Short Circuit

In a special episode, IJ’s Anya Bidwell interviews Matteo Godi of USC Law about his new article “Section 1983: A Strict Liability Statutory Tort.” Professor Godi provocatively argues that the basis of most modern civil rights litigation—originally part of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and today known as “Section 1983”—should be interpreted as a strict liability cause of action. Anya has him discuss...

We’re joined by Reb Masel, a California lawyer who tries to keep the law fun while educating the public about how it works. She’s apparently pretty good at it as she has a zillion followers across various platforms. She drops in to share her thoughts about a Fifth Circuit case concerning a little bit of moonshine. And years of pretrial detention. Did that detention deny the defendant a speedy tria...

The balance between free speech, campus order, and fighting antisemitism has been a major flashpoint the last couple of years and it just hit the First Circuit in a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The case concerns protests and encampments at MIT’s campus in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel. The legal questions concern MIT’s responsibilities in light of taking federa...

If you think you’ve worked in a bad job you might want to first hear the first case we have this week, brought to you by IJ’s Michael Soyfer. It might give you a bit of cheerful perspective. An employee was out with Covid when suddenly her employer needed her password for an urgent task. She shared it with a coworker friend which then got the job done. Months later, though, the two workers left th...

It’s Short Circuit Live from Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University with a D.C. Circuit special! We review opinions from a court that “many people are saying” is the second-most-important in the land.  With a full state of very special guests: GMU’s own Todd Zywicki, Casey Norman of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and IJ’s own Bob Belden. Professor Zywicki discusses a pair of recen...

“Religion” and “fact checks” don’t normally go together. But an employer did so when some employees tried to obtain a religious accommodation from a COVID vaccine requirement. Matt Liles of IJ explains that the employer didn’t exactly “fact check” religion itself, but tried to point out that other religious leaders were OK with the vaccine and so should the employees. This all ends up in federal c...

Dropping on First Monday, the Supreme Court’s first day of the October 2025 term, it’s our annual Supreme Court preview, recorded live at the University of North Carolina. Re-joining us after a very long hiatus is Sheldon Gilbert, the original host of the very first preview and very first Short Circuit Live, way back when he was the Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement. That is, back whe...

Two opinions that dig into history, one on voting rights the other on gun rights, and both from the Fourth Circuit. First, Dan Nelson of IJ tells us of a challenge to a North Carolina law that criminalizes voting by felons, even when the voter legitimately thinks they are eligible to vote. The statute was passed back during Reconstruction for racist reasons and hasn’t materially changed since. Doe...

It’s a Short Circuit Live from YIMBYTown! We travel to the Yes-In-My-Back-Yard conference, held this year in New Haven, Connecticut. Our guests discuss recent cases and controversies related to efforts to build more homes and also, unfortunately, do the opposite. First up is David Schleicher, aka “Professor YIMBY,” of Yale Law School. David updates everyone on a case we’ve talked about before, a l...

It’s a free speech episode with two rulings for the First Amendment. Paul Sherman of IJ details a victory that the Institute for Justice litigated at the Seventh Circuit. IJ represents a “death doula,” someone who helps people deal with many things that come up when a loved on passes away. Indiana said that she needed a funeral director’s license to do that. But she obtained a preliminary injuncti...

Your right to remain silent just got a little stronger in the Pine Tree State. We welcome on Carol Garvan of the Maine ACLU to discuss a recent ruling from the state’s highest court. Under police questioning a suspect asked about an attorney being present and whether he had to answer questions, but did so a bit ambiguously. Was that enough to invoke his rights under the Maine Constitution? Carol a...

Arbitration may not sound like the most exciting subject, but it recently made for an exciting story at the Second Circuit. Former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores sued several teams and the NFL itself. In response, the NFL said the case had to go to arbitration. Which was pretty convenient because the NFL’s arbitration clause gives the job of arbitration to the NFL’s commissioner. It’s kind of l...

Short Circuit traveled to Chicago for a live recording on the eve of the Seventh Circuit’s biannual Judicial Conference. In front of a crowd of Seventh Circuit enthusiasts your host spoke with some experts about some of the court’s recent opinions and how the circuit works. That included Sarah Konsky of the University of Chicago, appellate specialist Chris Keleher, and IJ’s own John Wrench. “Colle...

The Constitution separates “the judicial power” from “executive power.” Well, that’s the theory at least. A mixing of these powers led to some massive fines against a family farm. But Robert Fellner of IJ is happy to report that the Third Circuit recently ruled that’s a problem. In a case that IJ itself litigated, the court ruled that Article III of the Constitution guaranteed an independent judge...

It’s Sixth Circuit week on Short Circuit with a couple Sixth Circuit lawyers who clerked on the Sixth Circuit and practice law in Michigan. (Which is where? That’s right, in the Sixth Circuit.) David Porter and Sean Dutton spin yarns about some recent Sixth Circuit opinions, including with a bit of an inside look on what the circuit’s judges think about dissenting from not going en banc. First we...

Did you know the feds can send a subpoena to social media companies to find out stuff about your accounts and also order the same companies not to tell you? Turns out it happens all the time. But the law says that a court has to make an individualized assessment of each request. Some federal agents convinced a district court to just let them do all the paperwork and give a blanket gag order for a...

On the heels of the trade deadline, Rob Johnson of IJ reports on some baseball news. But it doesn’t concern the latest in Major League Baseball. Instead, it’s about the business of baseball and how broad is the “business of baseball” exemption from the antitrust laws. There’s a baseball league in Puerto Rico that gave some pretty rough justice to an owner, who then took the league to court. Does t...

Steve Lehto of Lehto’s Law rejoins Short Circuit—and for the first time on a YouTube episode—to spread the common sense he delivers daily on his own show. Steve shares a recent opinion from the Kansas Supreme Court about license plate covers. The police and lower courts had interpreted the law to make it a crime if a license plate cover blocked not just the actual license number but the name of th...

We look into the gray area between a multi-level-marketing venture, like Amway, and a “pyramid scheme.” Appellate attorney Kyle Singhal joins us to discuss a matter of his from the Sixth Circuit where the court examined whether prosecutors in a mail-fraud case got over their skis by repeatedly calling what the defendants did a pyramid scheme. “Pyramid schemes” are bad, obvs., but they’re not actua...

Can the government force you to only exercise a constitutional right once a month? Could it do that with speech? Or practicing religion? How about keeping and bearing arms? IJ’s Will Aronin asks that question when discussing a California law that restricted gun purchases to buying one gun a month. The Ninth Circuit recently found the law violated the Second Amendment. That’s something the Ninth Ci...

Is speaking to a yoga class speech? The Ninth Circuit recently proclaimed that the answer to that question is actually “yes.” But before you turn away from this episode because it simply parrots Captain Obvious, please know that it was not so obvious to the district court. Or the city of San Diego, which tried to define the teaching of yoga—but not the teaching of anything else—in public parks as...

Who doesn’t love a nice beard? It seems the firefighters in Atlantic City. One of their employees wants to wear a beard because of his religion. He doesn’t actually fight fires as part of his job, but there’s a possibility he’d be told he needs to and therefore he supposedly can’t have a beard because his special air mask wouldn’t fit. Does this violate the First Amendment’s protection of free exe...

We at the Institute for Justice are increasingly involved with combatting retaliation against free speech. Which is why we were highly interested to hear from Daniel Cragg and his recent win at the Eighth Circuit. Dan is a Minneapolis attorney who regularly sues the government for all kinds of things. This particular case was about a doctor who made a few remarks that weren’t very politically popu...

Is making someone file a form “in the public interest”? The Fifth Circuit took a look at that age-old question in a recent case regarding the FCC and its gathering of demographic data. What might seem like a small issue opens the door to how the administrative state works, where agencies get their power, and how narrow the courts are reading those powers these days. IJ’s Bob Belden explains the tw...

With the recent major tariff rulings we had to pull in a major tariff expert, Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. Scott digs into the “shocking decision,” as even he puts it, from the Court of International Trade declaring many of the recent “emergency” tariffs unlawful. He takes a look at what’s behind the opinion and what’s next as the case goes on appeal to the Federal Circuit and perhaps al...