Not to put too fine a point on it
Just today I discovered the fun that is reading Dahlia Lithwick's Supreme Court dispatches on Slate. You may be asking yourself: "Self, how fun can reading summaries of Supreme Court proceedings be?" To which I can only reply: "Very." For example, in explaining Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, Lithwick writes:
The key to comprehending this Clash of the Constitutional Titans is to imagine the 11th Amendment as the Loch Ness Monster and the 14th Amendment as the Abominable Snowman. Over the last 10 years, the Rehnquist Court has insisted that states are immune from suit under federal laws, even when those federal laws seek to correct for national civil rights abuses. The Loch Ness Monster won every fight. Thus, state workers were denied the right to sue for age discrimination in the 2000 case of Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, and state suits under the Americans With Disabilities Act were likewise deemed toothless against the 11th Amendment in the 2001 case of University of Alabama v. Garrett. There is one way the Loch Ness Monster could be stopped. The Supreme Court says that where Congress is acting under an explicitly constitutional grant of power, it can abrogate state immunity from suit. In other words, if Congress, in enacting FMLA, were acting under its 14th Amendment power to remedy gender inequities, it might raise up an Abominable Snowman capable of finally taking Nessie out. The question in Hibbs is whether FMLA was enacted to combat gender inequity in the workplace, or whether it's a piece of gender-neutral labor legislation. If the latter is true, the Loch Ness monster would ride again.(There is a better-than-even chance that this metaphor will not make it into the court's opinion in Hibbs.)
See? It's educational and fun!
Posted by ned at April 7, 2003 11:21 PM