How Much Worse Will Trump Become, and How Quickly?

NEIL H. BUCHANAN

Neil H. Buchanan, law professor and economist at UF Levin College of Law, contemplates the world in which we are likely to live if President Trump is reelected. Focusing in this column on the effects on government employees and contractors, Buchanan predicts that our society will be almost unimaginably worse a year from today and thereafter.

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Letting His Hair Down: Why a School District in Texas Is Wrong to Deprive a Male Student of an Education Because of the Length of His Hair

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN, KATHARINE BARTLETT

SMU Dedman School of Law professor Joanna L. Grossman and Duke law professor Katharine T. Bartlett explain why a public school district in Texas violated both the federal Constitution and Title IX by having (and enforcing) a hair-length policy for boys but not for girls. Grossman and Bartlett describe the facts of the case and the legal landscape for sex-specific dress and appearance policies before concluding that the school district’s decision to enforce the policy was not only poor judgment but illegal.

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Aiken v. So. Carolina Dept. of Rev.

Docket: 27944

Opinion Date: February 12, 2020

Judge: James

Areas of Law: Civil Procedure, Class Action, Government & Administrative Law

Respondents, individually and as members of a putative class, brought a declaratory judgment action against the South Carolina Department of Revenue seeking refunds of amounts garnished from their wages by the Department to satisfy delinquent debts they allegedly owed to other governmental entities. The sole issue on appeal centered on the circuit court's grant of Respondents' motion to strike one defense from the Department's answer to Respondents' second amended complaint: that South Carolina Revenue Procedures Act (RPA) subsection 12-60-80(C) prohibited this action from proceeding as a class action against the Department. The Department appealed the circuit court's order to the court of appeals, and the Supreme Court certified the Department's appeal pursuant to Rule 204(b) of the South Carolina Appellate Court Rules. After review, the Supreme Court reversed the circuit court and held this case could not proceed as a class action against the Department.

South Carolina v. Spears

Docket: 27945

Opinion Date: February 12, 2020

Judge: James

Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

Eric Spears was indicted for trafficking crack cocaine between ten and twenty-eight grams. Spears moved to suppress the evidence of the drugs seized from his person on the ground he was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, and Spears was convicted as charged. The trial court sentenced Spears to thirty years in prison. A divided court of appeals reversed Spears' conviction. The South Carolina Supreme Court granted the State's petition for a writ of certiorari to review the court of appeals' decision, and reversed, thus upholding Spears' conviction. The Supreme Court found evidence in the record to support the trial court's finding that Spears engaged in a consensual encounter with law enforcement and that Spears' subsequent actions created a reasonable suspicion that he may have been armed and dangerous - justifying law enforcement's Terry frisk that led to the discovery of the offending crack cocaine in Spears' pants.