IJ Annual Report Fiscal year ’25

(July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025)

Dear Liberty & Law reader, 

Since IJ opened our doors on September 3, 1991, we have always played the long game. While we celebrate every quick win we achieve, our approach has always been to gradually build precedent, improve policies, and change minds in favor of liberty. That’s how we take issues like full First Amendment protection for occupational speech and turn it from a pipe dream law professors laughed at into the law of the land.

For that reason, IJ doesn’t put too much value in yearly metrics; we don’t know when courts will issue decisions, for instance, so the number of victories will inevitably vary from year to year. So annual statistics just don’t fully reflect our approach to transformative legal change. But we understand that top-line figures can provide helpful context to the cases you read about in Liberty & Law. 

Each student we train is another advocate for liberty-minded public interest law—and sometimes a future IJ attorney. Each brief, book, or article that cites an IJ case is part of a battle to win over the public and the legal community alike to IJ’s philosophy of a free society. Even our YouTube subscribers—up to almost half a million! —spread our work to ever more people and have become our largest source of new supporters. 

This year’s victories show progress across IJ initiatives new and old. Our initiative against civil forfeiture, launched more than a decade ago, scored two big wins at appeals courts to make innocent victims of government seizures whole. And IJ’s Zoning Justice Project, launched just last year, has helped usher through 14 bills that make it easier to use your property in peaceful and productive ways—in addition to winning court victories for home businesses in Tennessee and small homes in Georgia.

Each of these wins has ripple effects for years to come. In March, a Florida town withdrew its citation against a community garden after we reminded them that a previous IJ lawsuit spurred reforms that protect the right to grow food on residential property. And in these pages, you’ll read about how last year’s U.S. Supreme Court victory in Gonzalez v. Trevino led to not just a final victory for Sylvia but also created a new tool for victims of government abuse to defend their rights.

In short, every number you will see in this report is part of IJ’s long-term strategy. 

By defending the rights of our clients today, we safeguard the rights of all Americans for generations. Thank you to our supporters, allies, and clients. 

Scott Bullock
President and Chief Counsel

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