Dissents have it all: brilliant writing, surprising reasoning, shade, puns, and sometimes historic impact. Although they are necessarily written by the “losing” side, they’re still important: they can provide a roadmap for future challenges and persuade their colleagues. Sometimes they’re just cathartic.
In Dissed, attorneys Anastasia Boden and Elizabeth Slattery dig deep into important dissents, both past and present, and reveal the stories behind them.
Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid
Cedar Point Nursery and Fowler Packing Company are California growers that produce fruit for millions of Americans. Collectively, they employ around 3,000 Californians. In 2015, the United Farm Workers (UFW) viewed the workers as ripe for the picking and sent union organizers to storm the workplaces during harvest time to encourage them to unionize ...
Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski
In Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, the Supreme Court will decide whether the government can moot a civil rights case by rescinding its unconstitutional policy after being sued, even though the plaintiff seeks nominal damages for a past, completed constitutional injury—in this case, a college student's First Amendment right to speak freely on campus. Th ...
Collins v. Mnuchin
After the mortgage crisis in the early 2000s, Congress created the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to regulate federal home loans. The FHFA is headed by a single director, who serves for a period of five years and cannot be removed by the President except for cause. Exercising its vast powers, the FHFA adopted a regulation that prevented the ...
Barnette v. HBI, LLC
In 2002, Walter Barnette was working in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue when he spotted an acre of land in a growing neighborhood. Though he lives across the nearby border with Iowa, he bought the property with the intent of one day building a home. Walter fell on hard times, however, and failed to pay his 2010 and 2011 property taxes—$986.50—to S ...
Massachusetts Lobstermen v. Ross
The Antiquities Act of 1906 authorizes the President to declare monuments on "land owned or controlled by the Federal government" to protect their historic or scientific value. On his way out of office, President Obama used this power to declare a 5,000 square mile area of the ocean to be the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument. ...
Rentberry v. City of Seattle
Rentberry is a small San Francisco-based start-up that connects landlords and renters through a website that uses innovative technology to allow users to bid for rental housing. The company hoped to expand its service to Seattle, but, in 2018, the city council adopted a one-year moratorium on rent-bidding websites over unfounded fears that such sit ...
Feltner v. Cuyahoga County Board of Revision
Elliot Feltner inherited his father-in-law's Cleveland, Ohio, autobody shop in 2012 and discovered the property, while valued at $144,500, had a property tax debt of more than $65,000. He decided to sell it to pay the debt and even found a buyer, but before he could complete a sale, the county took his property without paying him for his $80,000 in ...
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