Taking Flight To End Civil Forfeiture

IJ wrapped up a busy year of forfeiture litigation with a federal appellate victory and a U.S. Supreme Court cert petition involving an airplane forfeited in Alaska over a six-pack of beer. We’re also gearing up for a long-awaited oral argument in our class action lawsuit challenging TSA’s abusive cash seizure practices.

First, we struck an important blow for government accountability and justice for forfeiture victims. We won an appeal in the 11th Circuit regarding who has to pay the attorneys’ fees of property owners who win their forfeiture cases and get their property back. (Spoiler alert: It’s the government.)

We represented Army veteran and aspiring musician Brian Moore Jr., who had $8,500 in cash seized at the Atlanta airport by DEA agents in 2021 as he traveled to Los Angeles to shoot a music video. Represented by private attorneys, Brian eventually won when the government agreed to dismiss his case with prejudice. Shockingly, the district court then ruled that Brian had not “substantially prevailed” because he had not gotten a ruling “on the merits,” even though he got all his money back.

Brian’s flabbergasted attorneys reached out to us, and we agreed to take up his case on appeal. We secured a unanimous decision from the 11th Circuit that Brian had substantially prevailed and was entitled to be reimbursed for his attorneys’ fees, thus finally making him whole after a very trying ordeal that took years to resolve and sidelined his music career.

And after years of discovery, we prepared to present our case against the TSA to a federal judge—though not before a few last-minute delays related to the government shutdown. We expect the argument to be rescheduled in the new year.

The class action challenges TSA’s seizures of travelers with large amounts of cash during airport security screenings, which both exceed its statutory authority and violate the Fourth Amendment. We aim to stop that practice by vacating TSA’s policies and securing a permanent injunction against TSA’s abusive behavior in the future.

Finally, IJ filed a cert petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision by the Alaska Supreme Court about whether forfeiting an entire Cessna airplane over a prohibited six-pack of beer is an excessive fine.

We represent Ken Jouppi, a bush pilot who transported passengers to remote Alaskan villages. In 2012, one of his passengers was caught smuggling beer—which is illegal in the village of Beaver—by state troopers. The troopers also charged Ken, who they alleged had seen a six-pack of the passenger’s beer at the top of her bag, and he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to the statutory minimum of three days in jail and a $1,500 fine.

But for the past 13 years, Alaska has also been trying to forfeit Ken’s Cessna because it was used to carry the beer. In April, the Alaska Supreme Court rejected his appeal, allowing his $95,000 plane to be forfeited over a six-pack of beer.

In a previous IJ victory, Timbs v. Indiana, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines applies to the states—but the Court didn’t resolve what “excessive” means. In Ken’s case, we hope to build on Timbs to establish that financial penalties like forfeiture must be proportional to an individual’s supposed crime. We’re optimistic that the Court will take up the case because several Justices have previously signaled interest in reviewing forfeiture abuses.

And if the high court decides not to take Ken’s case, IJ has nearly a dozen other forfeiture cases working their way up. We will continue to rein in the myriad constitutional deficiencies as we push to eliminate civil forfeiture once and for all.

Dan Alban is an IJ senior attorney and co-director of IJ’s National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse.