Category: Courts and law
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Democrats Slow Down on Criminal Justice Reform
by Dick Hall-Sizemore As Steve Haner remarked in an earlier post, the changes being enacted by Democrats in this year’s session are on many fronts and more extensive than many observers had anticipated. It is hard to keep up. The same is true in the criminal justice area, but, perhaps to a lesser extent. A…
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Bill Broadens Definition of Sexual Harassment
by Hans Bader On January 30, a subcommittee in Virginia’s House of Delegates voted 5-to-2 to adopt a revised version of HB 1418, a bill to expand employers’ liability for sexual harassment. The bill originally applied to employers with six to 14 employees. Now it applies to all employers with more than five. Originally, while…
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Virginia Rated Worst State for Partisan Gerrymandering
By DJ Rippert They’ll be back (in office forever). The USC Schwarzennegger Institute released a report finding that Virginia had the highest degree of partisan gerrymandering among all U.S. states. The report analyzed the “statewide popular vote in 2017 or 2018 state legislative elections and the partisan composition of the state legislative chambers in 2019.”…
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Finished with the Second Amendment Virginia Dems Now Attack the First (and Sixth)
By DJ Rippert Sticks and stones? Del. Jeffrey M. Bourne, D-Richmond, has introduced HB1627. The bill is entitled, “Threats and harassment of certain officials and property; venue.” The proposed legislation strengthens a series of very questionable laws already on the books. The first few sections of the existing law make it illegal to make threats…
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Virginia Likely to Avoid “Marijuana Legalization Trap” in 2020
By DJ Rippert Reefer madness. Virginia is notably lagging most other states in marijuana reform. Across America recreational marijuana is legal for adults in 11 states and legal for medical use in 33 states. Twenty-five states have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. In Virginia marijuana is illegal, criminalized and unavailable for medical…
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HB 1200: Another Small Business Shakedown
by Hans Bader Right now, if you employ five or fewer workers in Virginia, you aren’t subject to most state restrictions on who you can hire. And if you have fewer than 15 employees, you usually can’t be forced to pay a worker’s lawyer much at all if the worker sues you. That would change…
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Way Overdue: Cleanse the State Code of Racist Residue
by James A. Bacon This 1956 law, enshrined in Chapter 59 of the Acts of the General Assembly, is a dead letter, rendered irrelevant by judicial rulings, others laws, and history, but it’s still on the books: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no child shall be required to enroll in or attend any school…
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Virginia marijuana reform: Outlook for 2020
By Don Rippert Cannabis certitude. The seemingly inexorable march toward legalized marijuana in the United States continues unabated. A poll of 9,900 American adults conducted by the Pew Research Center from September 3 – 15, 2019 found that 67% of the respondents thought cannabis should be legalized. That’s five percentage points higher than Pew’s last…
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Northam Comes to the Aid of Menhaden (But is Chap Petersen Paying Attention?)
By Don Rippert Fish tale. Omega Protein, a Canadian owned company, has willfully exceeded its menhaden catch limit in the Chesapeake Bay. You can read the details here. The catch limit is controversial since menhaden is the only marine fish regulated directly by the Virginia General Assembly. All other saltwater fish in Virginia are regulated…
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The Issue of Guardianship and the Contribution of a Newspaper
On Sunday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a remarkable article. It was remarkable both in the amount of space the newspaper dedicated to it, 5½ whole pages, and its subject, guardianship, a subject about which little is known by the public, but that could affect anyone. The publishing of this series of articles illustrates the continuing…
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Virginia Judges, 1; Artificial Intelligence, 0
by James A. Bacon It sounded like such a good idea: Develop a criminal-sentencing algorithm to help judges identify felons least likely to reoffend and either give them shorter jail sentences or divert them to probation or substance-abuse treatment programs. Virginia created just such an algorithm in 2001. Minimizing the subjective element in sentencing, it…
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More Craziness: Now “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” Are a Thing
by James A. Bacon The Campbell County Board of Supervisors has voted to declare the county a “second amendment sanctuary.” It’s not clear from this WDBJ article exactly what that entails, but Wikipedia defines a second-amendment sanctuary as a jurisdiction that does not expend resources to enforce gun control measures perceived to violate the Second…
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Omega Protein Exceeds ASMFC Catch Limit of Menhaden
by Don Rippert What, me worry? Omega Protein has admitted exceeding its menhaden catch limit for 2019 in the Chesapeake Bay. Omega Protein, a Houston-based company and wholly owned subsidiary of Cooke, Inc, a Canadian firm, operates a fishing fleet based in Reedville, Va. Employing about 300 Virginians, Omega Protein has been mired in controversy…
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Bacon Bits: Of DNA and Electrons….
Getting 39,999 right out of 40,000 not too shabby. After 18 years the Virginia Forensic Science Board has wound up its review of 530,000 cases in which DNA evidence was available. The effort identified 13 men who were wrongfully convicted, including the highly publicized cases of Earl Washington Jr., and Thomas Haynesworth, reports the Richmond…
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Disregard that Law
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Well, Virginia made the national headlines again last week and over the weekend. This time it was over the requirement that couples applying for a marriage license list their race on the application. And Attorney General Mark Herring was the hero, saying that, despite what the law said, the couples did not…