How Labor Secretary Scalia Played Chicken With Meatpacking Workers’ Lives – Mother Jones

A typical poultry, pork, or beef plant employs hundreds of people—by and large immigrants, refugees, and people of color—toiling shoulder to shoulder to dismember and break down carcasses moving down the kill line at rates as high as 390 cattle, 1,295 pigs, or 10,500 birds per hour. Meatpacking workers have always faced hazardous conditions and high injury rates, and their tight working conditions make them highly susceptible to viral pathogens. What spreads inside a meat factory doesn’t stay within its walls: By late May, rural counties that had meatpacking plants with COVID-19 outbreaks had average infection rates five times higher than the rest of rural America. As of mid-July, at least 168 meatpacking workers had died from the disease.

“It’s a terrible experiment in achieving herd immunity,” says David Michaels, a professor of occupational health at George Washington University who led the the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under Obama. By the time the pandemic runs its course, he predicts, “everyone will have become infected” at meatpacking plants. ....
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/07/labor-eugene-scalia-meatpacking-osha-stress-carpal-tunnel-coronavirus-covid/

Trump administration makes it harder for franchise employees to sue over wages | TheHill

The Department of Labor issued a rule on Sunday that makes it harder to prove that companies are responsible when individual franchise owners or contractors violate wage laws. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said in a statement that the rule responds to the president’s aim to reduce regulations that limit economic growth.....
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/478037-trump-administration-makes-it-harder-for-franchise-employees-to-sue-over-wages

Oyez! Originalists, Open Minds And The Supreme Court (Joshua Johnson, 1A)

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a celebrated conservative and an “originalist.” He believed the Constitution is not that open for interpretation and that the original words of the Founding Fathers are not meant to adapt as society evolves.

But Scalia did believe in having his ideas challenged, and he hired several clerks with liberal politics to work for him at the Supreme Court before he died in 2016.

The play “The Originalist” examines Scalia’s relationship with one such “counter clerk” and it’s taken on new life following his death. Scalia was replaced with another originalist on the court — Justice Neil Gorsuch, who is projected to continue a legacy of conservative decisions and dissents.

We consider originalism as a school of legal thought and the different approaches to the Constitution the current nine justices take in deciding the law of the land.
Interview:
http://the1a.org/shows/2017-07-18/oyez-originalists-open-minds-and-the-supreme-court

Our Opioid Addiction Crisis And A Theatrical Take On Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (Diane Rehm Show )

We’re losing an entire generation: That’s how many have described the magnitude of the opioid addiction crisis we face in this country. A researcher and the director of a drug abuse treatment clinic offer their perspectives on what’s happening and efforts to reverse the trend. Then, what we can learn about political polarization and compromise from a new play about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Interview: 

https://dianerehm.org/shows/2017-07-14/our-opiod-addiction-crisis-and-a-theatrical-take-on-supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia

Scalia returns from the grave to pollute America’s water

On Tuesday, February 28, surrounded by Republican lawmakers, President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to begin the process of rolling back the Obama administration’s Clean Water Rule.

That rule was finalized in 2015, so Trump couldn’t unilaterally undo it with the stroke of a pen. Instead, he asked the appropriate agencies to rewrite the rule and redefine “navigable waters” — a term that has plagued courts for decades — according to the definition put forth by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2006. And while that might seem like a small change, legal experts say that directive could vastly reduce the federal government’s ability to protect the nation’s streams, rivers, and wetlands from pollution....
https://thinkprogress.org/waters-of-the-united-states-rule-scalia-trump-rewrite-7327a1343836

Justice Antonin Scalia Had Conflicted Views About American Policing

Donald Trump has repeatedly declared himself the “law and order candidate.” He’s also promised to place conservative justices on the Supreme Court, in the mold of Antonin Scalia. But would Scalia himself have supported Trump’s views on policing?

Antonin Scalia, the hero of conservatives, was known more for the force of his pen than the law that he made. He often chose to write alone, to make a point, or say things in his own indomitable way. As a consequence, Scalia was rarely a powerbroker among the justices, which requires compromise and suppressing one’s own views in order to put together the five votes needed to form a majority. That was not Scalia.

Except, ironically, when it came to the parts of the Constitution that governed policing. Here, Scalia often was the critical swing vote. And not infrequently he was the one writing the majority opinion....
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/scalia-and-american-policing/496604/?utm_source=feed

Scalia Is Dead, But Texas Has A Devious Plan To Bring His Vote Back To Life

A landmark lawsuit filed by several states that wish to preserve their ability to engage in anti-transgender discrimination will be heard by a judge with a record of hostility toward LGBT rights. This is not a coincidence. Indeed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), whose office has taken the lead in this suit, appears to have manipulated the court system intentionally to ensure that his case will be heard by an anti-LGBT litigator’s dream judge....
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/05/27/3782284/scalia-dead-texas-devious-plan-bring-vote-back-life/

Matt Bors on the Media's Cynical Mourning of Justice Scalia

On speaking ill of the dead, and the next Supreme Court Justice....
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/alternet-comics-matt-bors-medias-cynical-mourning-justice-scalia