Arizona State Law Journal Blog

By Nicholas Ansel. On September 19, the British Supreme Court held oral arguments over the legality of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament. The Prime Minister prorogued Parliament in order to sidestep any opposition to his plan for Brexit. The Court, in a landmark ruling on constitutional common law and separation of powers, held that the suspension was unlawful. Equally interesting was that over four million people livestreamed the first day of oral arguments, surely interested in an issue that has dominated public discourse. The British Supreme Court has been in existence for a decade, all the while permitting video recordings of its proceedings. So too has the Canadian Supreme Court permitted video recordings for about three decades. But in America, our Supreme Court does not allow any video.…

Paul Bender, Professor of Law, Dean Emeritus, and Former Deputy Solicitor General of the United States The United States and the State of Arizona both have laws that prohibit businesses that serve the public from refusing to serve customers because of the customers’ race, sex, religion, national origin, or disability. Neither law includes sexual orientation among the bases for refusal of service that are prohibited. Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, and Flagstaff, however, have each adopted anti-discrimination public‑accommodations ordinances that do apply to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. On September 16, in a decision that has received national attention, the Arizona Supreme Court decided Brush & Nib v. City of Phoenix—a case raising the question whether Phoenix’s Ordinance could be used by the City to penalize the owners of a…

By Jake Abrahamian. In March 2019, the Northern District of California decided the much-anticipated case in re National Collegiate Athletic Association Athletic Grant-in-Aid Cap Antitrust Litigation (NCAA Athletic Grant-in-Aid). Plaintiffs in the case were current and former Division I college football and basketball players who sued the NCAA, the governing body for college athletics. Plaintiffs alleged that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by artificially capping the compensation that member athletes receive for their athletic services to NCAA schools. The court held that, although the NCAA did violate antitrust law, the appropriate remedy is uncapping only compensation related to education. This is a far cry from the remedy sought by the student-athletes who were hoping to lift all limits on compensation. For years now, student-athletes have taken to the courts to…