our Companies, And Our Economy
Earlier, I wrote about how it was a good thing that the Supreme Court blocked foreigners from suing in the U.S. over…
Blog
EEOC: A Scofflaw That Poisons The Climate For Hiring
One way the current political climate discourages hiring is by turning problem employees into potential lawsuits for the employers who take the risk…
Blog
More On Supreme Court Ruling Limiting International Lawsuits
Earlier, I wrote about the Supreme Court’s closing the door on lawsuits by foreigners alleging nebulous violations of “human rights” or international norms…
Blog
The Train Wreck That Is Obamacare
At least one union that supported passage of Obamacare, is now calling for its repeal. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the United…
Blog
Supreme Court Dismisses Alien Tort Lawsuit Over Nigerian Dispute
The Supreme Court today refused to allow Nigerians to sue Dutch and other corporations in U.S. court over alleged abuses in Nigeria that occurred…
Blog
Don’t Waste Billions Putting Gun-Wielding Guards In Our Schools
School violence has diminished in recent years, but in response to a few mass shootings, the National Rifle Association and the Obama…
Overlawyered
SCOTUS: U.S. Can’t Play Tortmaster-General to the World
Notably, all nine Justices sidestepped the issue that had caused extensive angst among many popular commentators, namely whether the statute could be applied to corporations…
Blog
Food Safety Modernization Act Far More Costly Than Supporters Claimed
“Proposed FDA safety rules frustrate tree fruit farmers,” reported The Washington Post. As the FDA puts “in place a massive overhaul of the nation’s…
Blog
Obama Budget: Bad News For Investors, Taxpayers, And Education Reform
Blog
Obamacare Strangles Job Creation, Stifles Medical Innovation
Earlier, I wrote about the dismal March jobs report and how high unemployment has been masked by rising numbers of discouraged workers and people…
Capital Press
Group Sues EPA Over Instant Messages
A new lawsuit accuses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials of using instant messaging to avoid revealing their communications to the public. The plaintiff, the Competitive…