Ann blogs regularly on Turtle Talk, the blog of Michigan State University College of Law’s Indigenous Law & Policy Center, and has also blogged on Faculty Lounge.  Below are some of her posts.


A Bisexual Plaintiff’s Employment Discrimination Victory in Flood v. Bank of America

The Faculty Lounge
May 26, 2015

In a little noticed decision issued a couple of months ago, the First Circuit reinstated a bisexual plaintiff’s employment discrimination claims under the Maine Human Rights Act, reversing the district court’s dismissal on summary judgment. The decision is remarkable because, as I and Dr. Karen Yescavage discuss in our recent law review article, despite the fact that bisexuals experience significant levels of discrimination, they rarely sue.

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Justice Scalia’s Dissent in Windsor & Why Everyone Should Learn Indian Law

The Faculty Lounge
February 07, 2014

I was reading Justice Scalia‘s dissent in Windsor the other night and came across a statement that was wrong in regard to whether the Court had decided a previous case in which the plaintiff and defendant were not adverse.  There is a very clear example from federal Indian law that contradicted his statement that the Court has never decided such a case, yet no one, as far as I could tell, cited it in the briefs or in any of the opinions.  This experience reminded me how important Indian law is, even for those who don’t practice or teach it.

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Thanksgiving and the Madison County v. Oneida Indian Nation Case

The Faculty Lounge
November 27, 2013

Thanksgiving is always a good time for non-Natives to reflect on the colonial history of the United States and particularly the lands that have been granted by tribes in some cases and, in others, taken forcibly or through patently unfair negotiations.  And this term, a case pending before the Supreme Court raises these very issues.  As the current Court term churns along and conferences and arguments are conducted and orders are issued, one case from last term–Madison County v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York—remains stalled.

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Owens Lake Restoration

The Faculty Lounge
October 26, 2013

Recently, I heard the surprising and wonderful news that considerable progress has been made on the restoration of Owens Lake and the Lower Owens River.  Some of you may remember that the plot of the movie Chinatown is based on Los Angeles officials’ (and others’) wheeling and dealing in the early 1900s to get the rights to divert water from Owens Valley, once a fertile farming area, about two hundred miles to the City of Los Angeles (without revealing their true intentions).

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Putting It On Our Children to Fix the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch?

The Faculty Lounge

August 26, 2013

I was visiting Sydney Sea Life Aquarium recently and, in the children’s activity area, noticed signs urging kids to become plastic warriors by pledging to reduce their families’ use of plastic packaging in order to protect the ocean. I’m sure I’ve seen similar signs in aquariums and museums near me, but this time it struck me.

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Marriage & Polyamory

The Faculty Lounge

July 18, 2013

Interesting survey results on polyamorists’ interest in marriage were recently published on Loving More’s website.  As background, conservatives who oppose marriage equality have been making slippery slope arguments for years about the purported danger of legally sanctioning same-sex marriage and a resulting inability to distinguish plural marriage.  See, e.g., Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 590 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting).  In response, as I noted in my article Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation, some marriage equality proponents have tried to distance themselves from polyamory and have sometimes cast aspersions on it.  79 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1461, 1484 (2011).  However, polyamorists themselves face considerable discrimination and appear to be deserving of legal protections, although there is uncertainty about whether and what types of protections they want.  79 U. Cin. L. Rev. at 1513-14.

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Unmarried Fathers & the Equal Protection Clause

The Faculty Lounge
June 20, 2013

As much of the Indian law community holds its breath waiting for the Supreme Court to decide the so-called Baby Veronica case, I’ve been thinking about an issue that’s not raised at all before the Supreme Court and that doesn’t  seem to have been raised below (although the lower court materials in South Carolina state court remain confidential), namely, shouldn’t a law that allows a newborn to be adopted without the unmarried father’s consent be interpreted as a violation of equal protection?

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Arizona trespass case and the application of laches to state land claims

The Faculty Lounge
June 17, 2013

 I’m very excited to be visiting here as a guest blogger.  I thought I’d start off by discussing a very interesting Arizona case I came across while exploring recent developments in Property Law.  Sussex v. State of Arizona is a trespass case that’s currently pending in the Arizona Court of Appeals, and I’ve found it to be a great teaching tool as well as an interesting factual setting in which to think about laches.  The facts are contested, but the Sussex family, who are the defendants, have averred that their family has been living on the property that the state claims to own since 1894 (part of the property appears to be claimed by the City of Tempe—it’s the driveway to the house that is allegedly on state land).  Arizona sued siblings Steven Sussex and Judy Troutman and Mr. Sussex’s wife Virginia Sussex for trespass to the land in 2005.  In August 2012, a jury awarded the State $1,500 in damages after a judge ruled against the Sussex family’s laches argument.  The State apparently originally received the land from the federal government as Common Schools Land.

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