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The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

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Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

unofan said:
Yes. Should've said isolated rather than isolating. But give me a break, I was up till 12:30 watching game 1 last night. Reading patent decisions first thing in the morning after that is cruel and unusual punishment
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Then why did you bring it up? ;)
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

So you can't patent genes but can patent leather shoes??
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

joecct said:
So you can't patent genes but can patent leather shoes??
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no
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

It is said violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

apparently Justice Kagan has a dry sense of humor...

note the phone number she cites in her ruling today (original source cited by Taranto at WSJ).


To address the community’s concerns, the Board implemented a Clean Truck Program beginning in 2007.Among other actions, the Board devised a standard-form“concession agreement” to govern the relationship between the Port and any trucking company seeking to operate on the premises. Under that contract, a company may transport cargo at the Port in exchange for complying with various requirements. The two directly at issue here compel the company to (1) affix a placard on each truckwith a phone number for reporting environmental orsafety concerns (You’ve seen the type: “How am I driving? 213–867–5309”)
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I wonder how many people are going to dial that number. Seems to me that the phone company wouldn't give anyone that number in any area code that still has a radio station that plays "oldies" ! ;)
 
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Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

FreshFish said:
apparently Justice Kagan has a dry sense of humor...

note the phone number she cites in her ruling today (original source cited by Taranto at WSJ).





I wonder how many people are going to dial that number. Seems to me that the phone company wouldn't give anyone that number in any area code that still has a radio station that plays "oldies" ! ;)
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Some businesses will pay top dollar for it.
 
FreshFish said:
:rolleyes: the only business I can think of that would want that phone number would be a brothel in which all the service workers were named Jenny. :rolleyes:
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There used to be a plumbing service that bought a bunch of 867-5309 numbers nationwide. Not sure if they still have them, though.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

FreshFish said:
:rolleyes: the only business I can think of that would want that phone number would be a brothel in which all the service workers were named Jenny. :rolleyes:
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Benjamin Franklin Plumbing. In certain area codes, the number has fetched quite a lot of money - especially out east, in the 212 area code specifically.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

An essay on the taxing power of the Congress to regulate behavior -- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2232257

I wondered if the Roberts opinion on the PPACA codified that the Congress could tax anything at anytime for any purpose. Since I am not a constitutional scholar, I did not realize that the 20th Century had all sorts of intrusions... Turns out there were a bunch of precedents that the SCOTUS could rely on.

Sad....
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

SCOTUS agrees to review "disparate impact" measure of alleged discrimination during their next term.


In "disparate impact" lawsuits, the government or private plaintiffs can allege discrimination based on statistics showing that minorities were disproportionately harmed by a housing practice without also having to prove any intentional racial bias.

At issue before the Supreme Court is whether the Fair Housing Act allows such challenges. Lower courts generally have, although they have used differing legal standards for evaluating the cases.
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I've always been a bit puzzled by claims that "disparate impact" measures "discrimination" since it merely looks at outcomes and not at how the outcomes occurred.

For example, does the NBA "discriminate against" short people? If you look at their rosters, there is clearly a "disparate impact" invovled when you compare the height of NBA players relative to the height of the general population. However, the NBA merely selects for success on the basketball court. There have been one or two successful pros shorter than 6'0".

The theory is that whenever you have a "disparate impact" that "somehow" there "must be" discrimination "somewhere" to explain the differential outcomes. However, in many cases, there are explanations for those outcomes that do not rely on "discrimination" to produce those results (if someone wants to be an air traffic controller in the US, they need to speak English well enough to communicate with pilots. Does a failure to hire someone who does not speak English at all indicate that there MUST be "discrmination" against non-English speakers?).

So the NBA and height, or air traffic control and speaking English, might seem silly examples: you are selecting FOR a trait, you are not actively discriminating AGAINST someone.

For some reason, "housing" is a completely different matter, though no one ever has explained why banks are supposed to ignore a borrower's ability to repay as a critera for making a loan.
 
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FreshFish said:
SCOTUS agrees to review "disparate impact" measure of alleged discrimination during their next term.




I've always been a bit puzzled by claims that "disparate impact" measures "discrimination" since it merely looks at outcomes and not at how the outcomes occurred.

For example, does the NBA "discriminate against" short people? If you look at their rosters, there is clearly a "disparate impact" invovled when you compare the height of NBA players relative to the height of the general population. However, the NBA merely selects for success on the basketball court. There have been one or two successful pros shorter than 6'0".

The theory is that whenever you have a "disparate impact" that "somehow" there "must be" discrimination "somewhere" to explain the differential outcomes. However, in many cases, there are explanations for those outcomes that do not rely on "discrimination" to produce those results (if someone wants to be an air traffic controller in the US, they need to speak English well enough to communicate with pilots. Does a failure to hire someone who does not speak English at all indicate that there MUST be "discrmination" against non-English speakers?).

So the NBA and height, or air traffic control and speaking English, might seem silly examples: you are selecting FOR a trait, you are not actively discriminating AGAINST someone.

For some reason, "housing" is a completely different matter, though no one ever has explained why banks are supposed to ignore a borrower's ability to repay as a critera for making a loan.
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Anti-discrimination laws contain exceptions for bona fide qualifications. So your NBA and ATC examples aren't what we're talking about. Ability to pay rent/mortgage is also a clear example of something allowed by such laws. . What isn't allowed are other, seemingly neutral policies which have the effect of being discriminatory.

No one says "Irish need not apply" anymore. But they might come up with some bogus reasons to exclude Irish people nonetheless. The law still needs to prevent that.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS IV: Gays, Guns, and Immigrants, OH MY!

unofan said:
Anti-discrimination laws contain exceptions for bona fide qualifications.... Ability to pay rent/mortgage is also a clear example of something allowed by such laws.
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So you say.

but that's not what some of these lawsuits say. If a bank uses financial capacity to repay the mortgage as a criteria, and it turns out that somehow people of certain ethnicities have disproportionately higher ability to pay a mortgage than people of a different ethnicity, these "disparate impact" lawsuits are saying that "somehow" there is still "discrimination" even when based solely upon objective criteria.

In these housing cases, (and also in some hiring cases as well), the sole "evidence" of "discrimination" is the disproportionate outcome, even if all the standards are objective. No one can unearth any evidence of discriminatory "intent" whatsoever. that doesn't even matter under the "disparate impact" standard. You give everyone the same multiple choice exam, one group scores higher than another group, and the existence of the differential outcome is sufficient in and of itself to claim "disparate impact."

Some people then argue that the exam "must be" biased somehow. I didn't realize that knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, or not, indicates a "biased" exam. Now, it could indicate differential problems in the educational system that teaches people math, but I cannot understand how promoting someone who can't do math (as measured by an exam), for the sole reason of mitigating a "diparate impact,", solves the problem of a faulty educational system: it appears to discriminate against people who ARE qualified to mandate that unqualified people be promoted anyway.
 
FreshFish said:
So you say.

but that's not what some of these lawsuits say. If a bank uses financial capacity to repay the mortgage as a criteria, and it turns out that somehow people of certain ethnicities have disproportionately higher ability to pay a mortgage than people of a different ethnicity, these "disparate impact" lawsuits are saying that "somehow" there is still "discrimination" even when based solely upon objective criteria.

In these housing cases, (and also in some hiring cases as well), the sole "evidence" of "discrimination" is the disproportionate outcome, even if all the standards are objective. No one can unearth any evidence of discriminatory "intent" whatsoever. that doesn't even matter under the "disparate impact" standard. You give everyone the same multiple choice exam, one group scores higher than another group, and the existence of the differential outcome is sufficient in and of itself to claim "disparate impact."

Some people then argue that the exam "must be" biased somehow. I didn't realize that knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, or not, indicates a "biased" exam. Now, it could indicate differential problems in the educational system that teaches people math, but I cannot understand how promoting someone who can't do math (as measured by an exam), for the sole reason of mitigating a "diparate impact,", solves the problem of a faulty educational system: it appears to discriminate against people who ARE qualified to mandate that unqualified people be promoted anyway.
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Without knowing what the specific lawsuits say, I can only answer genericly. The question isn't just that such tests have a disparate impact. There's also something more at issue. Either the test wasn't sufficiently related to the job at issue (making any impact arbitrary and non-qualification related), it was worded in a discriminatory manner, or otherwise had an impact that cannot be legitimately explained away.

The impact itself gets you into court. The employer/landlord/whatever can still explain it away if they have good reasons to do so.

The issue in the case just accepted by the court is whether the Fair Housing Act allows such claims. It's a question of statutory interpretation, not an argument against the legitimacy of such claims as a whole.

If the answer to that is "yes," then the court has to decide what the proper test for all of the associated issues is - who has the burden to prove what.
 
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