Yes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the California Fair Employment Department. They have sued the Law School Admission Council claiming that it has violated the Americans Disabilities Act in administering the Law School Admissions Test. Karen Sloane explains here. Here's an excerpt: A 29-year-old congressional aide claims his dyslexia impairs his ability […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
A new empirical economic study (go here and here) by Alexander Gelber and Matthew Weinzierl says that some tax policies that put more money in the pocket of low-income U.S. parents are associated positively with their children's academic abilities. This study comes at an interesting time given the recent debate about whether there should be […]
As described in this article by Emily Badger: In the years leading up to the housing crash, public data suggest that black would-be homeowners in Detroit were 70 percent more likely than white borrowers to receive a risky subprime loan from the now-defunct lender New Century Mortgage Company. This is the central statistic embedded in […]
Read about it here. Check out this excerpt: The economic significance of the disagreement [between conservatives and liberals about the role of luck in financial success] has mainly to do with taxation. Taxing success that is attributable to pure luck does not have disincentive effects, and so is a cheap away of financing government. Taxing […]
The contraception coverage mandate in the Affordable Care Act is important to many consumers. Some of the mandate's opponents claim that it violates the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. This article by Brigham Young University law professor Frederick Gedicks concludes that the mandate is constitutional.
This short piece in the British Medical Journal, focusing on a fatty-food tax in Denmark, says that the evidence is equivocal. One problem is that consumers may respond to a fatty-food tax by substituting cheaper (but still fatty) foods for more expensive fatty foods. Another problem, believe it or not, is that consumers may buy […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau student loan ombudsman, Rohit Chopra, has issued his first annual report required by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post says that the report may portend a finanical crisis. The report's executive summary appears after the jump.
A coalition of business groups and labor unions sued in New York state court on Friday to stop New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces. Read the complaint and this press account. The complaint claims, among other things, that the regulations are arbitrary and irrational under New […]
That's Steven Pearlstein's characterization of the judiciary's attitude toward federal health and safety regulation in a column published today. Here's an excerpt discussing what Pearlstein views as a recent example: Their latest salvo came just before Labor Day, when a divided three-judge panel threw out rules requiring states to control the air pollution that wafts […]