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Author: Joshua Thompson After nearly three years, the California Supreme Court has set a date for oral argument in Coral Construction v. City and County of San Francisco.  The argument will be held May 4, 2010, at 9 pm in San Francisco. PLF Principal Attorney Sharon Browne will be arguing the case for the petitioners. … ...

Today, the Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, will be hearing the case of Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action v. Regents of the University of Michigan. This case challenges the constitutionality of Proposal 2, a statewide constitutional amendment that banned the use of race by Michigan state and local governments.  You can read PLF’s brief h ...

The Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, declared Proposal 2 unconstituional under the Equal Protection Clause today. Proposal 2 is Michigan’s landmark constitutional amendment that banned racial preferences and discrimination by state and local government. Think about that for a second — a constitutional amendment banning discrimination is ...

As we reported on Thursday, the Sixth Circuit declared Michigan’s Proposal 2 unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause.  The decision has been roundly condemned throughout the legal community.  For good reason.  The decision defies both logic and common sense by holding that Proposal 2 — a state constitutional amendment proh ...

That was fast!  After the Sixth Circuit’s horrendous decision striking down Michigan’s equal rights amendment two weeks ago, the Michigan Attorney General filed this certiorari petition yesterday to ask the Supreme Court to take up the case.  Kudos to the AG’s office for this ueber-quick response to an unjustifiable ruling. I ...

Last week, district court judge Charles Breyer may have written the last chapter of Wal-Mart v. Dukes, when he denied the plaintiffs’ renewed attempt to bring a massive class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart for sex discrimination.  Remarking on the path of the infamous lawsuit, the brother of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, ̶ ...

Today Pacific Legal Foundation filed this amicus brief in EEOC v. Kaplan, which was joined by the Cato Institute, the Center for Equal Opportunity, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Project 21.  EEOC has been particularly aggressive in pursuing disparate impact cases lately, and its case against Kaplan is representative.  Like many compan ...

Here on the Liberty Blog, we have often posted about the perils of “disparate impact” laws; that is, laws that allow courts to find illicit discrimination in a facially neutral action without any showing of improper intent (here, here, and here, for example).  These statutes require businesses and government actors to engage in pernic ...

In Michigan, when landowners fail to pay their property taxes, local governments take the property, sell it, and keep all the profits—no matter how small the debt or how valuable the property. As a result, local governments are profiting handsomely over the misfortune of their residents. For example, a few years ago, Wayside Church lost … ...