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This case has sooo many good property issues:

The parents of a young Pennsylvania girl who was sexually molested by their neighbor have sued the man in a bid to force him to buy their house.

The child’s parents said they don’t want to live next to Oliver Beck and “are under duress to move.” Their lawsuit, filed in Lehigh County Court in Allentown, said his presence is “ultra-hazardous given the close proximity” of Beck to the victim and their two other daughters.

Beck, 65, pleaded guilty in September 2011 to indecent assault of a child under 13 and was sentenced to three to 23 months in prison. After his release, he moved back to his home near Emmaus, about 55 miles north of Philadelphia.

The suit contends the plaintiff’s house is now “virtually unmarketable” because their neighbor is a registered sex offender. They want Beck to buy their house for $350,000, which they say is the fair-market value plus fees and expenses related to moving to a new home.

Beck’s lawyer has asked a judge to dismiss that portion of the suit, saying the law does not entitle the plaintiffs to force Beck to buy their home.

What a bizarre suit!

PropertyProf links to a Slate story that comments on how sex-offenders in the neighborhood affects property prices.

About 12 percent. According to a study released in 2008, houses located next door to a registered sex offender drop by that much in value. For the average American homeowner, that’s a loss of nearly $21,000, enough money to send a child to private school for two years. The family in Pennsylvania claims the home is worth $235,000 without a sex-offender neighbor, so the loss in value has likely surpassed $28,000.

The Pennsylvania family is probably overreaching in its claim that the home is “virtually unmarketable.” Homes located next to registered sex offenders sell all the time—otherwise, a convict’s effect on property value would be nearly impossible to study.

…

The picture gets even bleaker when you consider that sex offenders affect not only the value of adjacent properties, but the value of other homes nearby. On average, homes within a 0.1-mile radius of a registered sex offender drop in value by 4 percent. If you buy a home in a typical Arkansas subdivision with 10 homes within 0.1 miles of your own, and each of those homes includes one adult male, there is an 8.6 percent chance that a sex offender will be close enough to depress your home’s value. (Sex offenders have no measurable effect on the value of homes more than 0.1 miles away.)

And interesting new article from Mark Rienzi about the intersection of for-profit companies and religious liberties, titled “God and the Profits: Is There Religious Liberty for Money-Makers?” Here is the abstract:

Is there a religious way to pump gas, sell groceries, or advertise for a craft store?

Litigation over the HHS contraceptive mandate has raised the question whether a for-profit business and its owner can engage in religious exercise under federal law. The federal government has argued, and some courts have found, that the activities of a profit-making business are ineligible for religious freedom protection.

This article offers a comprehensive look at the relationship between profit-making and religious liberty, arguing that the act of earning money does not preclude profit-making businesses and their owners from engaging in protected religious exercise.

Many religions impose, and at least some businesses follow, religious requirements for the conduct of profit-making businesses. Thus businesses can be observed to engage in actions that are obviously motivated by religious beliefs: from preparing food according to ancient Jewish religious laws, to seeking out loans that comply with Islamic legal requirements, to encouraging people to “know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” These actions easily qualify as exercises of religion.

It is widely accepted that religious freedom laws protect non-profit organizations. The argument for denying religious freedom in the for-profit context rests on a claimed categorical distinction between for-profit and non-profit entities. Yet a broad examination of how the law treats these entities in various contexts severely undermines the claimed categorical distinction. Viewed in this broader context, it is clear that denying religious liberty rights for profit-makers would actually require singling out religion for disfavored treatment in ways forbidden by the Free Exercise Clause and federal law.

H/T Bainbridge

While we are all so busy counting the votes on the Supreme Court to strike down DOMA, I wonder if there are enough votes in Congress to simply repeal DOMA, and thus moot Windsor. The President would certainly sign such a law.

And by repealing the law, we would avoid the thorny issue of the Court doing it. Now, it would be the people (through their representatives doing it). Plus, Congress could spell out how to fix the  choice-of-law rules (hint, read Will Baude’s article), and not leave it to the Court to sort through this morass.

Could this be done in the next few months? Probably not. Are there majority votes in both houses? Probably. Could the Republicans hold together a filibuster? I’m doubtful.

I wonder why such a bill has never even been introduced.

Jeff concludes in his New Republic piece:

We’ll find out this summer whether the conservative justices are as devoted to limiting congressional power on the subject of marriage equality as they were with Obamacare. If they’re not, however, libertarian law professors won’t be the only ones wondering about the inconsistency.

From the UK Telegraph, it seems that Kim Jong Number One is aiming for Austin.

The photos appeared in the state-run Rodong newspaper and were apparently taken at an “emergency meeting” early on Friday morning. They show Kim signing the order for North Korea’s strategic rocket forces to be on standby to fire at US targets, the paper said, with large-scale maps and diagrams in the background.

^{North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered strategic rocket forces to be on standby to strike US and South Korean targets at any time (EPA)}

The images show a chart marked “US mainland strike plan” and missile trajectories that the NK News web site estimates terminate in Hawaii, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.

He must’ve been sad he missed SXSW or something. I’m pretty sure the revelers on 6th Street wouldn’t even notice.