Here’s three interesting ones (well, to me as a law nerd, anyway) from the carnival of law and humanity that comes out of my daily scan of the latest appellate court decisions:
–The Second Circuit overturns a lower court decision holding that medical residents are not “students” exempt from FICA taxes, concluding that the statute doesn’t clearly define what a “student” is and the courts need to look at the facts of each particular program (regardless of whether this is right on the law, it’s terrible policy, as it leaves the issue to expensive fact-intensive litigation rather than giving residency programs clear rules to plan around). The subtext, of course, is that residents who make little money now but expect to make a lot in the future would far rather opt out of the whole Social Security system to the greatest extent possible.
–The Eighth Circuit disagrees with a man who claims to be mentally retarded so as to receive disability assistance, saying his low IQ isn’t proof enough to overcome his work history and general life experience of nobody treating him as mentally handicapped. While it’s something of an amusing effort, the guy has obviously had a pretty hard life when you read the whole thing (for example, the court notes that he dropped out of school not due to mental impairment but due to an accident that nearly cost him his right arm).
–The Fifth Circuit rejects Dennis Kucinich’s challenge to the Texas Democratic Party’s ‘loyalty oath’ that presidential primary candidates must pledge to support the ultimate nominee. Judge Edith Jones clearly doesn’t think much of the idea of the oath but finds no constitutional problem with it being a condition to ballot access in a partisan primary.