 |
| Cifras Confiables/Wikimedia/cropped/CC BY-SA 4.0 |
The 53-page opinion provides a framework for defeating mandates now and in the future.
Last week, a three-judge panel on California’s Second District Court of Appeals revived a case brought by a group of Los Angeles firefighters who challenged the City of Los Angeles’ Covid-19 vaccine mandate. The decision reversed a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the case because the judge found the firefighters’ allegations regarding the safety and efficacy of the Covid shots implausible, ignoring the settled rule that, at the pleading stage, judges must accept all factual allegations as true.
(Disclaimer: I am one of the lawyers representing the firefighters in this case and the lawyer primarily responsible for drafting the appeal.)
Although unpublished, the appellate court’s 53-page opinion marks a pivotal moment in the fallout from Covid policy. As I have written before, leftist institutions such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the California judiciary have always championed individual freedom, even in emergency situations (“emergency” being a term of art that is subject to manipulation, of course). In fact, the lower-court judge in the firefighters’ case, Michael Linfield, wrote a book about this. He quoted two of the United States’ most liberal jurists, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, who wrote in a famous dissent that “grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.”
Unfortunately, the left abandoned their principles during the pandemic. We might have expected that from politicians like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden, establishment puppets who lacked the discipline or intellectual curiosity to question public health alarmists. (I litigated one of the first successful lockdown-related cases against Newsom, for a coalition of gym owners who challenged California’s arbitrary closure of gyms during the early stages of the pandemic.) Judges should have known better. After all, the California Code of Judicial Ethics requires that they “uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary.” It requires that they “perform the duties of judicial office impartially, competently and diligently.”
At minimum, that meant applying California’s pleading standards faithfully. Those standards are famously low, lower than the federal standards, which the Supreme Court, led by its conservatives, keeps heightening. In a California state court, a plaintiff who pays the filing fee and alleges facts that, assumed to be true, state any plausible claim, gets to gather evidence and present that evidence to a judge or jury. He gets his day in court. --->READ MORE HERE
 |
| Photo: Yellow Corp |
The Treasury Department erred in giving a loan to a troubled trucking company as part of a 2020 Covid-19 rescue package and should refrain from similar sector-specific loan programs in the future, according to a new congressional report.
Yellow, a trucking company, received a $700 million loan from the Treasury Department as part of an aid program for private industries included in bipartisan legislation known as the Cares Act enacted early in the pandemic.
But Treasury had to skirt the program’s rules to make the loan, the report said. The agency designated Yellow—then known as YRC Worldwide—as critical to national security even though the company didn’t meet the standard for that designation, the report said.
To qualify as a national-security company, a firm needed to have high-priority defense contracts or a top-security clearance. Although the company was a Defense Department contractor it “was not critical to maintaining national security given that the shipping services it provides to the military could be provided by other trucking companies,” the report said.
Instead, Treasury used a “catch-all provision” allowing for loans based on the recommendation of the Defense Department or Director of National Intelligence, according to the report, released Tuesday by the Congressional Oversight Commission, which was set up to monitor how Cares Act money was spent.
Originally made up of four members, the commission is now down to just Rep. French Hill (R., Ark.), who is the sole author listed on the report. Other members have resigned or are no longer in Congress.
In exchange for the loan, Treasury received a roughly 30% stake in the company. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
Binge drinking increased with home delivery of alcohol during pandemic
Covid pandemic spiked Type 1 diabetes in children, adolescents: Study
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
If you like what you see, please "Like" and/or Follow us on FACEBOOK here, GETTR here, and TWITTER here.
No comments:
Post a Comment