‘Institute for Justice’ Archives
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 [...]
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Over at ACSblog, Ohio State law professor Dan Tokaji argues that it’s time for campaign finance “reformers” to proclaim proudly that “equality,” rather than “corruption,” is the reason they favor restricting political speech: Acceptance of equality as a rationale won't make hard [...]
The Evils of Public Financing
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Republicans in Congress have responded to the apparent desire among voters for smaller government with a proposal to eliminate the public financing system for presidential elections. Our friends over at the Center for Competitive Politics present some very compelling reasons for ending the program. As they [...]
IJ Launches Center for Judicial Engagement
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice, IJ Launches Center for Judicial Engagement Arlington, Va.—If a national campaign launched today by the Institute for Justice is successful, judges in constitutional cases will be inspired and emboldened to do one simple thing that—surprisingly—they often don’t do today: judge. The courts are [...]
Recycling Is Now a Campaign Finance Violation
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law, Paul Sherman At a time when proponents of stricter campaign finance regulations continually howl about the increasing costs of political campaigns, you would think that a grassroots political group would be applauded for trying to keep costs down. But according to a Washington Post story released [...]
Can the city of Philadelphia’s budget priorities trump the Constitution?
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice That’s the question being debated today at the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Tait v. City of Philadelphia. The tour guide licensing lawsuit has generating significant local and national media coverage, including All Things Considered, Marketplace and a front page feature in the Wall Street [...]
If You Don’t Fight the Censors Will Win
Liberty Alerts, Congress Shall Make No Law Things keep happening to the right to speak in Wisconsin. It is hard for anyone to keep up with what you can, or cannot, say in the Cheesehead state.* First a quick recap. As we have discussed several times before at MakeNoLaw.org (here, here, and here), last summer the Wisconsin Governmental [...]
Minnesota Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Important Property Rights Case
Liberty Alerts, Institute for Justice Red Wing, Minn.—On Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010, the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed to hear an important property rights case examining when citizens may challenge rental inspection laws that cities are actively enforcing against them. The case, which arises out of Red Wing but which will have statewide [...]
