Latest news with #I.J.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Government Threatened To Seize His Home Over Tall Grass
It's finally spring. Better mow your lawn. If you don't, your town government may fine you thousands of dollars a day. Worse, if you can't pay the fine, they may confiscate your home. Six years ago, in Dunedin, Florida, Jim Ficken let his grass grow. His mom had died, and he'd left town to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to cut his grass, but that friend died, too! In the two months Ficken was away, his grass grew taller than 10 inches. City bureaucrats started fining him. But they didn't tell Ficken that. When he finally got back, there was no notice of the $500-a-day fine. Only when he ran into a "code enforcement officer" did he learn he'd be getting "a big bill." When the bill came, it was for $24,454. Ficken quickly mowed his lawn. Then the city tacked on another $5,000 for "non-compliance." Ficken didn't have that much money, so city officials told him they would take his home. Fortunately, Ficken discovered the libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice (I.J.), which fights government abuse. I.J. lawyer Ari Bargil took on Ficken's case, arguing that the $30,000 fine violates the Constitution's limits on "excessive bail, fines, and cruel punishments." But a judge ruled that the fine was "not excessive." Of course, judges are just lawyers with robes. Often they are lawyers/bureaucrats who've become very comfortable with big government. I call a $30,000 penalty for not cutting your lawn absurdly excessive. IJ attorney Bargil told local news stations, "If $30,000 for tall grass in Florida is not excessive, it is hard to imagine what is." Dunedin's politicians often impose heavy fines for minor transgressions. One resident told us, "They [fined] me $32,000 for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco" and also "for a lawn mower in my yard….They fine people that they can pick on and then they keep picking on them." It happens elsewhere, too. Charlotte, North Carolina, fined a church for "excessive pruning." Danbury, Connecticut, charged a resident $200,000 for leaving his yard messy. Bargil notes, "It's pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow." In just five and a half years, Dunedin collected $3.6 million in fines. But by then, I and others had noticed. We were reporting on Dunedin's heavy fines. So did the politicians sheepishly acknowledge that they had milked citizens with excessive fines and give the money back? Of course not. They hired a PR firm. That cost taxpayers another $25,000 a month. Politicians care mostly about themselves. After the Institute for Justice filed a second lawsuit, Dunedin agreed that Ficken could pay less: $10,000. Still too much, but Ficken agreed. "Our Founders," says Bargil, "recognized that the ability to fine is the ability to cripple. It's one of the ways, other than incarceration, that government can really oppress." Government routinely oppresses. For six long years, Dunedin's politicians oppressed Jim Ficken. COPYRIGHT 2025 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. The post The Government Threatened To Seize His Home Over Tall Grass appeared first on
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court Has an Opportunity To Correct Its Kelo Eminent Domain Error
One of the U.S. Supreme Court may soon overturn one of its worst decisions in recent memory—a ruling that justified government stealing property from its owners to pass it to better-connected private parties. On Friday, the court will decide whether to consider a New York case that could upset the precedents set by Kelo v. New London, an eminent domain battle that prompted books, a movie, and state-level legal reforms. While Kelo was a loss for anybody who wants to set boundaries around government power, the court could take the opportunity this week to set things right with Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency. In dissenting to the majority's 2005 decision in Kelo allowing the taking of a house owned by Susette Kelo by the city government of New London, Connecticut to transfer it to a favored developer, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor quoted Calder v. Bull (1798): "[A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it." "Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," O'Connor added. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded—i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public—in the process." That dissent was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Also agreeing with the dissenters were a great many Americans horrified that the Supreme Court had signed off on the confiscation of private property so long as a potential new owner could show spiffy plans for the confiscated parcels and promise greater tax revenue. It wouldn't even have to be a fulfilled promise—Susette Kelo's house remained undeveloped when financing for the project fell through. The response to Kelo included books, a movie—Little Pink House—and a wave of state-level court decisions and legislative efforts intended to rein-in the abuse of eminent domain. "Since Kelo v. New London, 47 states have strengthened their protections against eminent domain abuse, either through legislation or state supreme court decisions," notes the Institute for Justice (I.J.). Of course, not all the reforms were created equal. I.J. grades the various efforts, with states like Florida getting an "A" grade and Connecticut—where the Kelo case occurred—lagging with a "D." A 2009 study found that "states with more economic freedom, greater value of new housing construction, and less racial and income inequality are more likely to have enacted stronger restrictions, and sooner" on eminent domain. And then there's New York. I.J. gives that state an "F" because it failed to even attempt reform. In 2009, that state's highest court conceded "it may be that the bar has now been set too low" as it approved seizure of private property for redevelopment. "But any such limitation upon the sovereign power of eminent domain as it has come to be defined in the urban renewal context is a matter for the Legislature, not the courts." The legislature never acted. So, it's no surprise that Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency comes from the Empire State. Nor is it a surprise that the circumstances seem so familiar. "Bryan Bowers and his business partner Mike Licata purchased property across the street from a new hospital in Utica, New York," according to Andrew Wimer of I.J., which represents the plaintiffs in the case. "The property was taken through eminent domain by the Oneida County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA) and given to their potential competitors to be used for parking." That is, local officials used eminent domain to favor one private party over another in a raw case of crony capitalism that violated private property rights and free market principles. In arguing for the Supreme Court to take the case, Bowers and I.J. point out that "lower courts disagree about how to implement Kelo's caveats about development plans and identified private beneficiaries. The result…is a patchwork of conflicting rules." In particular, they say, New York applies minimal scrutiny to eminent domain cases even when the grounds for seizing property are obviously bogus. "New York's courts have long held that evidence of pretext is legally irrelevant in takings cases." Bowers and company also urge the court to "consider whether Kelo should be overturned" given that four justices have publicly called for reconsidering or overturning that decision. In an amicus brief filed in support of Bowers, the Cato Institute and Ilya Somin of George Mason University explicitly argue that the Supreme Court "should overrule Kelo because it is deeply at odds with the text and original meaning of the Public Use Clause and is also marred by other errors." Emphasizing America's strong history of respect for private property, they argue that "an interpretation of the Public Use Clause that gives government a near-blank check to take property for transfer to private parties is deeply at odds with this commitment to the protection of property rights." Ironically, while establishment defenders of the powers-that-be cheered the Kelo decision—The New York Times editorialized that it was "a welcome vindication of cities' ability to act in the public interest"—it so shocked Americans that it breathed new life into efforts to restrain government's ability to seize homes, businesses, and land. Far from the "setback to the 'property rights' movement" that the Times' editorial board celebrated in 2005, it reignited interest in protecting private property. That revived interest resulted in reforms to eminent domain in many states and localities. It alerted the public that takings of private property are often corrupt, performed by politicians to reward friends and allies. And it reminded us that property rights are inextricable from other protections for our liberty. "The Court has elsewhere recognized 'the overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic,'" Justice Thomas commented in his own dissent to Kelo. "Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not." On Friday, March 21, the Supreme Court is scheduled to decide whether to hear Bowers' case—and potentially to reconsider the mistake it made with Kelo. The post The Supreme Court Has an Opportunity To Correct Its Kelo Eminent Domain Error appeared first on
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Government Says Money Isn't Property—So It Can Take Yours
As a lawyer who sues the government, you get used to the different kinds of arguments that government lawyers use to justify abuses of individual rights—sweeping claims of government power, bad-faith procedural obstacles, and more. This was a new one: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that confiscating $50,000 from a small business did not infringe the business' right to private property because money is not property. "Money is not necessarily 'property' for constitutional purposes," the government's brief declared—putting the very idea of property in square quotes. Reading at my desk, I practically fell out of my chair. The DOJ gave three rationales for the argument, all packed into a doorstopper of a footnote: (1) the government creates money, so you can't own it; (2) the government can tax your money, so you don't own it; and (3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the "general welfare." If a libertarian was asked to write a satire of a government lawyer's brief, this is what they might come up with. But here it was, in black and white. Whose money, specifically, was the government saying wasn't property? That of Chuck Saine, the owner of C.S. Lawn & Landscaping, a small landscaping business outside Annapolis, Maryland, which he has operated for over 40 years. Saine became a client of the Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public interest law firm, when the federal government sought to impose over $50,000 in liability on his business through a "trial" held deep inside the bowls of a federal administrative agency. At said trial, both the prosecutor and the judge were employed by the same federal agency. I.J. sued, arguing that before the government can impose that kind of liability, it has to provide a real trial before a real judge and jury. The specifics of what the government claims Saine did wrong (in short: arcane labor law) are beside the point. If the government wants to confiscate over $50,000 from your business, you must have the chance to argue your defense to an impartial judge and jury—not an agency bureaucrat. Now, the DOJ argued that Saine has no right to a real judge and jury because the government was only trying to take his money, not his property. They claimed that fiat currency is a legal fiction that the government can as easily destroy as create. Lest anyone miss the implicit connection to the history of the gold standard, DOJ's footnote prominently cited the Legal Tender Cases—where the Supreme Court upheld laws forcing people to accept paper currency, rather than gold and silver, as payment for debts. This was an argument for taking Saine's $50,000 without a trial before a real judge and jury, but the same argument could be used to justify all manner of mischief. If your money is not your property, what is to stop the government from just seizing all of it tomorrow—for any reason it gives? Before you run out and trade your USD for meme coins, let me reassure you: DOJ's argument is wrong. The Due Process Clause applies to "life, liberty, or property," and the Supreme Court has repeatedly applied that Clause to money. It follows that, since money is neither life nor liberty, it must be property. To be sure, DOJ's arguments have force as a philosophical critique of government, taxation, and the monetary system. They may also highlight legitimate reasons to hold part of your wealth in gold or (for some) cryptocurrency. But "for constitutional purposes," to borrow a phrase from the DOJ, the arguments are a flop. A federal court will soon decide whether to uphold Saine's right to a trial before an impartial judge and jury. Hopefully, the court will agree: Money is property, and an agency bureaucrat is not an impartial judge. The post The Government Says Money Isn't Property—So It Can Take Yours appeared first on
