KEYTLaw's Blog

Affirmative Action In Colleges Possibly Back Before Supreme Court

ABA Journal: Two federal appeals decisions this year involving affirmative action and college admissions could bring the issue back before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Washington Post takes a look at the two cases. In one, Fisher v. University of Texas, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a race-conscious admissions policy at the University of Texas. The entire appeals court refused an en banc appeal by a 9-7 vote on June 17, Tex Parte Blog reported. According to the Post, the dissenters “practically invited the Supreme Court to step in.”

In another case, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Michigan constitutional amendment banning colleges and universities from granting any preferential treatment to minorities. On Friday, Michigan’s attorney general asked for an en banc rehearing, Reuters reports. The Squire Sanders Sixth Circuit Appellate Blog posted the petition for rehearing (PDF) in the case, Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action v. Regents of the University of Michigan.

“Facebook Law” Bans Student-Teacher Social Media Interaction

ABA Journal: A new Missouri law set to take effect later this month is aimed at more clearly defining teacher-student boundaries.

But critics say portions of Senate Bill 54, also known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, go too far in limiting social media contact between teachers and their students.

Even though it’s being referred to as the “Facebook law,” the law’s scope goes well beyond a single popular social network and instead covers any contact teachers would have with students via social media, according to reports in MSNBC’s Digital Life and KSPR ABC Channel 33.

New Health Insurance Law Mandates Free Birth Control

The Hill: The Obama administration on Monday announced that new healthcare plans will be required to cover contraceptive drugs and counseling without co-pays, starting next year.

The Health and Human Services guidelines, however, exempt some religious groups from having to offer the birth control coverage following an outcry from Christian conservatives.

The coverage guidelines largely reflect earlier recommendations from the Institute of Medicine that received overwhelming praise from women’s health advocates last month.

Congress Wants To Spy On Your Computer

NY Post: If Congress had to name laws honestly, it would be called the “Forcing Your Internet Provider to Spy On You Just In Case You’re a Criminal Act of 2011” — a costly, invasive mandate that even the co-author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), says “runs roughshod over the rights of people who use the Internet.”

But because it’s disguised as the “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act,” the House Judiciary Committee approved it last week by a wide margin — even though it’s got little to do with child porn and won’t do much to protect kids.

The centerpiece of this ill-conceived law is a sweeping requirement that commercial Internet providers retain a one-year log of all the temporary Internet Protocol addresses they assign to their users, along with customer-identification information. The Justice Department says this will help track down child-porn peddlers by linking online activity and real-world identities. But the government would be able to access that sensitive data for all kinds of investigations, most of which would have nothing to do with child porn.

Assocation for Legal Career Professionals Objects to ABA’s Reforms

Tax Prof Blog:

Following up on last week’s post, NALP has sent this biting four-page letter objecting to the ABA’s reform of law school placement data reporting:

The purpose of this letter is to convey NALP’s strong objection to the actions taken by the Council with regard to the collection of law school employment data. … This will, in effect, duplicate the research effort that NALP has successfully undertaken for the last 37 years. We object to this action on several grounds, including the fact it will actually lead to LESS transparency and information about the entry-level legal employment market and not more, and the fact that it is an action that is contrary to all of the public conversations about this issue that have taken place among the ABA, NALP, the law schools, and the public over the last year and a half. …

[W]e object in the strongest terms possible to the Section’s unlicensed use of NALP’s research terms and definitions in its plan to collect student record level data directly from the schools. The ABA may well decide that it should survey schools directly about what happens to their students when they complete their legal education, but in order to do so the ABA must develop its own survey instrument and research terms. The actions of the Council’s Executive Committee this week have effectively taken the intellectual property that NALP has developed over the last 37 years, used it as if it were its own property, and at the same time have effectively disabled NALP from using its own intellectual property by implementing a second and necessarily preemptive reporting duty on its accredited law schools…