October 4, 2018

POS 384 CIVIL LIBERTIES
In class today, Thursday 10/4, I distributed 2 handouts: my version of the outline of Kennedy's Masterpiece Cake opinion, and Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in that case. We finished going through Kennedy's opinion and putting it in outline form. We then started with the battle of the concurrences. We went over how Kagan's concurrence pointed Colorado to how they can reach a different result in the Phillips and Jack cases without expressing religious hostility. We began our exploration of how Gorsuch concluded that it is impossible to have different results for the two scenarios. We talked about Kennedy's footnote 2, where he put his toe into those waters, but didn't fully jump in. We will pick up next Thursday with more exploration of Gorsuch's concurrence (including whether he agreed with Thomas that the Commission statements are unnecessary to the finding of hostility) and then move to the Thomas and Ginsburg opinions. (I also want to go back to the question of enforcement of order to end discrimination, and go over civil contempt.)
There is no class on Tuesday 10/9. The assignment for Thursday 10/11 is to review the concurrences, and to read today's Ginsburg handout. In addition, read in the textbook pp.224-233.
I also told the class about my plan for the upcoming graded assignment. I'm hoping to have the assignment for the class on Thursday 10/11. My thought is to have the assignment be an analysis of the current transgender case brought by Phillips against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (as described in the handout from 9/25) using the various Masterpiece Cakeshop opinions as fodder for an analysis about how the new case will ultimately come out.


POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 10/4, I distributed one handout, my version of the Katko v. Briney case brief. We first went through the Speelman hypotheticals that I handed out last class. We then went through the notice of termination and discussed whether there were any defenses to the voucher termination once Ms. Speelman gets her hearing. We then turned to Katko v. Briney, and got through most of the case brief. We will pick up with the Iowa Supreme Court's resolution of the punitive damages issue next week, as well as discussing primary v. secondary authority. Along the way we also discussed the different standards of persuasion for criminal v. civil cases.
There is no class on Tuesday 10/9. The assignment for Thursday 10/11 is to read to the end of Chapter 1 of the text, and do a case brief of Suggs v. Norris (not handed in or graded).