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Nepali Immigrants Sue Kentucky Over Law That Stopped Them from Opening a Home Health Care Business

December 4, 2019

Homeowners Seek Rehearing in House-Destruction Case

November 25, 2019

Less than 1% of the nearly 10,000 charities rated have received at least 18 consecutive 4-star ratings

Pennsylvania Women Denied the Right to Work Win First Round in Suit Against the Pennsylvania Cosmetology Board

PHILADELPHIA—Today, a three-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania denied the Cosmetology Board’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two Philadelphia-area women who want to end an unconstitutional requirement that stands in the way of their careers. The Board used Courtney Haveman’s and Amanda Spillane’s past legal problems to deny them the right…

Nevada Families Win First Round in Fight to Restore Tax Credits for Scholarships

Lawsuit maintaining that the Legislature ignored the state’s Constitution to reduce support for educational choice will proceed

Las Vegas, Nev.—Today, Clark County District Court Judge Rob Bare handed Nevada families a first-round win in their constitutional challenge to a 2019 law that eliminated the automatic annual increase in the amount of tax credits available for donors to the Nevada Educational Choice Scholarship Program. Attorneys for the state were seeking to dismiss the…

Lawsuit Challenges Arizona Engineering Licensing Law

Institute for Justice Partners with Engineer to Challenge Law Requiring Engineers to Obtain License to Call Themselves Engineers or to Be Entrepreneurs

From satellites in space to circuits for flashlights, Greg Mills has spent his entire career working as an engineer designing and building electronics. But earlier this year, a group of industry insiders sitting on a government board abruptly put Greg’s career on ice. Now he’s fighting back. Greg’s resume reads like a veritable who’s-who of…

Nepali Immigrants Sue Kentucky Over Law That Stopped Them from Opening a Home Health Care Business

Kentucky’s certificate of need law lets large providers monopolize home health in most of the state

Louisville, Ky.—Dipendra Tiwari saw an urgent need for Nepali speakers to receive home health care from workers who understood their language and culture. With thousands of Nepali immigrants living in the Louisville area, he hoped to open a modest business that would employ nurses and health aides qualified to offer services to both the Nepali…

North Dakota Health Department Guts Food Freedom Law

Legislative Committee Approves Department’s Request to Stymie Local Entrepreneurs

Bismarck, N.D.—Today, the North Dakota Legislative Assembly’s Administrative Rules Committee approved rules to significantly weaken the state’s food freedom law. The Institute for Justice (IJ) has repeatedly urged the Legislature and the state Department of Health not to adopt rules that will significantly impair people’s ability to run their homemade food businesses. The law, which…

IJ Applauds Texas’ Proposal to Stop Denying Security Licenses for Unrelated Criminal Convictions

Arlington, Va.—On Friday, the Institute for Justice (IJ) submitted comments to the Texas Department of Public Safety supporting rules proposed on October 25, 2019. The rules ease licensing burdens on people with unrelated criminal records who now want to work in the private security industry. Enforcing a new Texas law and directive by Governor Greg Abbott,…

Homeowners Seek Rehearing in House-Destruction Case

National law firm joins the Lech family’s fight for compensation after police destroy their house in pursuit of shoplifter

Arlington, Va.—If the government needs to destroy your home to build a freeway or a school, the Constitution entitles you to just compensation. But what if the government needs to destroy your home for some other reason—say, to capture a fugitive who has randomly taken refuge in your house while fleeing the police? Does the…

Our Issues

Educational Choice

School choice is simply the idea that all parents, regardless of means, should enjoy the freedom to choose what schools their children attend.
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Economic Liberty

The right to earn a living in the occupation of your choice without unnecessary government interference is at the heart of the American Dream.
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First Amendment

We seek to defend the free flow of information—information that is indispensable to our democratic form of government and to our free enterprise economy.
more on this issue »
Private Property

Respecting the right of private property is essential to a just and prosperous society. But government at all levels—local, state and federal—routinely infringe on these rights.
more on this issue »

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October 24, 2019 | Strategic Research

The Price of Taxation by Citation

Case Studies of Three Georgia Cities That Rely Heavily on Fines and Fees
June 7, 2019 | Strategic Research

Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue?

Testing Opposing Views of Forfeiture

Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts

Miami Shores Village, Fla., told Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts to remove their front-yard vegetable garden or face $50 a day in fines. But trees, fruit and garden gnomes are just fine.

Captain Matthew Hight

Cynthia Perry

IJ client Cynthia Perry wants to send her daughter, Faith, to a private school in North Carolina, but she cannot afford the tuition on her own. She needs the financial lifeline of an Opportunity Scholarship.

Jim Ficken

Jim Ficken is a 69-year-old retiree living in a modest two-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Dunedin, Florida. For letting his lawn grow too long, Jim faces nearly $29,000 in fines and has been threatened with foreclosure.

Jeff Hirsch

Jeff has spent almost 30 years building a successful small business with his brothers, distributing candy, snacks and other goods to convenience stores throughout Long Island. But the government raided the business’s bank account using civil forfeiture—taking $446,000 and nearly destroying the family business. T

Carter Walker

Carter Walker is a reporter covering the county government for the Lancaster, Pennsylvania newspaper. To shine a light on forfeiture spending by the Lancaster County DA, he filed a request, which was denied. Carter appealed to Pennsylvania’s Office of Open Records and won, but now the DA is fighting in court to keep this information secret.

Lynn Schofield

Growing up in the Ivory Coast, Lynn Schofield learned to braid from her family. When Lynn moved to Louisiana, she opened her own braiding salon that once had more than 20 employees. But that all changed in 2003, when the Board began requiring braiders to obtain a license.

Archdiocese of Newark

The Archdiocese of Newark is one of the largest in terms of population in the U.S., with nearly 1.3 million Catholics and 219 parishes. The Archdiocese is fighting a New Jersey law that makes it a crime to sell monuments, such as headstones, to their parishioners.

James Jenkins

James Jenkins, along with his husband, is the co-owner of Valancourt Books in Richmond, Virginia, which specializes in reviving and popularizing rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction.

Laura Pekarik

IJ client Laura Pekarik is an entrepreneurial dynamo who owns and operates the Cupcakes for Courage food truck.

Aicheria Bell

Aicheria Bell lives in Des Moines. She is passionate about natural hair care and has been braiding hair since she was three years old.

Christos and Markela Sourovelis

Chris and Markela Sourovelis worked their whole lives to build a home for their family. Officials in Philadelphia then tried to use civil forfeiture to take it all away, even though Chris and Markela did nothing wrong.

Richard Beyer

Richard and his business partner poured thousands of hours of sweat equity into renovating the two homes and the lots they purchased in New London, Conn.

Lyndon McLellan

Lyndon McLellan has spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience Mart in rural North Carolina. Then, without any warning, agents from the IRS seized his entire bank account, totaling more than $107,000.

Flor Morency

Flor Morency is the mother of twin children, a boy and a girl, who have received scholarships through Nevada’s program. But in July, Morency was told that her children could no longer receive a scholarship because a new state law made it statistically impossible to grant scholarships to all renewing students.

John Rinaldi

When John tried to expand his cab business to Bowling Green, he was stymied by a city law that limited the number of taxis allowed in the city to only 16. Less than two months after he filed a lawsuit, Bowling Green repealed the cap.

Norys Hernandez

Norys Hernandez co-owns a home in North Philadelphia with her sister, who resides there. Norys has never been in trouble with the law. But her home was seized after her nephew was caught selling a small amount of drugs outside the home.

Benigno Diaz

Benny Diaz owns and operates the “Taco Trap” food truck. But he can’t sell his tacos in Fort Pierce, Florida because the city bans all food trucks within 500 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

John Rosemond

John Rosemond’s lawsuit defends freedom of speech and freedom of the press from government officials who believe that it can be a crime in America to express an opinion in a newspaper.

Grace Granatelli

After obtaining her private certifications in canine massage therapy, Grace started volunteering with rescue agencies and adoption events to provide canine massage for ailing and neglected dogs. She later turned her volunteer hobby into a business, which she named Pawsitive Touch.

Michael Nolan

Michael loves Charleston and plans to tell its story to visitors, but he will do so because he has a right to say what he wants—not because the city has given him its permission.

Lij Shaw

Elijah “Lij” Shaw is a single father and lifelong record producer and recorded nationally renowned, Grammy Award-winning performers like Adele, John Oates, Jack White and Wilco. After his daughter was born, Lij decided to convert his garage into a soundproofed recording studio, which he used without any complaints for over a decade. But now Nashville is threatening to destroy Lij’s investment and uproot him from his neighborhood.

Korver Ear Nose and Throat LLC

Korver Ear Nose and Throat LLC owns a recently constructed medical facility in Orange City, Iowa. It would like to convert the lower level of this facility into an outpatient surgery center, but does not want to incur the enormous time, expense, and uncertainty of going through the certificate of need process, only to be denied because of its competitor’s opposition.

Anubis and Ramses Avalos

Dipendra Tiwari

Lissette Waugh

Nevada is trying to force makeup artistry instructors, like IJ client Lissette Waugh, to get a license they don’t need.

Heather Coffy

Heather is a single mom and has three children she wants to participate in Indiana’s school choice program.

Dr. Lee Birchansky

Recognized as one of the top ophthalmologists in the country, Dr. Lee Birchansky seeks to offer the kind of medical innovation Iowans need.

Aaron and Monica Cannon

Brian Berube

Brian Berube, owner of the Lonesome Dove saloon in Mandan, North Dakota, started his business with August “Augie” Kersten 28 years ago. The two commissioned a mural, which the city wants to take down.

Gerardo Serrano

Gerardo Serrano owns a Ford F-250 pickup that was seized by Customs and Border Protection for civil forfeiture in September 2015. CBP seized the truck because they found five bullets in the center console, claiming they were “munitions of war.” After almost two years without a judge hearing his case, Gerardo joined with the Institute for Justice in September 2017 to file a lawsuit to get his truck back. Gerardo also filed suit on behalf of all U.S. citizens who have had vehicles seized by CBP, seeking an order requiring the agency to provide a prompt hearing whenever they take vehicles for civil forfeiture.

Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, Inc

Founded in 2011, ROSE is an Atlanta-based, nonprofit organization that works to increase access to breastfeeding support and improve healthcare equity among African-American communities in Georgia and around the country.

Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto

Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto, a Democrat representing Bernalillo County, carried the Forfeiture Reform bill on the floor of the Senate.

Carl and Joy Gamble

Norwood, Ohio wanted to bulldoze Carl and Joy’s home of more than three decades to make way for a private developer.

Markela Sourovelis

In May 2014, Philadelphia police showed up unannounced at Markela’s home and tried to seize the home through civil forfeiture because her son had been caught selling a small amount of drugs outside the home. After a year of uncertainty, the city agreed to stop seizing people’s homes without warning and forcing people to give up their constitutional rights and kick out family members. Even better—Markela’s son was allowed back home.

Wendy Robin

Wendy trained as a makeup artist in Hollywood and has over 20 years of experience working with celebrities. But in Nevada, teaching others how to apply makeup without a government-issued license can subject you to up to $2,000 in fines.

Della Sims

Della Sims is a retired postal worker who has rented from Josefina Lozano in Zion, Illinois since 1998. She’s fighting back against the city’s warrantless rental inspections.

Joey Vanoni

The owner and operator of the Pizza di Joey food truck, Joey is challenging Baltimore’s 300-foot rule because it threatens his lifelong dream of owning his own pizza business. He also believes that the city shouldn’t be limiting hungry Baltimoreans’ dining choices.

Jameelah El-Shabazz

In 2011, police raided Jameelah El-Shabazz’s apartment in New York City and found several cups filled with crushed eggshells, which Jameelah uses for religious purposes. Believing the cups were filled with drugs, police arrested Jameelah and her son Akin and held them in jail for a week. They also had her apartment closed . City attorneys, relying on those same discredited allegations about the cups of crushed eggshells, claimed the apartment had been the site of drug crimes, and had her apartment closed under the city’s no-fault eviction ordinance. Unable to fight back in court, Jameelah had to agree to permanently bar her son from her home in order to regain access to her own apartment.

Mike Warfield

Fed up with Charleston’s endless series of trivial questions, Mike is standing up for his First Amendment right to talk to paying customers without first getting the government’s permission.

Jean Soderlind

Tour guides are storytellers, and the government can’t be in the business of deciding who is (or who is not) allowed to tell stories.

Teresa Quinones

Teresa Quinones, of Lawrenceville, Ga., is a mother of three young children. Her two oldest children, Audri and Christopher, attend Notre Dame Academy, thanks to Georgia’s Scholarship Tax-Credit Program.

Greg Mills

Linda Cameron

Linda Cameron has been living in the same Richland, Washington home for nearly 40 years. After consulting with a builder, Linda decided to turn her outdated carport into a garage and add a second bedroom and bathroom. But Richland won’t give her a building permit unless she pays over $60,000 in “impact fees.”

Josh Craven

Josh grew up in Pleasant Ridge and he cannot realistically afford to own a home anywhere else.

Celeste Kelly

IJ client Celeste Kelly spent hundreds of hours learning about horses in order to obtain private certifications in animal massage. But now the state of Arizona is forcing her to become a licensed veterinarian to continue practicing her craft.

Dan Staackmann

Dan Staackmann is the founder and president of Upton’s Naturals, an independently-owned, ethical vegan food company based in Chicago. Mississippi’s ban on using “veggie burgers” and other meat terms in their labeling will have a devastating effect on companies like Upton’s Naturals.

Sage Lewis

Sage Lewis pioneered an innovative community for the homeless on his commercial property at 15 Broad Street in Akron, Ohio. His nonprofit, The Homeless Charity, provides tents, food, showers, computers, and other resources to 44 residents. But Akron is trying to eliminate his work through the city’s zoning code.

Gajendra Singh

Dr. Gajendra Singh opened Forsyth Imaging Center in 2017 to provide X-rays, ultrasounds, MRI scans, and other services at affordable prices. But Dr. Singh is stymied by North Carolina’s “certificate of need” laws.

Young Americans for Freedom

Whitworth University Young Americans for Freedom Chapter (WU-YAF) has members who are eligible for the State Work-Study Program, but some of their desired employers are considered ineligible because they are “sectarian.”

Lawsuit Challenges Arizona Engineering Licensing Law

Institute for Justice

Homepage

Nepali Immigrants Sue Kentucky Over Law That Stopped Them from Opening a Home Health Care Business

Homeowners Seek Rehearing in House-Destruction Case

Less than 1% of the nearly 10,000 charities rated have received at least 18 consecutive 4-star ratings

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | December 9, 2019

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | December 5, 2019

Lawsuit maintaining that the Legislature ignored the state’s Constitution to reduce support for educational choice will proceed

J. Justin Wilson | Press Release | December 5, 2019

Institute for Justice Partners with Engineer to Challenge Law Requiring Engineers to Obtain License to Call Themselves Engineers or to Be Entrepreneurs

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | December 4, 2019

Kentucky’s certificate of need law lets large providers monopolize home health in most of the state

Conor Beck | Press Release | December 3, 2019

Legislative Committee Approves Department’s Request to Stymie Local Entrepreneurs

Conor Beck | Press Release | November 25, 2019

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | November 25, 2019

National law firm joins the Lech family’s fight for compensation after police destroy their house in pursuit of shoplifter

Our Issues

Educational Choice

Economic Liberty

First Amendment

Private Property

PODCAST

CJE PODCAST

SUPPORT OUR WORK

The National Law Firm for Liberty

Our Videos

Our Research

October 24, 2019 | Strategic Research

Case Studies of Three Georgia Cities That Rely Heavily on Fines and Fees

June 7, 2019 | Strategic Research

Testing Opposing Views of Forfeiture

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