Category: litigation

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litigation tax policy

Humbled in Humboldt County

Humboldt County, property rights, Institute for Justice

For years, the county clobbered property owners with fines of “$10,000 or more per day for offenses they did not commit,” reports the Institute for Justice, which has represented several of the harassed residents.

More than 1,200 property owners in Humboldt County, California, were hit with such fines for growing pot despite only one form of evidence: old satellite images of their property. Followed by, often, no further investigation.

Among the victims: Corrine and Doug Thomas, whom the county charged more than a million dollars. They were also supposed to pay $200,000 to demolish a barn near their home because a prior owner had grown marijuana there. Another owner, Blu Graham, tried in 2018 to get a hearing to show that his greenhouses contained vegetables, not marijuana. As he waited year after year, the fines piled up.

Finally, in 2022, these and others targeted by the county sued in federal court with IJ’s help.

After some ups and downs, a court of appeals affirmed the plausibility of the plaintiffs’ claims, and the prospect of a trial motivated county officials to settle.

The county has withdrawn the fines, retracted the arbitrary allegations, and agreed to give owners 30 days warning in which to counter an accusation before the county acts further. No fines are to be levied until a case is decided. New owners cannot be punished for what previous owners did. Etc. 

And the county must pay the plaintiffs’ litigation costs.

This is Common Sense. Let’s hope it sticks.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall litigation partisanship

Maddened in Michigan

Michigan, petition, initiative, deadlock, democracy, voting

“It’s not every day that Michigan’s bureaucracy violates state and federal law while disenfranchising more than 700,000 Michigan voters,” opens the legal brief filed in the Michigan Supreme Court last Thursday by Americans for Citizen Voting – Michigan. “But that’s exactly what happened [last] week.”

The group (which I chair) has worked for the last year to place the Citizen Only Voting Amendment on Michigan’s November ballot. It makes two basic reforms: requires the Secretary of State to check the voter rolls, identifying and removing noncitizens in a fair process, and requires photo identification to cast a ballot.

Last week, the Board of State Canvassers, two appointed Democrats and two appointed Republicans, deadlocked repeatedly, 2-2, on counting petition signatures even when they agreed that the signer was a registered Michigan voter, and then, on whether to certify the issue for the ballot. 

“The initiative’s sample was left just three signatures short of certification for the ballot,” Sen. Ruth Johnson explained in The Detroit News, “after Democrats on the board refused to count the signatures of nine Michigan voters whose identities had been verified by a notary public, and who signed affidavits under penalty of perjury that the signatures on the petitions in question were theirs.”

“These are real affidavits from real people who are real voters who signed these petitions,” Republican Board Chair Richard Housekamp implored his two Democratic colleagues. 

“The signature matches,” acknowledged Democratic Vice-Chair Mary Ellen Gurewitz, “but whether it should be counted . . . um . . . I think we should decide later.”

“So, you’re going to hold the voter hostage is what I hear you saying,” Housekamp replied.

“You should not have to stop to check the count,” wrote Johnson, a former Secretary of State, “before giving credit for a signature you have already acknowledged is valid. . . .

“Two unelected members of an obscure state board,” she concluded, “cannot be allowed to strip away the constitutional rights of nearly one in 10 adults in our state who signed a petition to place this issue before voters.”

That’s why we and the 700,000 Michiganders who signed our petition want our day in court. Left without any response at all from Michigan’s Democrat-dominated Supreme Court, on Monday we filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Yesterday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh ordered the Michigan Secretary of State, Bureau of Elections and Board of State Canvassers to respond to our appeal by noon today. Our day is coming.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption international affairs litigation

U.S. Aided Brazilian Tyranny?

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, Brazil, corruption, freedom

In a case with “serious repercussions,” insists journalist Brazilian-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald, a “U.S. federal judge concluded that an immigration record entered in the Customs and Border Protection system during the Biden administration was fraudulent.” 

While the idea of fraudulent behavior in a government bureau will hardly shock you, this record was special. It was used to imprison a Brazilian official.

The official? Filipe Martins. He filed suit in the U.S., and as a result a truth came out. “The fraudulent record reflected a non-existent entry into the U.S. by the national security advisor to former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Greenwald explains. “The fabricated entry was then somehow obtained and used by a controversial Brazilian Supreme Court judge to imprison that national security official.”

Behind all this lurks a rogue Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes. He’s Brazil’s éminence grise, exercising enormous power in his country far beyond his constitutional authority. He’s basically the country’s unacknowledged dictator. He hates free speech, as his run-ins with Twitter (X) and Elon Musk show. 

Moraes was gung ho for tyranny during the Biden years, but is justice catching up with this “justice”? U.S. intelligence agencies appear to have secretly nurtured the rogue judge, but with the change of administrations has come an official antagonism.

Now ramped up by a federal judge in the current case — which is “increasingly suspect and bizarre,” as Greenwald notes. “The political implications are obvious: did Biden officials — overtly hostile to the Bolsonaro government and strongly supportive of Lula — deliberately manufacture an immigration record to permit Moraes to order this top-level Brazilian official imprisoned unjustly?”

Americans traditionally think that their government shouldn’t meddle in the internal affairs of foreign states. We certainly shouldn’t allow our government to work sub rosa against freedom around the world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights litigation national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Visas for 1st Amendment Foes?

Marco Rubio, censorship, travel visas, foreign policy, 1st Amendment, free speech

Last December, the U.S. State Department imposed visa bans on five persons who, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”

But is it okay for the U.S. government to withhold visas from foreigners acting to undermine the freedom of speech of Americans?

Not okay! says a judge trying to put a halt to the administration’s withholding of visas from foreign officials and others who push for such censorship.

Why? Because noncitizens “could reasonably understand the policy to place their immigration status at risk — not because they wield foreign sovereign power or facilitate ​its censorship, but simply because they work in content moderation.” 

The don’t-attack-freedom-of-speech requirement is said to unlawfully burden noncitizen speech.

Of course, to withhold or revoke a visa does not stop anyone’s speech. The persons thus deprived are at liberty to keep demanding the curtailing of online U.S. speech. They’re not being tossed in the hoosegow.

The judge’s stance could be used to waylay any attempt to counteract specific coercive actions by noncitizens to undermine U.S. freedoms, whether originating from Brussels or Beijing. All such attacks manifest the actors’ often-articulated viewpoints.

Indeed, some persons contend that ejecting formerly visa-equipped foreign students from the U.S. for terrorizing Jewish students and vandalizing campuses are suffering from violations of freedom of speech. This is incorrect. No foreign-based soldiers in a war against U.S. freedoms possess an inalienable right to condition-free visas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets litigation U.S. Constitution

Punish Energy Producers?

global warming, climate, hysteria, courts, litigation, lawsuit, socialism, government

The latest attempt to hamper our ability to do things? A series of lawsuits against oil companies for allegedly committing global warming. The plaintiffs want billions and billions to be extracted from these companies for fueling civilization.

Litigation before the Supreme Court, Suncor v. Boulder County, is “one of the most consequential energy cases in decades,” argue Michael Toth and Sarah Harbison in the New York Post. 

Boulder County is just one of many seeking to make oil and gas companies fork over massive damages. 

To whom? Entities like Boulder County.

The high court’s response will help determine the viability of future such litigation and “whether the United States remains an energy superpower.”

Energy superpower status is not what people trying to drive their cars and heat their homes at a reasonable cost are worried about. If the court accepts the plaintiffs’ reasoning, the sky’s the limit as far as the liability of the energy industry. 

And those new sky-high liability costs for gas and oil providers will result in new sky-high costs for you and me.

Looting all of us is fine with lawsuit supporters like David Bookbinder of Environmental Integrity Project. “This is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax,” Toth and Harbison claim. “The people who use the products pay for the damage that they cause.”

The Post’s authors urge the Supreme Court to “shut down” this attempt to circumvent the Constitution. And confirm that U.S. energy policy “can’t be dictated by local lawsuits.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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litigation Second Amendment rights

The 26-Year Assault Is Over

guns, second amendment, 2nd amendmenet, self defense, Constitution, rights

After more than a quarter century of litigation against gun makers, it’s over. The Indiana Supreme Court has called a definite halt to the town of Gary’s long streak of legal harassment by dismissing its lawsuit in a 4-1 ruling.

Gary’s petition to transfer jurisdiction of the lawsuit had been made in order to keep it alive. The court had to decide the fate of that maneuver. After stating briefly that all materials had been reviewed that needed to be reviewed and all parties heard that needed to be heard, the court announced that it “DENIES the petition to transfer,” affirming the decision of an appeals court. The USACarry story about the case links to the appeals court’s lengthy decision.

Both rulings had been preceded by a state law passed in 2024 stipulating that only the state itself — basically, the attorney general — can file such a suit on behalf of cities or counties. The incumbent is uninterested in doing so.

Gary, Indiana, initiated its action against a laundry list of gun makers, distributors and dealers in August 1999. The suit accused them of culpability for crimes committed with the weapons they had brought into the marketplace. At the time, making and marketing guns was legal; still is. 

So the suit was manifestly absurd from the outset.

Perhaps cities contemplating litigation against baseball bat makers and steak knife vendors will accept the lesson.

So it’s finally finished. At least this particular attempt to nullify our Second Amendment rights is finally over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law litigation partisanship

Un-Redistricting Virginia

Gerrymander, Virginia, Circuit Court, voting, elections, democracy

A circuit court has ruled that Virginia’s new voter-passed congressional map, gerrymandered to give Democrats in the state a prohibitive advantage in the next congressional election, is unconstitutional.

Judge Jack Hurley, of the Circuit Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the 29th Judicial Circuit, Tazewell County, denied a motion to stay his injunction blocking certification of the election using the new districts. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli reports that once a final order is drafted and entered, “it will be immediately appealed.”

If the rejiggering survives the challenge, it could be the factor that tips the balance in the House of Representatives toward the Democrats next November.

Cuccinelli, who is now national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, had been saying that passage of the gerrymander would not be the last word. In their rush to get the measure to voters and enacted before November 2026, lawmakers ignored sundry constitutional requirements.

The 2024 special session that took up the redistricting measure had been convened to legislate about the budget. “Its governing resolution limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.”

Also, says Cuccinelli, the state constitution requires that “an election must intervene between first and second passage” of a proposed constitutional amendment. “Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.”

Among other problems is the constitutional stipulation that “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed map violates this requirement “badly.”

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, and this partisan map must go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fourth Amendment rights litigation

The C-word in Surveillance

4th Amendment, search, surveillance, Constitution, cars

Is unconstitutionality like obscenity? — we can’t define it, but know it when we see it.

Take San Jose, California, and its automatic license plate reader system. I might not win an argument explaining how San Jose’s public surveillance relates to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. But. . . .

That amendment insists that people have a right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and that governments may not search and seize property without a warrant “upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

How does one’s public goings-about in cars that are drivable only with a state-mandated license plate amount to something that must not be searched or surveilled? Our driving on roads is all out in the open, after all, not private. 

Maybe we should stress the Fourth’s narrow guideline: warrants must describe the place to be searched, and the persons.

Broad-based tracking flouts that narrow stricture.

But really, I’m biased: mass surveillance is Orwellian. Do we want our government keeping track of us that much?

Especially as in San Jose, where not only can over a thousand police department employees scour the data sans any legal warrant, but the department also shares this resource with over 300 agencies across the state.

Creepy. That’s the word for it.

And that’s the word used by Institute for Justice lawyers who filed a lawsuit against San Jose’s practice.

Jacob Sullum’s article in Reason explains the legal arguments carefully as well as the many ways the information can be weaponized to, for example, retaliate against protesters. 

Information is power, after all. And in the wrong hands . . . creepy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary litigation regulation

Justice Delayed Forever

Boeing, justice, liability, crony

In 2023, the families of persons who had died because of Boeing’s lies about safety were told that it was too early to challenge the Justice Department’s deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with Boeing. Now, in 2026, the same Fifth Circuit says that their challenge is too late.

When was the perfect Goldilocks moment? When was lawyer Paul Cassell supposed to challenge, on behalf of his clients, “the Justice Department’s 2021 deferred prosecution agreement and 2025 non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with Boeing”?

Cassell reports that several years ago, Boeing “lied to the FAA about the safety of its new 737 MAX aircraft.” After Justice investigated, it charged Boeing with a criminal conspiracy — yet immediately signed a “sweetheart DPA” that let Boeing avoid a criminal conviction so long as it paid penalties and compensation to the families. 

And promised to do better.

In court, the families proved that the Justice Department had hidden the agreement from them even though legally obliged to consult with them. The same judge who acknowledged this in 2022 went on to rule, in 2023, that there was nothing he could do.

Appealing that decision, Cassell was next foiled by the Fifth Circuit, which ruled in December 2023 that any relief for the families was “premature.” Now, many complications later, the Fifth Circuit has “simply ignored its previous promises.”

With Boeing suffering no proportionate consequences for its incompetence and dishonesty about safety, it is just a matter of time before similar cases are repeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Internet controversy litigation

Sony’s Scam Scuttled

Supreme Court, copyright, censorship, free speech, property

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can’t be forced to deprive customers of Internet access on the basis of an unverified complaint about copyright violation. And can’t be held liable for refusing to kill a customer’s access.

The ruling holds that a service provider “is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement. . . .”

The plaintiff? Sony. 

The defendant? Cox Communications. 

According to the ruling, Sony “alleged that Cox contributed to its users’ infringement by continuing to provide Internet service to subscribers whose IP addresses Cox knew were associated with infringement.”

Of course, Cox cannot “know” that a user had infringed some copyright merely because it got an automated notice that a user had done so. Cox is just an Internet service provider, not a judge, jury, or hander-out of penalties for unestablished crimes.

Had the high court ruled otherwise, the consequences would have been dire.

“Under the legal standard the labels wanted,” Reclaim the Net observes, “an ISP that received enough of these automated complaints and didn’t disconnect the account could face catastrophic financial liability. A Virginia jury bought that theory in 2019 and hit Cox with a verdict of over $1 billion.”

The decision bodes well for rulings on other attempts to transform ISPs — or PC operating systems, satellites, or any other gateway to modern life — into instant wielders of crippling punishment . . . no trial, no judgment, no justice allowed. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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