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Short Circuit

Short Circuit

By: Institute for Justice
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 The Supreme Court decides a few dozen cases every year; federal appellate courts decide thousands. So if you love constitutional law, the circuit courts are where it’s at. Join us as we break down some of the week’s most intriguing appellate decisions with a unique brand of insight, wit, and passion for judicial engagement and the rule of law. http://ij.org/short-circuit© Institute for Justice Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Short Circuit 382 | Beard Law

    Short Circuit 382 | Beard Law
    Jun 27 2025
    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 exercise? Matt Liles of IJ reports on this case from the Third Circuit that digs into how “generally applicable” a law must be to not target someone’s religious practice. Then IJ’s Bob McNamara discusses a scary subject: statutes of limitations. Blowing one is every litigator’s nightmare. But which statute of limitations applies in a given case? For claims brought under Title IX, a federal ban on sex discrimination, that’s unclear. Bob breaks down a Fourth Circuit opinion that had to figure out what South Carolina law applies to Title IX claims in a case where a high schooler sued a school for not stopping sexual harassment. Is it a special state law on suing governmental entities? Or is it the most general state statute of limitations? Bob tells us the answer but also advises that this would all be a lot easier if Congress did its job and provided its own statute of limitations. Smith v. Atlantic City E.R. v. Beaufort County School Dist. Employment Division v. Smith Pogonologia
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    45 mins
  • Short Circuit 381 | Charo on the Tonight Show

    Short Circuit 381 | Charo on the Tonight Show
    Jun 20 2025
    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 popular at her place of work—a public hospital—at the height of the pandemic and cultural ferment in 2020. She lost her discrimination and retaliation claims at summary judgment but the Eight Circuit sent the retaliation claim back for trial. It also called her other claims “interlocutory.” We discuss the free speech issues at the heart of the matter but in addition your panel perplexes about how the court could think the other claims were interlocutory, considering the appeal was from a final judgment. Then Michael Bindas of IJ discusses a recent Ninth Circuit en banc opinion about a police shooting. The interesting thing to Michael’s eyes is how a concurrence treated a pair of substantive due process claims invoking the case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary. The panel dig into what the right recognized in Pierce has to do with a child’s claim for losing a parent, and what Plato’s Republic has to do with it all. Gustilo v. Hennepin Healthcare System Estate of Hernandez v. L.A. Pierce v. Society of Sisters Cato’s event on Pierce, including panel with Michael Meyer v. Nebraska at 100 Plato’s Republic (Book V)
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Short Circuit 380 | Homicide by Bath

    Short Circuit 380 | Homicide by Bath
    Jun 13 2025
    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 twists and turns of this story that goes back several decades. Then Nick DeBenedetto of IJ walks us through a habeas case from the Sixth Circuit with a wild story about a murder—or was it a murder?—of a wife by her husband and whether the conviction was tainted because of the background of a detective. The detective, it turns out, told all kinds of lies to get hired before he investigated the defendant. Did those lies affect the conviction enough to violate the Constitution? See if you can render your own verdict. National Religious Broadcasters v. FCC Widmer v. Okereke Rebels on the Air by Jesse Walker
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    53 mins

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