by Billy Binion, Reason, June 5, 2025.
Excerpt:
The gist is simple. That issue focused “on what appears to many to be an existential threat to democracy,” the magazine wrote, which is “the far-right shift of the Supreme Court, and the conservative movement’s plans to commandeer it.”
That critique has persisted for some time now. Some decisions today from the Court help show, once again, why it is neither fair nor accurate.
First up was Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, in which the justices reversed a lower court decision and sided with a woman who said she was the victim of reverse discrimination, ruling that members of a majority group do not have to clear a higher bar to prove such claims. The opinion, written by Jackson, was unanimous.
Here’s the money quote from Justice Jackson’s opinion:
The Sixth Circuit’s “background circumstances” rule requires plaintiffs who are members of a majority group to bear an additional burden at step one. But the text of Title VII’s disparate-treatment
provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs. The provision focuses on individuals rather than groups, barring discrimination against “any individual” because of protected characteristics. Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone.
DRH comment: I disagree with the concept of “reverse discrimination.” It’s discrimination, plain and simple.
by Jonathan H. Adler, Civitas Institute, June 2, 2025.
Excerpts:
The American Bar Association (ABA) is the nation’s largest lawyers’ organization. While representing only a small fraction of lawyers, it is also the sole accrediting body for law schools. Whereas universities generally are accredited by regional accrediting organizations, the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is the only game in town. Federal student loans are only available to accredited institutions, and the vast majority of states require a degree from an ABA-accredited school to take the bar exam. Could this soon change?
As the cost of legal education continues to rise and technological changes threaten to transform the delivery of legal services, the ABA’s de facto monopoly on legal accreditation is under siege. Texas and Florida, the states with the third and fourth-most lawyers in the country, are both considering whether to stop requiring bar applicants to have attended an ABA-accredited school. At the same time, the Trump Administration is pushing to expand accreditation options. An April Executive Order directed the Department of Education to step up scrutiny of existing accrediting institutions while simultaneously expediting approval of new accreditors so as “to increase competition and accountability in promoting high-quality, high-value academic programs focused on student outcomes.”
And:
Whether the ABA sees itself as a cartel today, much of its accreditation behavior aligns with what a self-interested cartel would do. Accordingly, many of the ABA’s accreditation requirements focus on costly inputs, such as the number of books in the library or the number of full-time, tenured faculty, that have no demonstrated relationship to a student’s ability to pass the bar or become an effective lawyer. These requirements, however, have helped inflate the cost of obtaining a law degree and stifled innovation in legal education.
by Christian Britschgi, Reason, June 5, 2025.
Excerpt:
What can be said for Fielder’s idea is that it would be at least as effective as the 1,500-hour rule (which is to say, not at all) and much less costly.
No other country in the world requires airline pilots to rack up as much flight time as the U.S. currently does.
Neither the Federal Aviation Administration (which regulates aviation safety) nor the National Transportation Safety Board (which investigates crashes) has found anyrelationship between the 1,500-hour rule and improved safety.
(The two pilots in the Colgan disaster notably had over 1,500 hours of experience each.)
Critics charge that the 1,500-hour rule reduces safety by forcing pilots to spend endless hours performing routine flights at the expense of time spent training in more productive simulators.
Regional airlines complain that it’s made recruiting pilots much more difficult, leading to a shortage of pilots and reduced regional airline service.
DRH comment: A better way to train pilots, on a benefit and cost per hour basis, is to have them fly simulators for a lot of hours. Why? Because simulators can simulate. That is, they can put the trainee in an emergency situation that he probably will never see in his 1,500 flight hours. And, moreover, it can do so for many emergency situations. This point was made to a good friend of mine by a retired American Airlines pilot who teaches trainees.
Editorial, Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025 (June 6 print version.)
Excerpts:
Start with CBO’s estimate that 5.2 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid would lose coverage owing to the bill’s work requirements. This contradicts the Democratic claim that few able-bodied people on Medicaid don’t work. But in any case, the work requirement could spur some to find gainful private employment that provides health insurance. That’s one laudable goal of the bill.
DRH comment: It appears from this quote that the CBO assumed that none of these able-bodied adults would get jobs. That’s amazing. It’s hard to believe that the CBO would be so dense. I haven’t checked the CBO study. I will later.
The CBO forecast also includes 1.4 million undocumented migrants who would lose coverage, mainly because the bill reduces federal matching funds for states that extend Medicaid to illegals. The bill also bars ObamaCare subsidies for many non-permanent immigrants and asylum seekers, which CBO estimates would reduce coverage by one million.
DRH comment: This is good, not bad. I’ve always advocated, along with substantially expanding the number of immigrants allowed, that the government not subsidize their health care and/or health insurance. And whatever the government does about legal immigration, it should not subsidize health care or health insurance for illegal immigrants.
Note: The accompanying picture was done by ChatGPT.
