STANDING UP TO BIGOTRY AND HATE: U.S. House leader questions Chicago Public Schools’ exclusion of Christian student teachers.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
December 22, 2025
ROGER KIMBALL: Trump Never Sleeps—But the Media Keeps Dreaming.
PLAINTIFFS’ LAWYERS IN NEED OF FERRARIS AND GULFSTREAMS TAKE NOTE of this emailed advice from GWU law professor John Banzhaf:
Yes, White Men Should Sue, Especially in D.C.
It Has a Unique Statute and a Target-Rich Environment
WASHINGTON. D.C. (December 22, 2025) – Both the head of the EEOC and Vice President JD Vance have just made public pleas strongly urging white men to sue if they believe they may have been illegally discriminated against because of their race and sex.
But although both suggested proceeding “under federal civil rights laws,” white men should also consider filing a complaint under D.C.’s Human Rights Act which provides powerful legal advantages in a target-rich environment, suggests public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who has won over 100 cases of illegal discrimination against women, Blacks, and Jews under the unique statute.
The D.C. statute make it easier to prove that discrimination has occurred because it has an “effect or consequence” provision (§ 2–1402.68) which provides that “Any practice which has the effect or consequence of violating any of the provisions of this chapter shall be deemed to be an unlawful discriminatory practice.” [emphasis added]
With this powerful tool at their disposal, it isn’t necessary for any white man who wasn’t hired or promoted to show why or how the discriminatory effect or consequence occurred, nor whether it was deliberate or even known to the employer.
All such a white man has to do, under this provision, is to show that the white men were hired, or are currently employed, at a rate lower than would be expected. The burden then shifts to the employer to defend the practice with a legally valid defense.
The statute also makes it very difficult to defend any practice once it has been shown that it had, intended or not, a discriminatory effect or consequence.
To defend any practice which had a discriminatory effect or consequence, the employer has the extremely difficult burden of showing that it would be impossible to remain in business without such discrimination. The argument that the practice saved lots of money, and/or was favored by customers, other employees, and anyone else is not a valid legal defense.
Thus § 2–1401.03 expressly provides that any practice which has a discriminatory effect or consequence can be justified only by proving business necessity.
Under this chapter, a “business necessity” exception is applicable only in each individual case where it can be proved by a respondent that, without such exception, such business cannot be conducted.” [emphasis added]
The activist law professor has frequently been able to short circuit proffered defenses offered under the statute simply by finding only one similar business – e.g. a dry cleaner, hair cutter, bar, etc. – which conducted business without resorting to such discrimination.
The same section of the statute also makes it clear that most common arguments offered in support of discrimination are invalid, and cannot be offered in its defense.
It expressly provides: “a ‘business necessity’ exception cannot be justified by the facts of increased cost to business, business efficiency, the comparative characteristics of one group as opposed to another, the stereotyped characterization of one group as opposed to another, and the preferences of co-workers, employers, customers or any other person.” [emphasis added]
If the employer cannot meet this difficult if not virtually impossible burden of proving a valid legal defense of the practice, it can then be ordered to hire, reinstate, or upgrade the person complaining, as well as pay damages to compensate him for any losses, pay reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, and even pay a civil penalty “in an amount not to exceed $10,000.”
Professor Banzhaf, who has been called a “King of Class Action Lawsuits,” recommends that white men proceed through a class action if the practice may have impacted more than one white man.
In such situations, when potentially faced with huge and potentially crippling damages and virtually no valid legal defense, defendants may have no choice but to settle, says Banzhaf, who has been called “a Driving Force Behind the Lawsuits That Have Cost Tobacco Companies Billions of Dollars,” and “The Law Professor Who Masterminded Litigation Against the Tobacco Industry.”
Finally, Banzhaf suggests that the District of Columbia is likely to be a target-rich environment because so many employers – e.g. universities, national associations, offices of major national organizations, etc. – publicly announced and implemented so-called DEI programs which the federal government has determined discriminated against white men in favoring other groups.
Indeed, Vance has described DEI as “a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”
For those who might try to argue that affirmative action plans – which might include DEI and other similar programs or practices – are lawful and therefore provide a valid legal defense to discrimination against white men, the statute is clear; under § 2–1402.53, affirmative action plans constitute an “unlawful discriminatory practice” unless and until they have been approved by the D.C. Office of Human Rights.
It’s raining soup. Go get a bucket. Lots of deep corporate pockets in all sorts of industries — and open admissions of discrimination — out there.
It really was like this everywhere, and yes all of them said it right out loud with the white men in the room, confident they were NOT putting a "sue me" sign on their backsides because they knew nobody would speak up, much less sue, due to very rational fears of blacklisting.
— Keith Levenberg (@KeithLevenberg) December 16, 2025
JOEL KOTKIN: America’s great migration: The young and ambitious are fleeing the stagnant coastal states for the booming heartland.
Travel across America and the differences between regions can seem almost like those between nation states. The elite classes – and their chattering-class interlocutors – remain concentrated in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, places that retain much of the world’s ultra-rich. Yet the supremacy of these cities is being undermined by their growing failure to offer working- and middle-class citizens, particularly the young, the prospect of a better life.
Over the past decade, economic and demographic momentum has accelerated towards Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas and Florida – places once dismissed as economically and culturally backward. None of America’s major growth hubs is now located in the north-east or California. The rising cities of today include Dallas-Fort Worth, Raleigh, Houston, Austin, Phoenix, Nashville and Salt Lake City.
Just don’t bring the Blue politics with you.
MEH, THEIR MELTDOWNS ARE LESS AND LESS RELEVANT: Oh, You Know the Libs Melted Down Over That Line JD Vance Delivered at AmFest.
THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET’S REPLACE ALL THE LAWYERS: AI Will Kill All the Lawyers.
‘Last week we did an experiment, a kind of simulation. We took a real, recent and important case – a complex civil court appeal which I wrote, and it took me a day and a half. We redacted all identifying details, for anonymity and confidentiality, and we fed the same case to Grok Heavy AI. And then we asked it to do what I did. After some prompting, the end result was…’ He shakes his head. ‘Spectacular. Actually staggering. It did it in 30 seconds, and it was much better than mine. And remember, I am very good at this.’
He sits back, wry yet resigned. ‘It was at the level of a truly great KC. The best possible legal document. And all done in seconds for pennies. How can any of us compete? We can’t.’
My experience has been that technological revolutions — even the real ones — don’t soak in as fast as enthusiasts predict. But Robert Reich’s advice to join the “symbolic analysts” is looking likely to be, well, as good as all Robert Reich’s other advice. See also, “learn to code.”
Related: AI won’t kill all the lawyers: Labor markets are complex systems and AI is mere technology. “AI is not Dick the Butcher. It isn’t trying to clear the path for tyranny. It’s a productivity shock. Productivity shocks don’t usually abolish a domain; they unwind rents and concentrate power.”
NGOS SHOULD BE BANNED:
🇺🇸 $14 TRILLION NGO EMPIRE: TAX EXEMPT, VOTER PROOF
An essay citing Federal Reserve Financial Accounts says U.S. NGOs held $14.12 trillion in assets as of Q2 2025, which is bigger than the combined 2025 GDP of Japan, Germany, and India by roughly 5%.
If your brain just tried to… pic.twitter.com/dNtCZppTHe
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 18, 2025
December 21, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
LAW IN THE AGE OF AI: Duty to Alert Court to Opponents’ “Fictitious Citation[s]” and “Misrepresentation of Case Law.” “To be sure, lawyers often need no prompting to alert the court to errors by the other side. But sometimes they might feel reluctant to look like they’re piling on with objections, especially when the erroneous citation is on a tangential point, or when they think they’ve already destroyed the other side’s arguments on the merits. And sometimes they might be reluctant to spend their time and the client’s money on putting together a list of errors by the other side (especially when that requires a whole new supplemental filing). These decisions show that, despite that, alerting the court to all the citation errors you found in the other side’s filings may be important to maintaining the court’s confidence and goodwill.”
NOT ADMITTING THE OBVIOUS: BBC Can’t Admit the Obvious. “The Australian Broadcasting Corporation insists that the Bondi Beach terrorist attack had nothing to do with religion. Not to be outdone, the British Broadcasting Corporation says, ‘Hold My Beer,’ and refuses to admit that the Intifada(s) were all about killing Jews.”
ROGER KIMBALL: Reflections on the revolution: an introduction.
ALL THE BEST PEOPLE HAVE TOLD ME THAT IT’S BANNING GUN OWNERSHIP BY PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T DO IT: The Key to Gauging Public Safety is Measuring Time-To-Effective-Resistance. “The people who commit these kinds of mass murders tend, fortunately, to be morons. “Speed, surprise, and violence of action” cuts both ways. They rely on it to get the jump on innocent people, but they are ill-equipped to be on the receiving end.”
TONI AIRAKSINEN: My First Hanukkah as a Jew, and Why Latke Calories Don’t Count. A sweetly personal essay.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE, TEACH-WOMEN-NOT-TO-RAPE EDITION: Sevier County teacher arrested for statutory rape by an authority figure, sexual exploitation of a minor.
STILL A FEW BUGS IN THE SYSTEM: Waymo Suspends Service in SF Amid Blackout, Driverless Cars Basically Give Up.
And block everyone else. “Traffic lights across the city were down, seemingly confusing the driverless cars — and halting them in their tracks. Riders and pedestrians posted videos of Waymos stuck at intersections, long lines of drivers behind them.” Time for a backup plan.
UPDATE: Not entirely surprising:
Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage https://t.co/uaYlhcSx25
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2025
REMINDER: After today, the days start getting longer and the nights start getting shorter.
TO BE FAIR, THEY REPORTED IT EXACTLY AS THEY MEANT TO: Matt Taibbi: The Jeffrey Epstein Saga is the Worst-Reported Story of All Time.
IT’S WRONG TO QUESTION THE NARRATIVE:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2025