June 26, 2019
Many gender-neutral restrooms and locker rooms are behind locked doors. Not in the same sense that all bathroom doors are locked; rather, these spaces can be accessed only by either being lucky enough to slip in behind someone with authorization, or by pleading one’s case before some sort of decision maker—a literal gatekeeper. In the…
June 3, 2019
The quintessential public forum, such as a town square, is a place for citizens to gather and discuss issues of the day and ideas related to the polity. Under the public forum doctrine, spaces that the government has opened to the public for expressive activities cannot be subject to content-based or viewpoint-based discrimination. These designated…
May 26, 2019
For the past year, the Trump administration has been hard at work trying to unilaterally rewrite asylum law. Its latest attempt, the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, informally known as Remain in Mexico, is yet another unlawful gambit. Announced in January by former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen, Remain in Mexico requires that certain…
May 6, 2019
Elections, especially Presidential elections, have consequences. Few need reminding of this truism after 2016. But the distributional consequences of American Presidential elections have long antedated the emergence of Trumpism in the Republican Party. On no issue is this clearer than those involving the regulation and protection of benefits for American employees. This is illustrated by…
April 23, 2019
The incident that gave rise to Mitchell v. City of Cedar Rapids, recently decided by the Iowa Supreme Court, should sound familiar by now. In November 2016, a Cedar Rapids white police officer, Lucas Jones, stopped a black motorist, Jerime Mitchell, for a minor traffic violation. When Mitchell attempted to drive away, Jones shot him,…
April 18, 2019
A tactic known as “snap removal” has divided federal district courts. Can a defendant remove a suit filed in its home forum (or the home forum of another defendant) after the plaintiff filed the suit but before service of process? At first blush, 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2) –– the forum defendant rule –– would seem…
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National…
Norman Williams is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Ken & Claudia Peterson Professor of Law at Willamette University, where he has taught since 2001. Dean Williams graduated…
Richard H. Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law. He is one of the nation’s leading scholars of constitutional law and a specialist in…
