Short Circuit 191: Judicial Activism for Reals

Frustrated with the deeply complicated issue of homelessness on Los Angeles’s skid row, a district court took the law into its own hands and ordered a lot of stuff to happen. One problem (of many) with that was the plaintiffs didn’t ask for the stuff. So it wasn’t too hard for the Ninth Circuit to reverse, as Jeff Rowes explains. He and his colleague Diana Simpson also discuss their own work on homelessness issues at the Institute for Justice and how the law often prevents small solutions to a very large problem. Diana also explains why you’re unlikely to have an insurance policy that covers the pandemic, as a colorful Sixth Circuit opinion tells us about a usually colorless subject. Finally, your host learns that asteroids actually have killed some people.

IJ’s Fall 2021 Legal Intensive in Chicago, https://ij.org/opportunities/students/legalintensive-fall2021/

LA Alliance for Human Rights v. Los Angeles, https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/09/23/21-55395.pdf

Santo’s Italian Café, LLC v. Acuity Insurance Co., https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/21a0224p-06.pdf

IJ’s North Carolina Right to Shelter case, https://ij.org/case/north-carolina-shelter-zoning/

Jeff Rowes, https://ij.org/staff/jrowes/

Diana Simpson, https://ij.org/staff/diana-simpson/

Anthony Sanders, https://ij.org/staff/asanders/

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