Latest Case: United States v. Payton (Criminal Law)

Can Workers Tell Governors to Drop Dead? The Moral Authority to Defy Lockdowns

JOSEPH MARGULIES

In this second of a series of columns about the COVID-19 protests, Cornell law professor Joseph Margulies argues, with some caveats, that workers have the moral authority to reopen their businesses in order to sustain themselves. Margulies notes that while he is not advising anyone to disobey the law (and while he personally supports the lockdown orders), business owners facing the impossible decision whether to follow the law or sustain themselves and their families are morally justified in defying the stay-at-home orders.

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Paid Labor: Eleventh Circuit Protects Rights of Pregnant Worker

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN, CYNTHIA THOMAS CALVERT

Joanna L. Grossman, law professor SMU Dedman School of Law, and Cynthia Thomas Calvert, principal of Workforce 21C and a senior advisor for family responsibilities discrimination to the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings, comment on a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals by the Eleventh Circuit protecting the rights of a pregnant worker. Grossman and Calvert describe the lower court’s ruling and the appellate court’s decision reversing it, calling the decision “a step forward for the rights of pregnant women.”

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United States v. Payton

Docket: 19-10360

Opinion Date: May 18, 2020

Judge: Leslie H. Southwick

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's imposition of a standard condition of supervised release requiring defendant to "permit a probation officer to visit at any time at home or elsewhere and permit confiscation of any contraband observed in plain view by the probation officer." The condition was imposed after defendant pleaded guilty to interference with commerce by robbery and to brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by imposing this condition in light of defendant's violent conduct, prior drug convictions, multiple probation violations, and failure to abide by the terms of pretrial release.