Institute for Justice

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Seattle ‘Housing Affordability’ Law Forces Hard-working Homeowners to Pay Ransom for Building Permit—Now Two Residents Are Fighting Back

July 23, 2020

Landmark Victory for Parents In U.S. Supreme Court School Choice Case

June 30, 2020

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

Nepali Immigrants Win First Round in Federal Lawsuit Challenging Kentucky Law That Stopped Them from Opening a Home Health Care Business
Institute for Justice Calls on South Carolina Supreme Court to Reject Constitutional Challenge to Scholarship Program
Montana Supreme Court Directs District Court To Rule in Favor of Espinoza Parents, Clearing Way for Program to Continue
A Week of Universal Injunctions
Nebraska Law No Longer Protects Instate Moving Companies From New Competition, But Another Anticompetitive Measure Stays Alive for Now
National Food Freedom Advocate Condemns Albuquerque’s Unconstitutional Ban on Homemade Food Sales
Homemade Food Producers Win First Round In Fight to Restore Food Freedom to North Dakota

Nepali Immigrants Win First Round in Federal Lawsuit Challenging Kentucky Law That Stopped Them from Opening a Home Health Care Business

Louisville, Ky.—Today, Federal District Court Judge Justin R. Walker handed a first-round legal victory to two Nepali immigrants in their challenge to a Kentucky law that is preventing them from opening up a new home health care business in Louisville. Dipendra Tawari and Kishor Sapkota filed their lawsuit in December 2019, after the state rejected…

Institute for Justice Calls on South Carolina Supreme Court to Reject Constitutional Challenge to Scholarship Program

Arlington, Va.—The Institute for Justice (IJ) today filed a brief in Adams v. McMaster, a case challenging a new South Carolina program to provide educational choice grants to allow families to defray the costs of sending children to private or religious schools. In its brief, IJ reminds the South Carolina Supreme Court that its state…

Montana Supreme Court Directs District Court To Rule in Favor of Espinoza Parents, Clearing Way for Program to Continue

Arlington, Va.—Today, the Montana Supreme Court officially recognized that three Kalispell mothers successfully protected Montana’s tax credit scholarship program. The program has been the subject of contentious litigation since the Montana legislature passed the program five years ago and the Montana Supreme Court invalidated the program in 2018. The litigation culminated in the landmark U.S.…

A Week of Universal Injunctions

Last week both the Second and Fourth Circuits issued decisions in cases challenging the Trump Administration’s new definition for “public charge.” Congress has long determined that those likely to become a “public charge” are inadmissible for immigration purposes. But Congress has never defined what “public charge” means. The Trump Administration, through the Department of Homeland…

Nebraska Law No Longer Protects Instate Moving Companies From New Competition, But Another Anticompetitive Measure Stays Alive for Now

Lincoln, Neb.—Gov. Pete Ricketts signed legislation that repeals a requirement that moving companies get permission from their competitors before they can open a new business. The so-called “certificate of public convenience and necessity” requirement gave existing moving companies the opportunity to formally object to new entrants and keep them out of the market. Unfortunately, the…

National Food Freedom Advocate Condemns Albuquerque’s Unconstitutional Ban on Homemade Food Sales

Albuquerque bans the sale of safe homemade foods the rest of New Mexico allows

Albuquerque, N.M.—The COVID-19 pandemic has crippled the economy of every city in America, and Albuquerque is no exception. With unemployment up and consumer activity down, Americans need to have every option available to support themselves and their families. Yet Albuquerque does not allow the sale of safe, shelf-stable foods like baked goods made at home—foods…

Homemade Food Producers Win First Round In Fight to Restore Food Freedom to North Dakota

Bismarck, N.D.—Today, a North Dakota district court denied the North Dakota Department of Health’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by five North Dakotan homemade food producers to restore the Cottage Food Act. These homemade food producers partnered with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to sue the Health Department for illegally gutting the law in…

Our Issues

Project on Immunity and Accountability

The Institute for Justice’s Project on Immunity and Accountability is devoted to the simple idea that government officials are not above the law; if citizens must follow the law, then government must follow the Constitution. But a set of legal doctrines makes it nearly impossible for ordinary Americans to hold the government accountable in court…
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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.
more on this issue »
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.
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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

Colon Health Centers for America

Dr. Mark Baumel, of Colon Health Centers for America, wants to increase the rate of screening for colon cancers. But when Dr. Baumel and his partners sought Virginia’s permission to buy new CT scanners, it denied them a “certificate of need.”

Sung Cho

Sung Cho owns and operates Super Laundromat and Drycleaners, one of the largest laundromats in Manhattan. Sung could be evicted, and his business closed, simply because his business was the site of a crime. The identity of the criminals was beside the point.

Bonnie Ybarra

Bonnie Ybarra was able to obtain program scholarships for two of her three elementary school-aged girls to attend private school, with her youngest daughter set to join them this year. But absent an infusion of scholarship funds into Nevada’s program, Ybarra’s girls face a return to the public-school system that previously failed to meet their educational needs.

Larry Miller

Larry Miller has been fighting for the rights of Atlanta’s vendors for the past twenty-five years.

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.

Michele Simon

Michele Simon is the executive director of the Plant Based Foods Association, a trade group representing the nation’s leading plant-based foods companies. At the behest of the meat lobby, Mississippi banned food companies making plant-based meat alternatives from using any meat product terms on their labels, a law that harms the Association’s members.

Alan and Judy Gillis

Alan and Judy Gillis live in Orrington, Maine and send their youngest daughter, Isabella, currently a junior to Bangor Christian Schools. But because Alan and Judy have chosen a religious school for their daughter, Maine prohibits the town from paying Isabella’s tuition to Bangor Christian Schools.

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.

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.

Scott Dow

Scott Dow has spent more than two decades working with computers, geospatial and remote sensing and 3D computer modeling, before he co-founded Vizaline in Mississippi.

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.

Shaniz West

Shaniz’s nightmare started when she stopped home with her children in tow one afternoon in 2014 to find her house surrounded by five local police officers.

Greg Mills

From satellites in space to circuits for flashlights, Greg Mills has spent his entire career working as an engineer designing and building electronics. But early in 2019, a group of industry insiders sitting on a government board abruptly put Greg’s career on ice.

Hunter Hollingsworth

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.

Dario Gurrola

Robert Reeves

Robert Reeves, a father of five young children, works as a construction worker and auto repairman. In July 2019, officers seized his car—which he had put $10,000 of work into—and his $2,200 in cash.

Emily Killeen

Jim and Cliff Courtney

Jim and Cliff Courtney have a plan to bring economic prosperity to their small community. Unfortunately, the state of Washington has sunk their plan with a law that requires them to obtain a certificate of “public convenience and necessity” from the state in order to pick up and drop off passengers.

Salamata Sylla

The Washington Department of Licensing ordered IJ client Salamata Sylla to obtain a time-consuming and irrelevant cosmetology license for hair braiding. IJ sued on her behalf and forced the Department to adopt a rule exempting braiders.

Rebecca Brown

Rebecca Brown was only in Pittsburgh for the weekend and the banks had already closed, so she decided to take her father’s money home with her in her carry-on bag and deposit it there. The money was seized from Rebecca when she tried to fly home to Boston from the Pittsburgh International Airport.

Hilda Brucker

Hilda Brucker was sitting at home one day working her job as a freelance writer. The phone rang, she answered, and was told by a hostile voice that if she didn’t come down to the courthouse at once she would be given a failure to appear violation. She hastily complied. When she got there, she found out that the city had issued a citation, although it had never told her about it. She later learned the citation stated she was charged with (1) “Rotted wood on house and chipping paint on fascia boards”; (2) “High weeds in backyard and ivy on tree and vines on house”; and (3) “Driveway in a state of disrepair.” Not knowing what to do, Hilda pled guilty to the driveway charge, while the other two were dismissed. She paid a fine of $100 and was sentenced to six months probation, where she had to report to a probation officer, avoid alcoholic intoxication, and cooperate “with code enforcement upon request.” She later hired an attorney who filed a motion to vacate her sentence, but the motion was continued several times, eventually being granted only after her six-month probation would have already ended. She also obtained a home equity line of credit in case she needed to pay for any of the fixes that the city nebulously demanded.

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.

Dr. Cara Harrop

Dr. Cara Harrop is a family doctor with over 20 years of experience. She runs Pure Health DPC, a primary care practice in Polson.

Miladis Salgado

On May 11, 2015, Miladis Salgado returned home to find her life turned upside down. While she was at work, police raided her home and seized her entire life savings—$15,000 in cash—based on a tip that her estranged husband was dealing drugs. He wasn’t, but that didn’t stop the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from attempting to keep Miladis’s money forever.

Heather Coffy

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

Charles Clarke

Charles Clarke is a college student, who spent over 5 years to save up $11,000—only to have it seized by law enforcement officials before he was scheduled to board a flight at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport.

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.

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.

Doug and Mary Ketchum

Doug and Mary Ketchum moved to Tennessee to purchase an historic liquor store that would let them take care of their 32-year-old daughter, Stacie, who suffers from cerebral palsy. But they can’t get a liquor license, thanks to the state’s strict residency requirements.

Laura Pekarik

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

Ken Quran

Khalid (“Ken”) Quran moved to America in 1997, and now runs a convenience store in Greenville, N.C. But the government seized his entire bank account—more than $150,000—even though he was never charged with a crime.

Summit Christian Academy

Summit Christian Academy is a private, nonprofit K-12 school located in Spokane, Washington. The school applied to participate in the state’s Work-Study Program, but was denied, simply because of its religious affiliation.

Harley Bruce

Harley Bruce owns Poor Piggy’s BBQ & Catering, which was the first food truck in Wilmington and serves up award-winning North Carolina barbecue.

Lisa Howard

Lisa is one of the owners of White Cottage Red Door in Door County, Wisconsin. When the small business opened a food truck in its parking lot, the Town of Gibraltar’s board, chaired by a local restaurant owner, promptly banned all mobile businesses.

Ben Burris

IJ client Dr. Ben Burris is an Arkansas orthodontist who wants to offer low-cost teeth cleanings to people who cannot otherwise afford them. But it is illegal for him to perform basic dental services, even though he is a licensed dentist.

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.”

Jessica Hadraba

Jessica is one of the owners of White Cottage Red Door in Door County, Wisconsin. When the small business opened a food truck in its parking lot, the Town of Gibraltar’s board, chaired by a local restaurant owner, promptly banned all mobile businesses.

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

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.

Central Radio Company

Bob Wilson is blocked by the city of Norfolk, Va., from displaying a banner protesting eminent domain abuse outside his business, Central Radio Company.

Dr. Kristin Held

Dr. Kristin Held is an ophthalmologist and board-certified surgeon with over three decades of experience who works as a solo practitioner at Stone Oak Ophthalmology Center in San Antonio, Texas. She wants to dispense routine medications to her own patients, but can’t, under a protectionist Texas law.

Jim Roos

St. Louis tried to take Jim Roos’ property through eminent domain. Jim protested by painting a giant sign on one of his buildings. The city then tried to censor him.

Josh Craven

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

Senator Lisa Torraco

Senator Lisa Torraco, a Republican representing Bernalillo County, N.M., was the initial sponsor for the Forfeiture Reform Law in the State Senate.

Natu Bah

Martha Rabello

Martha is a stay-at-home mom with two sons, a 5-year old and a 2-year old. She has baked her whole life and is professionally trained. Martha is Brazilian and lived in Brazil for 25 years, and she would like to start a home business focusing on Brazilian-inspired cookies.

Byron Billingsley

Byron Billingsley was cited by police in Doraville, Georgia for going around a truck traveling at 5 mph—with no other traffic around—without using his turn signal. After hiring a lawyer to defend himself he paid $100. He has to keep driving through Doraville as he works in the city.

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.”

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.

New report: CBP, Other DHS Agencies Seized $500 Million From Air Travelers Over Missing Paperwork

Institute for Justice

Homepage

Seattle ‘Housing Affordability’ Law Forces Hard-working Homeowners to Pay Ransom for Building Permit—Now Two Residents Are Fighting Back

Landmark Victory for Parents In U.S. Supreme Court School Choice Case

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

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | August 14, 2020

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | August 14, 2020

John Kramer | Press Release | August 12, 2020

Adam Shelton | Center for Judicial Engagement | August 12, 2020

Andrew Wimer | Press Release | August 11, 2020

Conor Beck | Press Release | August 11, 2020

Albuquerque bans the sale of safe homemade foods the rest of New Mexico allows

Conor Beck | Press Release | August 5, 2020

Our Issues

Project on Immunity and Accountability

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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