Episodios

  • Short Circuit 382 | Beard Law

    Short Circuit 382 | Beard Law
    Jun 27 2025
    Who doesn’t love a nice beard? It seems the firefighters in Atlantic City. One of their employees wants to wear a beard because of his religion. He doesn’t actually fight fires as part of his job, but there’s a possibility he’d be told he needs to and therefore he supposedly can’t have a beard because his special air mask wouldn’t fit. Does this violate the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise? Matt Liles of IJ reports on this case from the Third Circuit that digs into how “generally applicable” a law must be to not target someone’s religious practice. Then IJ’s Bob McNamara discusses a scary subject: statutes of limitations. Blowing one is every litigator’s nightmare. But which statute of limitations applies in a given case? For claims brought under Title IX, a federal ban on sex discrimination, that’s unclear. Bob breaks down a Fourth Circuit opinion that had to figure out what South Carolina law applies to Title IX claims in a case where a high schooler sued a school for not stopping sexual harassment. Is it a special state law on suing governmental entities? Or is it the most general state statute of limitations? Bob tells us the answer but also advises that this would all be a lot easier if Congress did its job and provided its own statute of limitations. Smith v. Atlantic City E.R. v. Beaufort County School Dist. Employment Division v. Smith Pogonologia
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    45 m
  • Short Circuit 381 | Charo on the Tonight Show

    Short Circuit 381 | Charo on the Tonight Show
    Jun 20 2025
    We at the Institute for Justice are increasingly involved with combatting retaliation against free speech. Which is why we were highly interested to hear from Daniel Cragg and his recent win at the Eighth Circuit. Dan is a Minneapolis attorney who regularly sues the government for all kinds of things. This particular case was about a doctor who made a few remarks that weren’t very politically popular at her place of work—a public hospital—at the height of the pandemic and cultural ferment in 2020. She lost her discrimination and retaliation claims at summary judgment but the Eight Circuit sent the retaliation claim back for trial. It also called her other claims “interlocutory.” We discuss the free speech issues at the heart of the matter but in addition your panel perplexes about how the court could think the other claims were interlocutory, considering the appeal was from a final judgment. Then Michael Bindas of IJ discusses a recent Ninth Circuit en banc opinion about a police shooting. The interesting thing to Michael’s eyes is how a concurrence treated a pair of substantive due process claims invoking the case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary. The panel dig into what the right recognized in Pierce has to do with a child’s claim for losing a parent, and what Plato’s Republic has to do with it all. Gustilo v. Hennepin Healthcare System Estate of Hernandez v. L.A. Pierce v. Society of Sisters Cato’s event on Pierce, including panel with Michael Meyer v. Nebraska at 100 Plato’s Republic (Book V)
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    1 h y 11 m
  • Short Circuit 380 | Homicide by Bath

    Short Circuit 380 | Homicide by Bath
    Jun 13 2025
    Is making someone file a form “in the public interest”? The Fifth Circuit took a look at that age-old question in a recent case regarding the FCC and its gathering of demographic data. What might seem like a small issue opens the door to how the administrative state works, where agencies get their power, and how narrow the courts are reading those powers these days. IJ’s Bob Belden explains the twists and turns of this story that goes back several decades. Then Nick DeBenedetto of IJ walks us through a habeas case from the Sixth Circuit with a wild story about a murder—or was it a murder?—of a wife by her husband and whether the conviction was tainted because of the background of a detective. The detective, it turns out, told all kinds of lies to get hired before he investigated the defendant. Did those lies affect the conviction enough to violate the Constitution? See if you can render your own verdict. National Religious Broadcasters v. FCC Widmer v. Okereke Rebels on the Air by Jesse Walker
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    53 m
  • Short Circuit 379 | Tariff Bazookas

    Short Circuit 379 | Tariff Bazookas
    Jun 6 2025
    With the recent major tariff rulings we had to pull in a major tariff expert, Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. Scott digs into the “shocking decision,” as even he puts it, from the Court of International Trade declaring many of the recent “emergency” tariffs unlawful. He takes a look at what’s behind the opinion and what’s next as the case goes on appeal to the Federal Circuit and perhaps also to the Supreme Court. The law the tariffs are justified under might not even allow for tariffs, but ruling that way means the courts will have to not give the substantial deference to the President in these kinds of matters that they often have given in the past. Both the Major Questions Doctrine and the Nondelegation Doctrine loom and there’s some gaps that need to be filled. Then IJ’s Jeff Rowes describes a victory for free speech in the D.C. Circuit where the Attorney General of Texas tried to use a consumer fraud statute designed to remedy things like “defective air conditioners” against a journalism organization. Even though the court upheld a preliminary injunction, Jeff argues that the very fact the law was used in this way in the first place, in conjunction with the rich and powerful, is an ominous First Amendment warning. Plus, we dig into some “where are they now, updating cases from recent episodes. This includes one where IJ is trying to have applied to the states one of the last bits of the Bill of Rights that the Supreme Court has missed: The Seventh Amendment’s right to a civil jury trial. Call for Papers for our conference on Declarations of Rights from 1776! VOS Selections v. U.S. Media Matters v. Paxton Scott’s conversation with Rick Woldenberg from the DC tariff case Scott & Clark Packard’s study on tariff powers from last year IJ’s Seventh Amendment incorporation cert petition Corn Law Rhymes & Other Poems (1833) The Taxed Cake
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    45 m
  • Short Circuit 378 | Come and Take It

    Short Circuit 378 | Come and Take It
    May 30 2025
    Fans of truckers should enjoy this episode, although they may grow angry hearing about a truck stop that never was to be. Tahmineh Dehbozorgi of IJ tells us of a property owner in Georgia who wanted to turn his land by a highway into a truck stop. But the county was dead set against him, leading to a decades-long zoning battle. A gas station would be OK, but not if it looks more like a place where truckers can fuel their rigs and get a little rest. In the end, when the controversy finally reaches the Eleventh Circuit the rational-basis test squashes any chance the truck stop has because . . . well because it’s a rational-basis case. Then Suranjan Sen takes us to the Sixth Circuit where an eight-year-old wore a hat with a gun on it that also says “Come and Take It.” The student was asked to take it off ostensibly because of a recent shooting in a nearby school. Did that violate the First Amendment? The court claims it did not but the matter seems a close case under the relevant caselaw. The crew looks at the relevance of the Tinker case from the Vietnam War era and also where the “come and take it” phrase comes from. Did you know it’s a Battle of Thermopylae thing? Click here for transcript. Corey v. Rockdale County C.S. v. McCrumb Tinker v. Des Moines Sch. Dist. Angry Cheerleader Case Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)
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    54 m
  • Short Circuit 377 | Zen and the Art of the Nondelegation Doctrine

    Short Circuit 377 | Zen and the Art of the Nondelegation Doctrine
    May 23 2025
    Sometimes a short ride goes a long way. Casey Mattox of Stand Together comes on to tell us how a dirt biker in Nevada may end up making some constitutional history. Agents of the Bureau of Land Management gave the dirt biker a citation for riding without a license-plate light. His public defender argued the underlying law was unconstitutional because Congress hadn’t given the Bureau an “intelligible principle” to guide the underlying traffic regulation and thus violated the nondelegation doctrine. That argument won at the district court but then the Ninth Circuit recently overturned it on appeal. But there may be more life in the case to come. Then Arif Panju of IJ details the latest challenge to a university speech code. A judge twisted some arms to get the school to change its policy and then declared the case moot. The Fifth Circuit, however, said the game’s not over yet because there’s no guarantee the old code won’t come back. Click here for transcript. US v. Pheasant Speech First v. McCall Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski FBI v. Fikre 2019 blog post on voluntary cessation Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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    56 m
  • Short Circuit 376 | Murder Mysteries

    Short Circuit 376 | Murder Mysteries
    May 16 2025
    Two federal appellate opinions involving a murder and whether justice was served. First, IJ’s Dan Alban reports on a Sixth Circuit case where a man alleges he was wrongfully accused and spent seven years in jail waiting for trials on various false charges, including not just murder but others too—including sodomy—and where the trials never happened. All of this, the man claims, was because of a conspiracy directed toward getting him to testify—and lie—in another case. It’s a crazy story that the court doesn’t want to hear because it concluded the man’s civil rights lawsuit was filed too late. Then we hear from An Altik of IJ about the latest in the very long running saga of a man, Rodney Reed, trying to prove his innocence while on death row. Reed was successful at the Supreme Court last year in his attempt to have a claim for DNA testing to be heard. But now that the Fifth Circuit has considered the claim it has denied relief. The court declared that the underlying rule used in Texas courts is constitutional under the Due Process Clause. Click here for transcript. Reed v. Goertz Brown v. Louisville-Jefferson County Background on Rodney Reed case The Murder on the Links
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    47 m
  • Short Circuit 375 | Unsympathetic Clients

    Short Circuit 375 | Unsympathetic Clients
    May 9 2025
    Constitutional rights protect everyone, even people we might not be terribly fond of. This week we discuss two defendants who perhaps don’t deserve a lot of sympathy but nevertheless had their rights vindicated in a way that protects those rights more broadly. First, an IJ alumna, Anna Goodman Lucardi, rejoins Short Circuit to update us on goings on in the Fifth Circuit where the court applied last year’s SCOTUS case about jury trial rights, SEC v. Jarkesy, to a similar situation involving the FCC and fines. The court found that the FCC’s system violated both the Seventh Amendment and Article III of the Constitution. This even though the well-known defendant, AT&T, is a “common carrier.” Then Jessica Bigbie of IJ reports on a Tenth Circuit matter where a warrant led to police finding some not-legal images on someone’s phone. But the warrant itself had some not-constitutional language under the Fourth Amendment. Language allowing the authorities to basically search everything for anything. Jessica applies her background as a public defender and assesses why this “unicorn” of a case came out the way it did. We then end the show with some “where are they now” on cases from Short Circuits past. Click here for transcript. AT&T v. FCC U.S. v. Santiago SEC v. Jarkesy Lawson’s The Rise & Rise of the Admin State The Mouse’s Tale
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    48 m