A federal district court has upheld Google's library book project as an authorized fair use under the federal Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §101 et esq., Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 2013 WL 6017130 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). The court upheld the power of Google to scan copyrighted books held by libraries and to give those libraries digital copies of those scans. It also upheld Google's power to make the text of those books searchable so that researchers could view snippets of those books and could search the books for...

In Houston v. Marod Supermarkets, 2013 WL 5859575 (11th Cir. 2013), the Eleventh Circuit ruled that testers have standing to bring suits claiming violation of the public accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The mere fact that one enters property for the purpose of testing compliance with the ADA rather than to purchase products does not deprive the plaintiff of standing to sue for violation of the law. In an odd coda, however, the court noted that injunctive relief was only...

The Sixth Circuit has held that §3617 of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3601 et seq., prohibits conduct intended to encourage residents to move even if they are not denied housing or induced to move. Hidden Village, LLC v. City of Lakewood, 2013 WL 5811642 (6th Cir. 2013). The basic provisions of the FHA (embodied in §3604) prohibit denying housing for discriminatory reasons, providing unequal and discriminatory terms and conditions for housing, and expressing an invidious preference for buyers or...

Once again a federal court has held that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (as amended in 1991) provides no relief to a store customer who was subjected to racial insults while trying to buy merchandise. The First Circuit held, in Hammond v. Kmart Corp., 2013 WL 5763267 (1st Cir. 2013), that the "right to contract" protected by 42 U.S.C. §1981 only protects the ability to enter a contract; it provides no relief for racially disparate treatment when one is in a store. Because the customer was able to...