Wilmington, Del.—Wilmington contracts out its municipal impound system to private towing companies and funds the whole system by letting these companies wrongfully take and keep people’s cars. The city pays these companies nothing for their services, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The price of Wilmington’s “cost-free†impound services falls squarely on vehicle owners in Wilmington, who are at risk of losing their cars to an impound system woefully deficient of due process that profits off scrapping the cars they tow. Two victims of Wilmington’s tow-and-impound racket, Ameera Shaheed and Earl Dickerson, represented by the Institute for Justice (IJ), today filed a lawsuit seeking to bring an end to Wilmington’s unconstitutional impound system.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were acts of unspeakable evil. The lives taken were awful tragedies. But the evil and tragedy of 9/11 were only compounded many times over by how we reacted then and since.We have allowed terror to take us over. Over and over again, we have let the government use terror to manipulate us into surrendering our precious liberties for the promise of safety.And yet our power-hungry protectors never seem to deliver on that promise. Both the Global War on Terror and the Global War on COVID have proven to be abject failures.If we keep this up for much longer, we won’t have any liberties left to surrender. In that scenario, none of us (and none of our descendants) will be safe from our “protectors.”Then the terrorists will truly have won.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, continue to cast a long shadow over American life. Twenty years later, at home and abroad, the world is more chaotic and less free because the U.S. government exploited our fear to erode our liberties and launch two disastrous foreign wars.Today's defining crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, has created another opportunity to restrict freedom in the name of protecting us from a fearsome enemy—in this case, a viral infection. So what will the world look like 20 years from now?
Red flag gun laws push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
Jerry Johnson flew to Phoenix with $39,500 and the intention of returning home with a semi-truck from an Arizona auction house, but instead he returned to Charlotte without his money and without a truck. After his $39,500 in cash was seized by law enforcement at the Phoenix airport, Jerry fought for its return in court.Under Arizona law, there is a two-step process. First, the property owner has the burden to show ownership, and, second, the government has the burden to prove that the money was connected to a crime. But instead, an Arizona Superior Court judge combined these two steps and placed the whole burden on Jerry and none on the government. The judge ruled that Jerry failed to prove he owned the cash that was seized from him because he could not prove the cash wasn’t connected to any crimes. Now, Jerry is teaming up with the Institute for Justice to appeal the civil forfeiture of his money and ensure that no one has to prove their innocence to keep their own property.
The Sheriff’s Office of Pasco County, Florida, harasses people in their own homes using a method they call “predictive policing.†The program has unfolded like a dystopian nightmare for the Pasco County residents it has ensnared, who have been subjected to near-constant police surveillance and harassment. The Sheriff’s Office claims the program’s goal is to predict and prevent crime before it happens by targeting people they suspect may commit crimes in the future, dubbing the approach “intelligence-led policing.†This euphemism may make it seem like there’s thoughtfulness to the approach, but there’s nothing fair or smart about it.
Most people accept that the government can fine you a small amount for parking illegally. But can the government cripple you financially for how you park your car on your very own driveway?In Lantana, Florida, that is exactly what happened to local homeowner Sandy Martinez. The city fined her more than $100,000—at a rate of $250 per day—for violating an ordinance regulating how one can park their car on their own driveway. When stacked on top of the astronomical fines the city imposed for two other trivial code violations—$47,375 for a storm-damaged fence and $16,125 for cracks in her driveway, each of which she fixed as soon as she could afford to—Lantana has fined Sandy over $165,000. That outrageous amount is nearly four times her annual income and more than half the value of her home.But the government cannot lock you into a lifetime of crushing debt for such harmless code infractions. That is because Florida’s Constitution clearly forbids “excessive fines.†This protection enshrines a centuries-old axiom: The punishment must fit the crime. By trying to impose ruinous fines on Sandy for such minor infractions, Lantana is violating Sandy’s constitutional right to be free from excessive fines. To fight back, she’s teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to file a lawsuit in Florida state court to hold the city accountable for this unconstitutional behavior.
A bipartisan group in Congress has introduced the so-called “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act Of 2021,†which would expand the surveillance and police powers of the national security state in the name of combatting homegrown extremism.
Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians alike must stand firm against the latest push to infringe on civil liberties in the name of combating “domestic terror.†Otherwise, sweeping powers granted amid crisis will undoubtedly be used against millions of Americans who did nothing wrong on January 6.
