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Lawsuit Challenges SEC Gag Order and Book Ban

January 9, 2019

Florida Supreme Court Ends Challenge to Scholarship Programs

January 4, 2019

Less than 1% of 8,000 charities rated have received at least 17 consecutive 4-star ratings

Charleston Appeals Federal Decision Striking Down Tour Guide Licensing Law

Institute for Justice, which represented would-be tour guides, comments on continuing legal battle

Charleston, S.C.—Yesterday, attorneys for the City of Charleston appealed an August 2018 federal court ruling that struck down the city’s tour guide license. The licensing law was challenged by three would-be tour guides—Kimberly Billups, Michael Warfield and Michael Nolan—who joined with the Institute for Justice (IJ) in January of 2016 to file a lawsuit alleging…

Amicus Briefs Make Case For Newcomers & Against Cartels In U.S. Supreme Court Case

Among the Themes: States may not discriminate against newcomers. The U.S. Constitution has many provisions designed to prevent anticompetitive efforts like Tennessee’s. Bottleneckers—like the Retailers Association—are self-serving institutions that use the government’s power to keep their prices high, thereby hurting consumers and would-be entrepreneurs alike. Arlington, Va.—On Wednesday, January 16, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court…

Lawsuit Challenges SEC Gag Order and Book Ban

Institute for Justice represents Cato Institute in First Amendment lawsuit to end SEC’s imposition of unconstitutional settlement gag orders

This press release and the lawsuit it announces are subject to a gag order imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prohibiting us from telling you the story of ████████, an American entrepreneur who, as he tells it, was the victim of an overzealous government investigation. Although the SEC agreed to settle his case…

New Jersey Appellate Court Curtails Eminent Domain Power

State Court Holds That Government Must Demonstrate Property Is “Necessary” Before Condemning Private Property

Arlington, Va.—In a decision with nationwide implications, the New Jersey Appellate Division yesterday (January 7, 2019) rejected the Borough of Glassboro’s attempt to condemn private property in service of an unspecified and undescribed “redevelopment plan,” holding that government officials cannot use their power to take property simply to engage in what the court called “land…

Ohio Governor Signs Landmark Reform of Occupational Licenses

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a sweeping overhaul of Ohio’s occupational licensing laws on Friday, which govern nearly one-fifth of the state’s workforce. By limiting the ability of otherwise qualified people to work in a given field, licensing laws limit competition and drive up prices for consumers. One study published by the Institute for Justice…

Florida Supreme Court Ends Challenge to Scholarship Programs

Years-long lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of Florida Tax Credit and McKay Scholarships

Tallahassee, Fla.—In a decision issued today, the Florida Supreme Court ended a years-long lawsuit that included a challenge to the constitutionality of the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) Scholarship and the McKay Scholarship Program for Students with Disabilities. The Institute for Justice (IJ) defended the programs on behalf of parents of scholarships students. “Today, after years…

Judge Denies Fort Pierce’s Motion to Dismiss Food Trucks’ Lawsuit

Today, Florida food truck owners are one step closer to vindicating their right to economic liberty after a judge denied the city of Fort Pierce’s motion to dismiss a challenge to its law requiring that food trucks be over 500 feet from any restaurant to legally operate. This ruling by Judge Lawrence Mirman of 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.
more on this issue »
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 »

IJ IN THE MOVIES

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE

CATHERINE KEENER

EMMY NOMINEE

JEANNE TRIPPLEHORN

LITTLE PINK HOUSE

SHE FOUGHT FOR HER HOME. AND YOURS.

ECONOMIC LIBERTY

Occupational Licensing Blocks Americans' Right to Earn an Honest Living.

OccupationalLicensing.com

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November 14, 2018 | Strategic Research

At What Cost

State and National Estimates of the Economic Costs of Occupational Licensing
November 15, 2018 | Strategic Research

Ready to Roll

Nine Lessons from Ending Wisconsin's Home-Baking Ban

Mildred Bryant

Mildred Bryant is 84 years old and living out her golden years in the home she’s owned for 46 years in Pagedale, Missouri. But she faces a real threat of tickets, fines, and imprisonment from the town.

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.

Ken Leininger

After eight years of working as a driver for Yellow Cab, Ken Leininger decided to start his own business. But when Ken tried to get permits for his new business early last year, Little Rock denied his applications.

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.

Rafael Lopez

San Antonio shut down Rafael’s food truck and threatened him with daily fines of up to $2,000 per day if he continued to vend.

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.

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.

Robert Martin

Robert Martin operates the Red’s Comfort Foods food truck and offers specialty gourmet hot dogs and sausages in Louisville, Kentucky. The city’s 150-foot ban makes it difficult for Robert to operate his Red’s Comfort Foods food truck in Louisville because the law creates no-vending zones that extend 150 feet around every restaurant, café and eating establishment in the city. In fact, Robert was even cited in 2015 for vending downtown within 150 feet of a restaurant.

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.

Brent Melton

Brent worked in banking for 42 years before he co-founded Vizaline to provide small community banks with a cost effective way to assess small property assets within their portfolios. But the Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors claimed the company was practicing unlicensed surveying.

Ushaben Chudasama

Ushaben used to thread part-time at the Threading Studio & Spa near New Orleans, often filling in for licensed estheticians when they were unable to work. But after state regulators ordered the business to terminate its unlicensed threaders, Ushaben is no longer permitted to thread in the studio.

Ilumi Sanchez

Ilumi has worked with children since she came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic in 1995. Although she has a Child Development Associate credential (“CDA”) and was trained as a lawyer in her home country, Ilumi does not have the associate’s degree now required under District of Columbia’s new regulations.

John Heiderich and Gwen Lee

John Heiderich and Gwendolyn Lee, have owned and operated rental properties in Seattle for more than forty years. They are unwilling to let the city intrude into their tenant’s home and are committed to helping their tenant protect her constitutional rights.

Randy Sowers

Randy Sowers has run a dairy farm in Frederick County, Md. since 1981. But in 2012, the IRS seized the farm’s bank account because the Sowers deposited the cash in amounts under $10,000.

Bernardo Soriano

Bernardo has plans to grow his food truck business, but San Antonio’s 300-foot rule is making it very difficult for him to realize his goals.

Ricardo Quintanilla

Ricardo Quintanilla operates Tacos el Regio but San Antonio’s vending restrictions make it difficult to operate.

Michael Peticolas

Michael Peticolas owns Peticolas Brewing, located in an industrial neighborhood near downtown Dallas. In 2013, Texas passed a law that prohibits brewers from negotiating with distributors for the value of their territorial rights. Instead, the law forces brewers to give those rights away for free. That jeopardizes his plans to expand into other parts of Texas.

Susette Kelo

Susette is the Kelo in Kelo v. New London. She led her neighbors in a seven-year battle to save their homes from being taken by the government for private development, culminating in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2005.

Susette Kelo

Regino Soriano

Regino Soriano owns a popular food truck named El Bandolero, but his plans to expand have been significantly restricted by San Antonio’s city’s 300-foot rule.

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.

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.

Russ Caswell

Russ Caswell and his family have owned and operated the Motel Caswell in Tewksbury, Mass., for two generations. The Caswells nearly had their property taken from them by local and federal law enforcement officials through a process known as civil forfeiture.

Michelle and Steven Freenor

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.

Ocheesee Creamery

Mary Lou Wesselhoeft and her husband Paul Wesselhoeft own Ocheesee Creamery, a small creamery in the Florida Panhandle. Because of the all-natural dairy philosophy that Mary Lou follows, she added nothing to the creamery’s skim milk. But a state agency wants her to use a confusing and misleading label that labels the milk something it is not: “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed.”

Jeana and Jack Horner

Jeana and Jack Horner are among the hundreds of people each year who find themselves caught in Indianapolis’s forfeiture machine.

Lisa Kivirist

Lisa Kivirist is a mother, farmer, business owner and avid baker. Lisa typically serves muffins and other baked goods at her B&B for breakfast, but the baked-good ban prohibits her from selling these same exact goods to guests.

Charlie Birnbaum

Charlie Birnbaum is fighting to keep his family home in Atlantic City, N.J., which has been in his family for 50 years. But New Jersey wants to take it for the benefit of a bankrupt casino.

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.

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.

Bob McGinnity

Bob and Michael do not know where they will go if they lose their homes. But they do know they have a right to stay and to keep what they have worked all their lives for.

Elmer Kilian

IJ client Elmer Kilian has been preparing taxes for the past 30 years on his dining room table. He fought and successfully defended his right to earn an honest living without getting permission from the IRS.

Jane Astramecki

IJ client Jane Astramecki, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, runs a home baking business. But Minnesota’s restrictive cottage food law bans her from earning more than $5,000 a year and from selling her treats at venues other than farmers’ markets and community events.

Abdikadir “Abdi” Abdisalan and Abdullahi Hassan

Abdi immigrated to the United States in the 1990s, after fleeing the civil war in his native Somalia. He is a longtime taxi driver who want to go into business for himself.

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.

Steve Cooksey

This caveman blogger fought for free speech and Internet freedom.

Alexis Bailly Vineyard

Inspired by France’s wine-growing regions, Nan Bailly’s father started Alexis Bailly Vineyard, Minnesota’s oldest operating farm winery, in 1973. Nan has continued her father’s legacy, making Minnesota wines with her vineyard’s grapes and other locally-sourced ingredients. She would like the freedom to offer new and greater varieties of blended wine to the public without worrying about an arbitrary limit on how many of her grapes crossed Minnesota’s border.

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.

Dina Galassini

Arizona wants to bar people from joining together to protest local ballot measures without first registering with the government.

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.

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.

Samantha Harris

Samantha Harris hired Sally Ladd, a New Jersey-based entrepreneur, to manager her short-term vacation rental in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. But when Pennsylvania wanted Ladd to obtain a real-estate broker’s license, which requires her to spend three years working for an established broker, Sally felt forced to shut down her business.

Phil Parhamovich

In March 2017, Phil Parhamovich, a musician from Madison, Wisconsin, was pulled over by the Wyoming Highway Patrol and pressured into signing a pre-printed waiver that stated he was “giving” his $91,800 in cash to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. Fortunately, after the Institute for Justice took his case, law enforcement returned all of the cash they had wrongfully taken from Phil.

Ash Patel

Ash Patel moved to Texas from India to pursue his American Dream of opening up an eyebrow threading salon. But in 2009, Texas demanded that eyebrow threaders obtain an expensive cosmetology license—even though beauty schools teach absolutely nothing about eyebrow threading. Ash shut down his successful business to avoid paying $2,000 in fines. He teamed up with the Institute for Justice to vindicate his rights. Six years later, IJ scored one of its most important economic liberty victories when the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state had violated the Texas Constitution by ordering threaders to obtain 750 hours of conventional cosmetology training. Threaders all over Texas are now free to work without having to obtain a government-issued license.

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

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.

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.

Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto

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

Heather Russinko

Heather is a single mother of a 14-year-old son. After bringing in baked goods to her son’s school for fundraisers and to his football team, Heather started getting many requests to sell them. But then Heather learned that selling her goods from home was illegal. Heather wants very much to be able to resume selling her delicious goods so she can use the money to support her son.

Michael Jensen

Michael Jensen would like Dr. Birchansky to perform his next needed eye surgery at the outpatient center next to Dr. Birchansky’s office because it is a safe, less costly, convenient, and familiar environment. Unfortunately Iowa’s CON law is denying him that choice.

U.S. Supreme Court Case Takes On Anticompetitive Liquor Laws That Keep Out Newcomers

Institute for Justice

Homepage

Lawsuit Challenges SEC Gag Order and Book Ban

Florida Supreme Court Ends Challenge to Scholarship Programs

Less than 1% of 8,000 charities rated have received at least 17 consecutive 4-star ratings

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | January 10, 2019

Institute for Justice, which represented would-be tour guides, comments on continuing legal battle

John Kramer | Press Release | January 10, 2019

J. Justin Wilson | Press Release | January 9, 2019

Institute for Justice represents Cato Institute in First Amendment lawsuit to end SEC’s imposition of unconstitutional settlement gag orders

John Kramer | Press Release | January 8, 2019

State Court Holds That Government Must Demonstrate Property Is “Necessary” Before Condemning Private Property

Nick Sibilla | Press Release | January 7, 2019

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | January 4, 2019

Years-long lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of Florida Tax Credit and McKay Scholarships

Conor Beck | Press Release | January 3, 2019

Our Issues

Educational Choice

Economic Liberty

First Amendment

Private Property

IJ IN THE MOVIES

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE

CATHERINE KEENER

EMMY NOMINEE

JEANNE TRIPPLEHORN

LITTLE PINK HOUSE

SHE FOUGHT FOR HER HOME. AND YOURS.

ECONOMIC LIBERTY

Occupational Licensing Blocks Americans' Right to Earn an Honest Living.

OccupationalLicensing.com

SUPPORT OUR WORK

The National Law Firm for Liberty

Our Videos

Our Research

November 14, 2018 | Strategic Research

State and National Estimates of the Economic Costs of Occupational Licensing

November 15, 2018 | Strategic Research

Nine Lessons from Ending Wisconsin's Home-Baking Ban

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