Long-Term Battles Become Lasting Victories

As this issue of Liberty & Law makes clear, IJ cases are about more than just one case. They are about a long-term fight to expand individual freedom. And no one knows that better than IJ’s clients, who are told on day one that signing up with IJ is signing up for a fight that will be bigger (and almost certainly last longer) than a single lawsuit.

It takes a special person to sign up for that kind of fight. And that makes it all the more gratifying when the promises of a long-term battle come true in the form of victories years after a case was closed.

Take IJ client Charlie Birnbaum, the Atlantic City piano tuner whose fight to save his family home from eminent domain abuse captured headlines nationwide. Charlie won his battle, which preserved his family’s home and legacy. 

But the fight was always about a legacy beyond just one family. That is why we were delighted to recently receive a request from a museum consultant asking for our permission to use Charlie’s picture in a special exhibit about the American Revolution and the protection of individual rights. (We said yes!) Charlie’s fight, which inspired countless Americans as it happened, will live on to inspire countless more.

Or take another eminent domain client, the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym for at-risk youth. IJ defeated the local government’s attempt to condemn the gym for luxury condos more than a decade ago. 

With a secure home, the CYAC expanded its program: Today, it takes kids whose parents are drug addicts and in prison and gives them a place to go after school ends. In the years since IJ helped save its property, the gym has provided training, mentorship, tutoring, a safe space, and, really, a family for hundreds of kids. There are kids who started coming when they were only 8 years old and now tutor others as adults. 

The CYAC’s program works. Dozens have attended a university, and at least a hundred have gone to community college or trade schools. CYAC kids now work in nursing, teaching, law enforcement, construction trades, the military, and even law. 

And sometimes that lifelong fight resonates even beyond the lifetime that started it. That’s certainly true of Hermine Ricketts, who ignited a national movement after her Florida village forced her to tear up her front-yard vegetable garden under an ordinance that allowed her to have anything in the yard—fruit, flowers, or flamingos—except the healthy food she wanted to grow. Hermine’s fight inspired a state law that forbids local governments from banning gardens like hers, though she tragically passed only months after her friends, family, and IJ attorneys re-planted her garden in celebration. 

So when a nearby county threatened to destroy Leann Barber’s private community garden late last year, a reminder from IJ about Hermine’s victory was enough to force the bureaucrats to stand down.

Fighting a long-term fight asks a lot of IJ’s clients. It demands tenacity, commitment, and dedication to a cause bigger than themselves. But long-term fights also offer something else: long-term victories. Charlie, the CYAC, and Hermine have won theirs. And other IJ clients have many more to come.

Robert McNamara is IJ’s deputy litigation director and Dana Berliner is IJ’s senior vice president and litigation director.