‘Institute for Justice’ Archives
Putting Useless Government Requirements to Rest
Minnesota Entrepreneur Challenges Requirement That All Funeral Homes Must Have an Embalming Room ECONOMIC LIBERTY, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE Arlington, Va.—May the government force entrepreneurs to do useless things, like build extra rooms in their stores that they do not need and will never use, just to prove they are serious about their [...]
Institute for Justice Continues to Defend Landmark Free Speech Ruling
FIRST AMENDMENT, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE “The irony here is that people and groups are gathering together to speak out against a case that protected the right of people and groups to gather together and speak out. We don’t lose our freedom of speech by exercising our freedom of association.” Arlington, Va.—Tomorrow, January 21, 2012, [...]
Victory for School Choice in Indiana
SCHOOL CHOICE, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE Arlington, Va.—Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Program is perfectly constitutional. That, in a nutshell, was the ruling issued by Marion County Superior Court Judge Michael Keele today in Meredith v. Daniels. The trial court rejected every legal claim brought by the plaintiffs—who are supported by [...]
Putting Useless Government Requirements to Rest
ECONOMIC LIBERTY, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE Arlington, Va.—May the government force entrepreneurs to do useless things, like build extra rooms in their stores that they do not need and will never use, just to prove they are serious about their business? That issue is at the center of a major lawsuit filed today, January 19, 2012, in Minnesota [...]
Institute for Justice Defends Super PACs
First Amendment, Institute for Justice The 2012 presidential election is bringing almost daily warnings about the influence of so-called “Super PACs” on the political process. A writer in The Atlantic called them the “WMDs” of campaign finance and to The New York Times they are “septic tanks into which wealthy individuals and [...]
Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Noncitizen Speech
FIRST AMENDMENT, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a lower-court decision upholding a federal law that prohibits noncitizens who lawfully reside in the United States—except for “permanent residents,” i.e., “green card” holders—from spending money to influence U.S. elections. IJ had submitted [...]
Georgia Must Reform Corrupt Civil Forfeiture Laws
PROPERTY RIGHTS, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE Arlington— Last Thursday , a coalition of civil rights groups from across the political spectrum is calling on legislators to reform Georgia’s civil forfeiture laws, which are among the worst in the nation. Civil forfeiture allows the police to seize your home, car, cash or other property upon the [...]
9th Circuit Strikes Down Ban on Contributions to Ballot Measures
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice In a mixed decision for the First Amendment, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today struck down a Washington law that banned certain contributions to ballot measures within the key final three weeks before an election. The court also upheld Washington’s stringent disclosure requirements for ballot [...]
California’s Redevelopment Nightmare Coming To An End
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice In a landmark victory for private property owners in the Golden State, the California Supreme Court today upheld a statute abolishing the nearly 400 redevelopment agencies across the state. The court also struck down a law that would have allowed these agencies to buy their way back into existence. The [...]
Minnesota Supreme Court Rules for Property Owners/Renters
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Today the Minnesota Supreme Court handed down an important victoryfor Red Wing property owners and renters and for citizens across the state of Minnesota. The court allowed a property rights case to go forward that had been tied up by procedural hurdles for more than five years. The case challenges Red [...]
Responding to POGO’s Ben Freeman on Bluman v. FEC
By Paul Sherman, Congress Shall Make No Law Writing for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Ben Freeman argues that my recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal regarding Bluman v. FEC is “deceptively titled” and uses a “bait-and-switch tactic” to con people into believing the Congress shouldn’t have the power to ban political [...]
Report: Idaho Ripe for Increased Educational Options
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice A tax credit program designed to expand educational options for Idaho K-12 students would be a natural extension of existing Idaho policy, according to a report released today by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice and the Institute for Justice. Expanding Choice: Tax Credits and Educational [...]
Tour Guides File Federal First Amendment Lawsuit
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice May the city of New Orleans subject local tour guides to hundreds of dollars in fines and five months in jail for engaging in unauthorized talking? This is the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) seeks to answer in a federal lawsuit filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of [...]
Cancer Patients Win Bone Marrow Legal Fight Against Attorney
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today issued a unanimous opinion granting victory to cancer patients and their supporters from across the nation in a landmark constitutional challenge brought against the U.S. Attorney General. The lawsuit, filed by the Institute for Justice on behalf of cancer [...]
Hailing Freedom for Milwaukee Taxi Entrepreneurs
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice The Institute for Justice is returning to its roots in a big way. One of IJ’s first cases successfully challenged the prohibition on new taxicab companies in Denver. That case allowed our clients to found Freedom Cabs, Denver’s first new cab company in nearly 50 years. Another version of Freedom [...]
Minnesota Homeowners Stand Up for Their Property Rights
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice In one of the greatest housing slumps in our nation’s history, the town of Winona, Minn., is making it that much harder for homeowners to hold onto their investments. Buying a home is an important and lifelong investment, but circumstances change and selling a home in today’s housing market can be [...]
Mississippi Citizens Join Together, File First Amendment Lawsuit
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Should Mississippi citizens need to get the government’s permission before speaking about political issues with their neighbors and friends? That is the question to be answered by a First Amendment lawsuit filed this morning in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi by five [...]
Entrepreneurs Challenge Government-Enforced Ferry Monopoly
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice A federal lawsuit filed today in Spokane, Wash., provides yet another example of why so many Americans are frustrated with the size and power of government. The suit, filed by two brothers, seeks to sink a government-enforced ferry monopoly that operates on Washington state’s Lake Chelan—a monopoly [...]
Entrepreneurs and Public Interest Law Firm Sue Hialeah City
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Street vendors in Hialeah, Fla., have had enough of the city’s effort to drive them out of business in order to protect brick-and-mortar businesses from competition. Today, they joined with the newly launched Institute for Justice Florida Chapter to file a state constitutional lawsuit against the city [...]
IJ Challenges “Policing for Profit” in Massachusetts
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice For two years, Massachusetts small business owner Russ Caswell has suffered through an American nightmare. Russ and his family have owned and operated the Motel Caswell in Tewksbury, Mass., for two generations. The motel, which Russ’ father built and the Caswells own free and clear, was supposed to [...]
New Report Debunks Myth of Judicial Activism
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Is the U.S. Supreme Court running roughshod over the other branches of government? Is it true, as outgoing Sen. Arlen Specter claimed, that the Court “has been eating Congress’s lunch by invalidating legislation with judicial activism”? According to a new report from the Institute for Justice’s [...]
IJ Moves to Intervene on Behalf of Parents To Defend Arizona’s New School Choice Program
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Yesterday, the Institute for Justice filed legal papers to intervene on behalf of parents to defend the nation’s first publicly funded education savings account program against a legal challenge filed yesterday by the Arizona School Boards Association and the Arizona Education Association, among others. [...]
Taking on the Taxi Cartel
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Should the city of Milwaukee be allowed to outlaw competition in the taxi market, causing permits to rise in price from $85 to a staggering $150,000? That is the question to be answered by a major lawsuit filed today by the Institute for Justice (IJ)—a national public interest law firm—and three [...]
IJ Victory Paying Dividends Nationwide
Congress Shall Make No Law, Institute for Justice Make No Law readers may remember the Institute for Justice’s victory in Sampson v. Buescher, where the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that grassroots groups have the right to speak about ballot issues without registering with the government and disclosing their activity. Now the [...]
Eminent Domain: The Movie
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Anti-eminent domain heroine Susette Kelo will soon join the likes of Erin Brockovich and Norma Rae in seeing her real-world drama turned into a mainstream movie. Kelo lost her little pink house in a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which the Court ruled that eminent domain could be used to take homes [...]
Major Court Hearing Will Decide If Douglas County’s Choice Scholarship Program Continues During Lawsuit
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice On the eve of the new school year, opponents of school choice are trying to halt Douglas County’s Choice Scholarship Program, even though 500 children are relying on the scholarships offered by the County to attend private schools selected by their parents. In a three-day preliminary injunction hearing [...]
Freedom of Speech Does Not Mean You Are Free To Speak for only Five Weeks Every Four Years
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Nothing is too small to escape the attention of the Speech Police. Matthew LaCorte is a recent high school graduate in the Borough of Woodland Park, New Jersey, who is going to college this fall. Matt is a member of Young Americans for Liberty and a Ron Paul supporter. He wanted to show that support by [...]
Atlanta Vendors File Major Lawsuit Against City, Join National Street Vending Initiative
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Arlington, Va.— Should the city of Atlanta be allowed to create a single street vending monopoly that forces existing vendors to start paying up to $20,000 in rent and fees every year? That is the question to be answered by a major lawsuit filed today by the Institute for Justice (IJ)—a national [...]
IJ Moves to Intervene in Defense of Indiana’s New School Choice Program
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Yesterday (July 20), the Institute for Justice—the nation’s leading legal advocate for school choice—filed a motion with the Marion County Superior Court to intervene on behalf of Indiana families in defense of Indiana’s new Choice Scholarship Program. The nation’s newest school choice program is [...]
Nashville Drivers Stage Rolling Protest
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Today, Nashville’s transportation entrepreneurs will take to the streets to protest new Metro rules that require them to charge consumers nearly twice as much for exactly the same service. The drivers want the Metropolitan County Council to eliminate its new $45 minimum fare for limo and sedan service, [...]
IJ Scores Major First Amendment Victory For St. Louis Property Owner
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice The 8thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today handed down a major First Amendment victory for the right to protest government abuse. The case is a victory for a St. Louis housing activist who grew so fed up with the government’s abuse of eminent domain that he painted an enormous protest message on the [...]
Institute for Justice Will File To Intervene In New Colorado School Choice Case
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice The Institute for Justice—the nation’s leading legal advocate for school choice that has litigated every major school choice case in the nation, including the 2004 Colorado Opportunity Contract Pilot Program—announced today that it will move to intervene on behalf of families from Douglas County, [...]
D.C. Federal Court Hands Down Victory for Free Speech
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Congratulations are due to friend-of-IJ Steve Hoersting, who, along with Dan Backer, Benjamin Barr, and the Center for Competitive Politics, just scored an early victory in Carey v. FEC, a challenge to federal campaign finance laws. For those who aren’t well-versed in campaign finance law, the [...]
Bureaucrats vs. the Internet: Election Regulators Target Facebook
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Jeff Patch has a must-read account of the latest affront to unfettered speech on the Internet. The Federal Election Commission on Wednesday denied a request by the social-media website Facebook that would have allowed the company to sell advertising space to candidates and political parties [...]
Louisiana Monks Bring Casket Sales Challenge to Federal Court
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice New Orleans, La.—The monks of Saint Joseph Abbey of Saint Benedict, La., seek to bury Louisiana’s government-imposed casket cartel with a trial that is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. on Monday, June 6, 2011, before the Honorable Stanwood Duval of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of [...]
National City Declares War on Small Business
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice You can say this much for National City—it doesn’t do things by half measures. Faced with a major loss in court over the city’s attempt to gain eminent domain authority over many of the city’s businesses, the city has responded by coming up with an even more radical plan. It plans to destroy [...]
National Legal Groups Join Forces to End Civil Forfeiture
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Today, two leading organizations have come together to advocate for reforms to states’ asset forfeiture laws—the power of police to seize property on mere suspicion of a crime and, in most states, keep some or all of the proceeds for their own use. The National Association of Criminal Defense [...]
Victory for El Paso Mobile Food Vendors
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Today, El Paso officials passed a new ordinance that eliminates protectionist regulations against mobile food vendors. The new ordinance comes only three months after four El Paso mobile food vendors teamed up with the Institute for Justice to file Castaneda v. City of El Paso, a federal civil rights [...]
National City Violated Federal Constitution and State Laws
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice A California gym that mentors at-risk kids scored a knockout legal blow against eminent domain abuse in California. Yesterday, April 21, Judge Steven R. Denton of the Superior Court of California ruled in favor of the Community Youth Athletic Center (CYAC) and against National City, Calif., in one of [...]
New Regulations Threaten to Drive Nashville Transportation Entrepreneurs off the Road
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Can the government force certain businesses to charge a minimum price just to protect politically connected companies from competition? That is the question the Institute for Justice and three of its clients want answered in a federal lawsuit filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Middle [...]
Clean Elections: “Incumbency Protection Racket”?
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Proponents of taxpayer funding for political campaigns, such as Arizona’s “Clean Elections” system, have long argued that it would make races more competitive, reducing the advantages enjoyed by incumbents and easing the path to office for challengers. A new paper finds just the opposite: [...]
Public Disclosure Serves the Interests of Incumbents
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Like many people, professor of law and former congressional candidate James L. Huffman had always assumed that public disclosure of political contributions was a good thing. But as Huffman recounts in The Wall Street Journal, his opinion changed when he ran for office as the Republican nominee for [...]
You Get What You Pay For
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law One of the more persistent myths of government campaign financing programs is that their purpose is to enhance First Amendment values. Justice Kagan made that claim on Monday when she said during the oral argument in the IJ/Goldwater challenge to Arizona’s system that with government financing, [...]
Matching Funds Do Chill Speech
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law One of the favorite, and most incredible, tactics of those defending Arizona’s Clean Elections scheme is to close their eyes to evidence that its matching funds provision has deterred the speech of privately funded candidates and independent groups and then assert such evidence doesn’t exist. I [...]
Major Lawsuit Filed Today Seeks to Shine Light On Georgia Law
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Arlington, Va.—Georgia has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws and practices in the country, but a lawsuit filed today by the Institute for Justice (IJ) and five concerned Georgia citizens seeks to change that. Civil forfeiture laws allow the police to seize your home, car, cash or other property [...]
Revealing the Campaign Finance “Reform” Impulse in One Blog Post
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Yesterday, Ezra Klein linked to a graph that, he says, shows the importance of so-called campaign finance “reform,” and more specifically using taxpayer dollars to fund the campaigns of political candidates. This matters now because on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to one [...]
100-plus Weigh In on the Biggest Campaign Finance Case since Citizens United
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Arlington, Va.—Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in the most important political-speech case since Citizens United: Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett are consolidated challenges brought by the Institute for Justice and the Goldwater Institute to Arizona’s [...]
Eminent Domain Trial Will Demonstrate National City Violated State and Federal Constitutions
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice National City, Calif.—A San Diego-area boxing gym that serves at-risk kids is showing what it takes to fight for what is right and to win. A trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, March 14, 2011, to decide whether National City, Calif., may declare nearly 700 properties—including the [...]
Property Owner Should be Allowed to Protest Government WITHOUT the Government’s Permission
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Arlington, Va.—In America, government should not be allowed to use subjective and discriminatory laws to shut down protests of abusive government action. That is a hallmark of American constitutional rights and yet that is the central issue at stake in a legal case to be argued by the Institute for [...]
Compensating Bone Marrow Donors Could Save Lives But the Government Bans It
Liberty Alerts, Institute For Justice Arlington, Va.—Every year, nearly 3,000 Americans die because they cannot find a life-saving bone marrow donor match—a trend that disproportionately impacts minorities. But on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011, cancer patients from across the nation who can’t find a donor match will square off in court [...]
