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Inside the push for a nationwide ban on abortion medication [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information]
February 13, 2023
273 views
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• Right-wing officials have been pushing to overturn Roe v. Wade, claiming it is an effort to respect states’ rights and the democratic process.
• Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) submitted an amicus brief in the Northern District of Texas in support of the plaintiffs in the case of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, which seeks to ban mifepristone, a drug used to induce abortions.
• The lawsuit is about prohibiting the use of mifepristone in the 31 states where abortion remains mostly legal.
• The case is assigned to Matthew Kacsmaryk, a radical Trump-appointed federal judge who is an impassioned critic of the “”sexual revolution.””
• The plaintiffs are relying on the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that has been ignored or limited by federal courts for decades, to support their argument.
• Major corporations, including Comcast, AT&T, T-Mobile, Uber, Mastercard, and Bank of America, are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars backing the politicians bolstering the effort to ban abortion medication.

Published February 13, 2023
Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post Inside the push for a nationwide ban on abortion medication

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Can I Wear a MAGA Hat To My Government Job? [Ken White, Popehat]

By Spencer Chen
In Ken White [The Popehat Report]
January 12, 2023
281 views
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• The Ninth Circuit recently ruled in Dodge v. Evergreen School District that Eric Dodge, a sixth-grade teacher from Vancouver, Washington, was entitled to a trial on his claim that school district officials violated his First Amendment rights by threatening to discipline him for wearing a MAGA hat to teacher training.
• The First Amendment protects public employees differently depending on whether the government is wearing its sovereign hat or its employer hat.
• To show a violation of the First Amendment, a public employee must show that the state actor engaged in an “adverse employment action” against the plaintiff as a result of their speech.
• The government must establish that it had a legitimate administrative interest in preventing or punishing the speech that outweighed the employee’s interest in exercising their First Amendment rights.
• The more the employee’s speech resembles core First Amendment expression (like political speech), the harder it is for the government to make this showing.
• Even when First Amendment rights are violated, there may not be a remedy due to the judicially created doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Published January 12, 2023. Visit Popehat to read Ken White’s original post.

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“Director of First Impressions”: How corporations use phony titles to dodge billions in overtime [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information]
January 11, 2023
294 views
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• Corporations are giving workers in low-wage jobs fancy-sounding titles in order to evade the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and deny them overtime pay, resulting in $4 billion in overtime payments avoided annually.
• To be exempt from overtime pay, an employee must pass three tests: the salary basis test, the salary test, and the duties test.
• Misclassifying workers to evade overtime pay laws is illegal but not uncommon, with a 485% increase in the usage of managerial titles for salaried employees just above the salary threshold set in the Federal Labor Standards Act.
• Major companies such as JPMorgan, Avis Budget Car Rental, and Walmart have been ordered to pay millions in back wages and damages for misclassifying employees and failing to pay them overtime.
• The companies with the highest percentage of “overtime avoiding positions” include Arby’s, Sonic Drive-In, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Jiffy Lube, Burger King, GNC, H&R Block, Dairy Queen, Subway, Jimmy John’s, Little Caesars, Office Max, and KFC.

Published January 11, 2023. Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post.

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Meta’s EU Fine; First-Party versus Third-Party Data, Redux; The EU’s First Party Imposition [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen
In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]
January 11, 2023
186 views
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• Meta Platforms Inc. was fined €390 million ($414 million) by the European Union’s main privacy watchdog for the way users’ data is used for personalized ads on its Facebook and Instagram units.
• The Irish Data Protection Commission found that Meta’s terms of service requiring users to accept personalized ads when signing up to the social media services violated EU rules.
• The EU ruling is not about third-party data, but rather first-party data; Meta argued that using first-party user data for advertising is integral to the service, and thus they can make access to their services contingent upon agreeing to letting one’s data be used for advertising.
• The EU disagreed, finding that Meta was illegally “forcing” users to let their data be used for personalized advertising.
• Meta must now offer personalized social networking to users without tying that to offering personalized ads, which is likely to have a broad impact on companies that use first-party data for advertising.

Published January 11, 2023. Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post.

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The right to compete [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information]
January 10, 2023
268 views
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• The FTC has proposed a new rule that would ban noncompete clauses in the US, which would render all existing noncompete clauses null and void.
• Noncompete clauses are estimated to reduce worker earnings by $250 billion to $296 billion per year.
• Noncompete clauses are increasingly being used for low-wage workers, such as fast-food workers and manual laborers.
• The Chamber of Commerce is opposing the FTC’s proposed rule, claiming noncompete clauses “preserv[e] competition” and “foster innovation.”
• The FTC has also announced an enforcement action against several companies exploiting workers with noncompete clauses.
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Clarifying Some Common First Amendment Terminology [Ken White, The Popehat Report]

By Spencer Chen
In Ken White [The Popehat Report]
December 30, 2022
199 views
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  • When First Amendment experts say “First Amendment exception,” they’re generally referring to the limited, historical set of exceptions to the First Amendment that allow the government to limit speech based on its content.
  • The exceptions aren’t exceptions to the proposition “the government can’t do anything to restrict anything that might be understood as speech,” because that’s not the rule.
  • When we say “this is a First Amendment issue” or “the First Amendment applies to this dispute,” we’re saying “there’s a set of law based on the First Amendment that you have to apply to this dispute to resolve it.”
  • This doesn’t mean “the person speaking automatically wins” any more than “you have a right to trial by jury if you’re charged with a crime” means that you have a right to be found not guilty.
  • We have to apply the relevant First Amendment test to determine if the speech falls into the incitement exception to the First Amendment.

Published December 30, 2022

Visit The Popehat Report to read Ken White’s original post

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Can A Tarot Card Reading Be Defamatory? [Ken White, Serious Matters]

By Spencer Chen
In Ken White [The Popehat Report]
December 29, 2022
189 views
C
  • Defamation requires a provably false statement of fact, not an opinion, insult, hyperbole, or rhetoric.
  • Professor Rebecca Scofield of the University of Idaho is suing Ashley Guillard, a Tik-Tok personality, for defamation after Guillard released a series of TikTok videos accusing Scofield of plotting and ordering the murders of four students at the University.
  • The question arises whether it is defamatory to offer an opinion based on magic, such as tarot card readings.
  • Professor Scofield may have an easier time proving defamation based on statements made by Guillard that do not explicitly reference tarot card readings.

Click HERE for original. Published December 29, 2022

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In Defense Of Free Speech Pedantry [Ken White, The Popehat Report]

By Spencer Chen
In Ken White [The Popehat Report]
December 23, 2022
244 views
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  • Free speech values can be divided into three categories: free speech rights (FSR), free speech culture (FSC), and speech decency (SD).
  • Clarity in distinguishing between these three values helps to clarify the different rights and interests in play.
  • Being precise about which free speech value is being discussed is important and can lead to a better understanding of the law and to more effective debates about cultural issues.

Click HERE for original. Published December 18, 2022

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The real scandal inside Facebook’s cross-check program [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
December 6, 2022
273 views
T
  • Facebook’s cross-check program has been criticized for offering unequal protection to some users, leading to the Meta Oversight Board investigating the program.
  • The board found that the program leads to unequal treatment of users, causes harm, and does not measure its effectiveness.
  • The board made 32 recommendations for the company, including developing stronger criteria for which accounts should be eligible for ERSR protections, making those criteria public, and allowing individuals to proactively apply for the program.
  • The board also recommends that Facebook build more capacity to ensure it’s actually reviewing posts in the GSR queue.

Published December 6, 2022

Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post

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Inside the Twitter meltdown [Casey Newton & Zoë Schiffer, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
November 10, 2022
274 views
I
  • Elon Musk held an hour-long Spaces call to reassure advertisers, but VPs Yoel Roth, Robin Wheeler, Damien Kieran, Lea Kissner, and Marianne Fogarty all resigned the next day.
  • Musk sent an email to the team demanding they return to the office and prioritize finding and suspending verified bots/trolls/spam.
  • A lawyer on Twitter’s privacy team posted a rebuttal to Musk on the company’s Slack, warning of potential legal risks and violations of the FTC consent decree.
  • Musk held an unannounced all-hands meeting with staff, where he said bankruptcy was not out of the question and threatened to accept resignations from those who did not return to the office.
  • Musk’s plan to make verification checkmarks available to anyone willing to pay $8 for a subscription to Twitter Blue was abused, and he is also working to make Twitter a payments company.
  • There is a real sense of doom that Twitter could become a shadow of its former self, and Musk and his team were unable to access the @twitter account until Wednesday.

Published November 10, 2022

Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post

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