expense while dining at the wandering dago & teaching Joseph Cairo, & Teamsters Local President Kevin McCaffrey not only Greek but NY Const Art 1 Sec 3
Justia Opinion Summary
WD filed suit against OGS, alleging that defendants violated its rights under the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and the New York State Constitution by denying WD's applications to participate as a food truck vendor in the Lunch Program based on its ethnic-slur branding. The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendant, holding that defendants' action violated WD's equal protection rights and its rights under the New York State Constitution. In this case, it was undisputed that defendants denied WD's applications solely because of its ethnic-slur branding. In Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017), the Supreme Court clarified that this action amounted to viewpoint discrimination and, if not government speech or otherwise protected, was prohibited by the First Amendment. The court rejected defendants' argument that their actions were unobjectionable because they were either part of OGS's government speech or permissible regulation of a government contractor's speech.
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
kevin McCaffrey
‘Saturday Night Live’ Fires New Cast Member After Slurs Surface Online
Comedian Shane Gillis was slated to begin on the NBC show this month
“Saturday Night Live” on Monday fired a new cast member slated to start on the NBC show in its fall season, following days of controversy over his use of racial and homophobic slurs.
Comedian Shane Gillis had been named last Thursday as one of three new cast members joining the ranks of the venerable late-night sketch show. Within hours of the announcement, YouTube clips began circulating online that showed Mr. Gillis on a podcast of his last year, using offensive language to describe immigrants and mockingly imitating their accents in a rant about New York’s Chinatown neighborhood. In a different podcast episode that also spread online last week, Mr. Gillis referred to several famous comedians with homophobic slurs.
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The online outcry intensified after Mr. Gillis responded on social media, saying that he was pushing boundaries in comedy, and seeming to suggest that critics of his comments were overreacting. “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said,” Mr. Gillis wrote in a note posted to Twitter . “My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”
“SNL” Executive Producer Lorne Michaels reacted by firing the comedian before he hit the air, and ahead of the launch of the show’s new season on Sept. 28.
“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” a spokesperson for the show said Monday in a statement. “We want ‘SNL’ to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show, and we hired Shane on the strength of his talent as a comedian and his impressive audition for ‘SNL.’ We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”
The series recently lost one of its most popular cast members, Leslie Jones, who announced her departure with a warm description of her five-season tenure on the show. “Saturday Night Live,” which has won more Emmy awards than any TV series in history, has seen its ratings seesaw since the consistent highs of its 42nd season, when Alec Baldwin took over the role of impersonating Donald Trump. The show had built anticipation for its coming season with big bookings, including musical guest Taylor Swift and Eddie Murphy, who is scheduled to host the show in December for the first time in 35 years.
Many comedians have been haunted by old material when it surfaces online in new context or under a greater level of scrutiny. Kevin Hart stepped down as the host of the 2019 Academy Awards amid controversy over tweets in which he made homophobic jokes. The debut of “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah in 2015 was initially clouded by jokes of his on Twitter that riffed on sensitive subjects, including the Holocaust. Such scrutiny has become more frequent, fueling debate about whether comedians should be measured by the same standards of speech that apply to other public figures.
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang joined the online discussion about the new “SNL” hire with an offer to discuss it in person with Mr. Gillis. “I prefer comedy that makes people think and doesn’t take cheap shots. But I’m happy to sit down and talk with you if you’d like,” Mr. Yang wrote on Twitter days ago, adding that he didn’t think Mr. Gillis should be fired from “SNL.”
Late Monday, Mr. Yang tweeted that Mr. Gillis had reached out to him and that the two planned to meet.
Mr. Gillis sounded a defiant note Monday in a post to Twitter. “I’m a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL. That can’t be taken away,” he wrote, adding that he respected the “SNL” decision and closed with a reference to a Fox comedy series that once competed with “SNL”: “I was always a mad tv guy anyway.”
Even as “SNL” can be edgy with its material, it has been criticized in recent years for being too slow to add more diversity to its cast. The naming of Mr. Gillis as a new featured player came just as the show said staff writer Bowen Yang would become the first Asian cast member in the history of the series, which is entering its 45th season. Chloe Fineman, a former member of improv-comedy troupe the Groundlings, was also announced as a new cast member.
Write to John Jurgensen at john.jurgensen@wsj.com
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