How Mike Huckabee and Robert Bork Could Help Center Neil Gorsuch

SHERRY F. COLB

Cornell law professor Sherry F. Colb analyzes an unusual comment by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee that a government restriction on the size of people’s Thanksgiving gathering would violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Colb describes a similar statement (in a different context) by conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork during his (unsuccessful) confirmation hearings in 1987 and observes from that pattern a possibility that even as unenumerated rights are eroded, the Court might be creative in identifying a source of privacy rights elsewhere in the Constitution.

Read More

Emmons v. City of Chesapeake

Docket: 19-1755

Opinion Date: December 4, 2020

Judge: James Harvie Wilkinson, III

Areas of Law: Labor & Employment Law

Plaintiffs, Battalion Chiefs, filed suit against their employer, the City of Chesapeake Fire Department, for non-compliance with the overtime pay requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Plaintiffs argue that none of the FLSA exemptions apply to them, both on their own terms and because the Battalion Chief position falls under a regulatory exception, 29 C.F.R. 541.3(b), that categorically withdraws certain first response workers from the exemptions' scope. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the fire department, holding that section 541.3(b) does not categorically except plaintiffs from the FLSA's system of exemptions, because plaintiffs are, first and foremost, managers within the fire department, not frontline firefighters. The court also held that plaintiffs satisfy all four prongs of the executive exemption and, as executive employees, are not due overtime pay under the FLSA.