Does the government control what time it is? Does the government control what time it is? Recently, I read that the west coast states are considering dropping Daylight Savings Time. Apparently, the process is first for the states to agree, and then they have ask for permission from the federal government. I believe it was also the federal government who made the decision to adjust the dates for DST a few years ago. So that got me thinking, does the federal government have authority over what time it is? Could the federal government theoretically decide to just cancel 7:39 AM for one week and order everyone to go directly from 7:38 to 7:40? Would there be a legal issue if someone founded a cult that believes that it is just always 6:27 PM? This also seems like it could be a problem for elections either way. If the federal government can decide what time it is, could it just decide that November will never come and there will never be an election? On the other hand, if the federal government can’t decide what time it is, could a state just declare “In our state, it is 2026, and Trump is no longer president”?
15 USC Subchapter IX gives the Secretary of Transportation powers to set rules about the 11 time zones, and those laws supersede state and local laws. Observance of Daylight Savings Time is optional for a state. This is the DST law. First, it says that at the DST changeover times, the standard time of each zone established by sections 261 to 264 of this title...shall be advanced one hour...however, (1) any State that lies entirely within one time zone may by law exempt itself from the provisions of this subsection providing for the advancement of time, but only if that law provides that the entire State (including all political subdivisions thereof) shall observe the standard time otherwise applicable during that period, and (2) any State with parts thereof in more than one time zone may by law exempt either the entire State as provided in (1) or may exempt the entire area of the State lying within any time zone. which allows a state to stay on permanent standard time (but not permanent DST). The appearance that government has to approve the change comes from the fact that states (other than Arizona, Hawaii, Guam etc) seem to want to switch to permanent DST, not standard time. The standardization of time is governed by laws passed by congress, so the government can change it, if they can pass a bill through both houses and get the president to sign.
In Texas, as in most of the US, the law is "Employment at Will". This means that an employer is free to fire people at any time, for any reason, or none, as long as it is not for one of the few reason forbidden by law, such as racial or age discrimination. Hourly employees are entitled to overtime pay in such cases, but "exempt" employees are not. Nor are they entitled to comp-time as a matter of law, that is at the option of the employer. (The question seems to imply that the employee in question was "exempt" but does not actually say so.) The only really effective recourse against that sort of "death march" is to quit and find a better job, or to threaten to do so while they still need you, unless the conditions return to acceptable ones. I have heard of people in such a situation who "get sick" every day at 5:30pm, because local law forbid requiring ill employees to work. But that is pretty much inviting an arduous and possibly expensive administrative and/or legal battle, and will depend on the specifics of the state/local law. In any case, it is too late for the person in question to try that. On the facts as stated, there might be a valid claim of age discrimination. But additional facts would be needed to establish this, and it would be in my view unwise to try it without consulting a good employment lawyer. Such a lawyer could advise exactly what must be proved and how, and what the probable chances of any recovery would be.
You can probably refuse A contract cannot be changed unilaterally unless the contract provides for unilateral change - its unlikely your contract does. In any event, the person with such a power of unilateral change has to exercise it reasonably. It is an implied term of employment contracts that the employee must obey the lawful and reasonable directions of the employer. So the question is, is the requirement to use a fingerprint time clock both lawful and reasonable? Well, at first blush, without genuine consent on your part (and &quot;do it or get fired&quot; is not genuine consent) this would appear to breach the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. The biometric data of your finger is personal information and, as such, it can only be collected with your consent. A similar factual case was decided in queensland (Note: the Australian law will be different in some ways from the Canadian law but they both require consent for collection) last year in that way.
Section 2 (a) of the order says: The heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall immediately take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to require compliance with CDC guidelines with respect to wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, and other public health measures by: on-duty or on-site Federal employees; on-site Federal contractors; and all persons in Federal buildings or on Federal lands. (emphasis added) It would seem that if, in future, the CDC changes its guidelines to indicate that mask wearing is no longer needed (presumably in the wake of a large decline in cases) the order would mean compliance with such revised guidelines, and thus reduced or eliminated mask wearing, when and if that is advised. The order does not contain any dated sunset or reevaluation provision. But the President can at any time revise or rescind this or any other Executive Order. The Twitter comments could be taken as an intention to reevaluate and a hope to be able to remove, the order within 100 days. In any case Twitter comments are not legally binding, nor are press conference statements or other public statements by the President. Evert if the order had contained a fixed sunset date, the President could always issue a new order extending this one at any time. Note also that the order only instructs department heads to &quot;take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.&quot; This leaves significant room for judgement as to what is &quot;appropriate.&quot;
The situation is that Executive Order 2020-33 is no more, and a new order, 2020-68 exists. The old orders to stay home are now copied under this order, but it may be necessary for her to re-issue (a subset of) the orders so that they are pursuant to #68 and not #33 (live by the technicality, die by the technicality). If she does not do that quickly, I expect there to be legal challenges. The law (30-403) doesn't say that orders issued pursuant to a declaration of a state of disaster expire when the authorizing declaration expires, but one can reasonably infer that that is what the legislature had in mind when this law was passed. But that is a matter for the courts to decide. Deference to the executive, which is the usual way that courts operate, would favor an interpretation where saying "All previous orders that rested on Executive Order 2020-33 now rest on this order" counts as re-issuing the same orders with a new number in the text. The law does not say that the circumstances authorizing an emergency order have to be completely different. Perhaps the legislature will revise the law in the future, but it is what it is right now.
This would require a constitutional amendment (overriding the First Amendment), which can be done in two ways. Congress can write an amendment and submit it to the states; or the states can call for a convention. None of these methods can be implemented by any number of courts.
School districts / states do generally have the power to set the curriculum including the viewpoint that will be officially conveyed. One well-known major restriction on such viewpoint restrictions is that the schools cannot restrict the free exercise of a religion, and cannot take a position on a religion. Apart from the religion third-rail, schools have pretty free reign in setting the curriculum, see Evans-Marshall v. Tipp City for one instantiation. In this case, the teacher assigned various books, including Heather Has Two Mommies, one of the books that prompted an outcry. The upshot of that case is that a teacher cannot invoke the First Amendment to override policy. This article (draft version, easier to handle) (published version, annoying footnote structure) reviews the topic, and section III covers prior cases. It notes that the cases of Lawrence, Windsor, Obergefell do not address the constitutionality of these education laws, though the reasoning in the prior cases might be applicable if there were a suit over curriculum. There is an implication that some of these rules have been enforced in the past, but most of the evidence is in the form of news stories (Beall v. London City School BOE is not available in the open). The article does engage in a somewhat deeper study of enforcement in Utah, where it was enforced (until it was repealed). Enforcement is necessarily indirect. The law require school districts to have a particular curriculum; violation would come when an individual teacher taught contrary to the prescribed curriculum. Those laws do not contain any provision like "a teacher who violates these rules gets fired", instead, punishment is via the general rule that you have to teach what is in the state-mandated curriculum. Rather than officially terminating a teacher for violating this curricular guideline, districts use vague reasons for non-renewal such as "due to problems with communication and teamwork" (from Evans-Marshall).
According to CENDI, yes the US government is able to claim copyright on works internationally. The law in question which makes US government works public domain in the US (17 U.S. Code § 105) only does so within the confines of US copyright. Since copyright protection is on a per-country basis, there's no reason that the US government couldn't assert IP rights under foreign copyright law (though I didn't go looking for an example). While the Berne Convention generally requires countries to provide foreign works the same protection as domestic works, I can think of two general reasons why US government works wouldn't fall under copyright protection in some countries: The country simply doesn't apply copyright protection to any government works (don't know how common this is). The country applies the rule of the shorter term. If they do, they aren't required to provide a longer term of protection than the country of origin does (which is nil in this case).