By Chelsea Chatham and Eric Glasser WTSP Channel 10 March 30, 2020
Excerpt
Professor Louis J. Virelli III
Lou Virelli, a constitutional law professor at Stetson University, says a U.S. Supreme Court case from 30 years ago – Employment Division v. Smith, essentially says that as long as the government isn’t asking the church to do something it isn’t asking everyone else to do, it’s on solid legal ground.
“Of course, if they were targeting churches, if worship ceremonies were singled out, that would be a totally different situation,” Virelli said. “But I think it’s fair to say that’s not what’s happening here.”
At a time when fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on state budgets nationwide, Florida’s approach to tax policy, relying overwhelmingly on the traditional sales tax, has put it in a uniquely precarious position….
Andrew Appleby, tax professor at the Stetson University College of Law, analyzes Florida tax policy with a particular emphasis on how measures such as the 2018 ballot vote and the failure to adopt Wayfair constrain the state from raising revenue. His research has focused on how revenue-raising constraints affect efforts to mitigate climate change in a state that is surrounded by water on three sides, Appleby said, but the research can also be applied to how the state will be able to withstand the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have a lot of constraints and there are to be costs in the future that are going to be fairly significant,” Appleby said. “We already have the supermajority [ballot measure] and no personal income tax. On top of that, we’re going to have a lot of tax bases eroded very significantly and very quickly.”
Appleby said many states would try to cope with that by ramping up enforcement efforts, as he said he observed during the Great Recession of 2008. But again, he said, not having Wayfair or a marketplace facilitator law is going to leave Florida a lot less to enforce.
“Florida is really at a severe disadvantage,” Appleby said.
As the church’s teaching on same-sex relationships evolves, Brigham Young University may have removed specific rules about same-sex intimacy from its honor code to leave “enough room to maneuver to what the church is doing, rather than having to go back and change all the rules because you guessed wrong,” said Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University.
The policy change exemplifies how religious schools are trying to balance aligning their conduct codes with their faiths and implementing clear rules and boundaries for an increasingly law-focused society, he said.
Trump 2020 has been fundraising since the president took office in January 2017; and since that time, his campaign has continuously spent big at Trump properties and businesses. According to FEC filings, the Trump campaign, the fundraising committee Trump Victory and the Republican National Committee have spent roughly $1.3 million at Trump hotels, golf courses, and other properties.
To be clear, none of this spending is illegal under federal campaign finance laws, according to campaign finance law expert and Stetson University Law Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy.
“The RNC is free to spend money for goods and services from the Trump Organization so long as they are paying fair market rates,” she explained. But, she continued, “Does this look like a vast conflict of interest? Yes, yes it does.”
Law360 spoke to more than a dozen state tax professionals, who said the SALT practice appears to be fading and that they expect even more departures in the next several weeks.
Andrew Appleby, a professor at Stetson University College of Law who previously worked in the tax groups of Eversheds Sutherland and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, summed up the sentiment of many when he told Law360 that the group’s diminution over the past few years, capped by this latest exodus, is a loss for MoFo.
“This departure represents the end of an era for a group that essentially created law firm multistate tax practice, what was at one point the preeminent SALT group,” Appleby said.
Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport hosted its seventh annual “Wills for Warriors” event. For the past seven years, Stetson, Stetson Law students, St. Petersburg Bar Foundation and volunteer attorneys from the Community Law Program have assisted Stetson Law’s Center for Excellence in Elder Law in preparing free simple wills and advance health directives for low income veterans and their spouses aged 60 or older.
The Center for Excellence in Elder Law, headed by Professor Rebecca Morgan, was established to meet the increasing need for legal education and research in the field of law and aging.
By Caitlin Johnston Tampa Bay Times Sept. 26, 2019
Excerpt
Professor Andrew Appleby.
Hillsborough County, Fla., Commissioner Les Miller wants to give voters another chance to pass a one-cent transportation sales tax, but he’s adamant the attempt will be in place of, not in addition to, the tax voters already passed in 2018…
Andrew Appleby, a professor of tax law at Stetson University, said the ordinance provides that only one transportation sales tax would ever be in effect, but he suggested going a step further to reassure voters by placing similar language in the ballot text of the referendum.
“It could state expressly that this new surtax will be effective only if the previous surtax is found invalid and thus repealed,” Appleby said. “The ordinance itself makes that clear, but not the referendum text.”
It’s a longtime practice that the Florida Legislature was trying to do away with by passing the Sunshine Protection Act to make Daylight Saving Time permanent year-round in 2018.
Rep. Vern Buchanan and Senator Marco Rubio introduced bills in their respective houses of Congress in 2019 to allow that state law to take effect. It requires congressional approval to do so. And according to Buchanan’s spokeswoman, Chloe Conboy, it would involve repealing a portion of the Uniform Time Act of 1966. She said Congressman Buchanan is confident it will pass.
But according to Stetson Law professor Louis Virelli, despite the fact that every committee in the Senate is majority Republican right now, time and circumstance may not be working in the bill’s favor.
“The impeachment trial, I’m certain slowed things down and the election year is going to draw attention to different priorities. So oftentimes the difficulty in getting a piece of legislation passed is not about the substance of the legislation, specifically, it’s about prioritizing and timing,” Virelli said.
One of the most famous guitar manufacturers in the world is suing a much smaller company that makes guitars in Tampa; Gibson is suing Tampa’s Armadillo Enterprises, which makes guitars under the Dean and Luna brands.
Gibson says three Dean or Luna guitars violate its trademarks.
Law professor Darryl Wilson, an associate dean at Stetson University College of Law, calls it “an interesting case from the standpoint of when you think of a trademark.”
“Much like any dispute in trademark law, though, what the judge will be looking at is whether or not the protected subject matter is distinctive. You need something to be distinctive in order to be able to get a trademark registration for it in the first place. And then, also, on the other end: has it been adequately policed once the trademark was procured? Or, has it been allowed to be used by the general public in a manner that gives rise to a claim that it’s generic?”
The short answer, according to legal experts, is that workers can’t cite the coronavirus outbreak as a reason not to carry out their ordinary duties—including duties that involve general travel. While a federal law called the Occupational Safety and Health Act offers some protection to workers who refuse to work in the face of danger, those protections are unlikely to apply—at least for now.
Instead, the ordinary rules related to workers compensation are likely to apply to those who catch coronavirus on a business trip.
Law professor Jason Bent of Stetson University points to a 1989 case about a woman who contracted chronic respiratory illness after being exposed to Influenza B while traveling in Asia. The Supreme Court of Minnesota ruled the woman was eligible for workers compensation because she was on work-related business, and the disease was not one she would have contracted in the United States.
