As of May 1, less than 5% of Minnesotans lack health insurance, down from just under 9% just 7 months earlier, as explained in this article by Jackie Crosby. (I'd be curious to hear about the latest data from other states.)
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
Read this morning's Supreme Court 8-0 decision here. (Justice Breyer did not participate.) The first three paragraphs of Justice Kennedy's opinion sum things up nicely: POM Wonderful LLC makes and sells pomegranate juice products, including a pomegranate-blueberry juiceblend. App. 23a. One of POM’s competitors is the Coca-Cola Company. Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid Division makes a juice […]
Last summer, we told you about my office's amicus brief in the Second Circuit on behalf of 15 leading national disability rights organizations and academic researchers. The case is Authors Guild, Inc. v. Hathitrust, No. 12-4547, and the brief urged the court of appeals to uphold a district court ruling that the HathiTrust's effort to make […]
That's the title of this article about binding consumer arbitration by Lina Khan, a reporter and policy analyst with the Markets, Enterprise and Resiliency Initiative at the New America Foundation. I was alerted to this article by arbitration expert Paul Bland at Public Justice. Paul called it "one of the best pieces of journalism ever […]
Here's what the White House says about the President's action yesterday on student loans: More students than ever before are relying on student loans to pay for their college education. 71 percent of students earning a bachelor's degree graduate with debt, averaging $29,400. While most students are able to repay their loans, many feel burdened […]
That's the question discussed in Taxing the Unheavenly Chorus: Why Section 501(c)(6) Trade Associations are Undeserving of Tax Exemption by law professor Philip Hackney. Here is the abstract: Our federal, state, and local governments provide a subsidy that enhances the political voice of business interests. This article discusses the federal subsidy for business interests provided […]
by Brian Wolfman In Eubank v. Pella Corporation, No. 13-2091 (June 2, 2014), Judge Richard Posner makes so many useful points about class-action settlements that it's not sensible to try to summarize them here. Read the opinion for yourself! Just one point for now: As I've mentioned before, class-action settlement proponents often argue that one […]
The federal Food & Drug Administration has launched what it's calling Open FDA. Here's how the agency is describing its new program: OpenFDA is specifically designed to make it easier for web developers, researchers, and the public to access and use the many large, important, health data sets collected by the agency. These publicly available […]
Read about it here. For more information, click on this link to an ABC news report or on the embedded video below. Under the new FDA regs, tanning beds must have a black-box warning about cancer risks and saying that minors should not use them. (A black-box warning is the most serious FDA warning, usually […]
That's the question asked by law professor Ann Hodges in Trilogy Redux: Using Arbitration to Rebuild the Labor Movement. Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court is in the midst of a revolution in arbitration jurisprudence comparable to that reflected in the Steelworkers Trilogy in 1960. While the Trilogy was hailed as a major accomplishment […]