9th Cir. Victory for Workers’ Rights Clinic

Associate Professor Shefali Milczarek-Desai recently served as co-counsel in Molina v. Dempsey’s Adult Care Homes LLC, et al., 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 9587 (9th Cir. 2023), upholding an im/migrant worker’s rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Arizona’s minimum wage and paid sick time laws. 

This was a Workers’ Rights Clinic case in which Shefali and her students represented an im/migrant woman nursing home aide who had been subjected to wage theft for over a decade by her former employer. After negotiations with the employer were unsuccessful, the Clinic filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona (Tucson) for violations of overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and minimum wage and paid sick leave under Arizona’s Fair Wages and Healthy Families Act.

The clinic prevailed in the district court, but the employer appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After a full briefing by the parties and setting oral argument, a unanimous three-judge panel ruled in favor of the Clinic’s client in an opinion that unequivocally adopted the Clinic's positions on each and every legal issue raised in the appeal.  

In August, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, EdD, MBA and his staff met with University of Arizona Law Navajo Law Fellows.

The visit was part of an ongoing partnership between the University of Arizona Law and the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program (“IPLP”) with the Navajo Nation to support the next generation of Navajo lawyers, advocates and legal scholars.

Established in 2019, the Navajo Law Fellowship Program provides additional financial aid, mentorship, a Navajo law curriculum, externship opportunities on the Navajo Nation, and bar preparation assistance to Navajo law students attending University of Arizona Law.

In a moment of sweeping constitutional change, Milton O. Riepe Chair in Constitutional Law Andrew Coan from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law has written three thought-provoking new papers. Two focus on originalism and federalism, showing that the original public meaning of the Constitution was fundamentally unsettled on the most important questions of federal power. The third argues that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center was not lawless, merely an ordinary example of conservative judges supporting a conservative result.

In “The Original Meaning of Enumerated Powers” and “Interpreting Ratification,” Andrew and co-author David S. Schwartz from the University of Wisconsin Law School, explore the doctrine of “enumerationism,” which limits Congress’s powers to those specifically mentioned in the Constitution. This principle is frequently invoked to challenge important federal legislation, including the Affordable Care Act and the Clean Water Act, but Coan and Schwartz’s articles present a compelling alternative view.

In a third paper, “What Is the Matter with Dobbs?,” Coan examines the controversial Supreme Court case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

Quotes from each paper are below. Read the full article here.

The Original Meaning of Enumerated Powers:

“Radical as it may seem, abolishing enumerationism would be consistent with most of American constitutional practice and the results, if not the rhetoric, of most Supreme Court precedent.”

Interpreting Ratification:

“If we are correct, the originalist case for limiting federal power is substantially weaker than is generally supposed and so is the resolving power of originalism as a practical method for deciding controversial cases. Given recent shifts on the U.S. Supreme Court, these issues are not merely academic. They may well determine the future of the federal regulatory and welfare states for a generation, with impacts on health care, the environment, consumer protection, workplace safety, and much more.”

What Is the Matter with Dobbs?:

“[C]onflating moral disagreement with lawlessness is both unpersuasive and a distraction from the core issue. It is also a form of crying wolf that risks backfiring when the charge of lawlessness is actually justified. One need not look far into the future to imagine such a case arising. If and when it does, liberals and progressives may wish they had exercised more restraint in leveling the charge against Dobbs.”

Next Wednesday, September 13, from 8:30 to 10:30am, Associate Clinical Professor and Director of the Tribal Justice Clinic Heather Whiteman Runs Him will be moderating the Arizona Tribal Sovereignty Forum. Co-sponsored by the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice, University of Arizona Law Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, and other University of Arizona organizations, the webinar will cover recent Supreme Court decisions affecting tribes.