New Sick Pay Ordinance May Lead to Rejuvenation of Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission

Books The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has the scoop:

Milwaukee’s dormant Equal Rights Commission could be back in business early next year – just in time to enforce the city’s controversial new sick pay ordinance.

On Tuesday, the Common Council will consider legislation to reconstitute the body with a focus not only on the sick pay measure, but also on the city’s own equal rights performance and on forms of discrimination that aren’t covered by state or federal laws. If that measure is approved, Mayor Tom Barrett will nominate a slate of seven panel members for confirmation in January, mayoral aide Leslie Silletti told the council’s Judiciary & Legislation Committee last week.

The Equal Rights Commission was founded in 1991 to investigate complaints of discrimination in housing and employment.

But the commission disbanded in 2003, amid complaints that former Mayor John O. Norquist’s administration never gave the seven-member panel the resources it needed to do its job. Since then, a single staffer in the city Department of Employee Relations has been carrying out the body’s mission, investigating some complaints himself and referring others to state and federal agencies . . . .

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The Church (or Mosque?) of AIG

The Thomas More Law Center has filed a complaint on behalf of a Michigan resident against Treasury Secretary Paulsen and the Board of Governors of the Fed. It alleges that the bailout of AIG violates the Establishment Clause.

Now, I admit that I have had many misgivings about the ongoing orgy of bailouts, but, I must say, that’s one that did not occur to me. I’ve worried that bailouts distort the market, reward incompetence, create moral hazard, and, in the case of AIG, foot the bill for “team building” junkets. But I hadn’t thought that it established a religion. What gives?

It turns out that AIG has a business unit that offers Shariah compliant financial products. In particular, it offers Takaful lines of insurance which, according to the complaint, invest in no businesses that are haram (or unIslamic). The Shariah compliant business units also pay the zakat, a religious tax that supports only Islamic charities.

Let’s get two things out of the way. There are certain cases that you just know are going nowhere. This is one of them. Second, the complaint is chock full of assertions about the nature of Islam and the role of Shariah compliant financial products in funding terrorism that have nothing to do with whatever legal arguments might be made in favor of the plaintiff’s position.

But even if the case is going nowhere, can we at least discern a semi-plausible argument on its behalf? Let me try so you don’t have to.

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What’s New in the Classroom: Fastcase

What’s new in the legal research classroom?   As was mentioned in previous posts, there is a new database, Fastcase, available to all Wisconsin bar members.   In the Advanced Legal Research classrooms this past semester students were introduced to Fastcase.  Now that it is available to all members of the Wisconsin bar, we plan to expand training on this cost-effective legal research tool.  The Fastcase database has already been reviewed by Leslie Behroozi and Elana Olson in a joint post.   I’d like to focus my comments on the Interactive Timeline feature of Fastcase.  This new feature will prove useful for spotting trends in the law, not only to practicing lawyers, but also to academics, including those interested in writing papers for publication.   

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