Plus new podcast on unpublished legal opinions. | View in browser
Institute for Justice updates
Civil Forfeiture
IJ Fights Back After Court Defangs Forfeiture Reform
Imagine winning your forfeiture case against the federal government, only to lose a third of your money to attorneys’ fees. It wouldn’t be fair, which is why Congress in 2000 enacted the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act to require that government pay the fees of property owners who “substantially prevail” in their forfeiture case against the feds. Now IJ is fighting to ensure that government officials can’t evade this vital protection.
Texas Driver Sues to Put the Brakes on Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
As Alek Schott drove home from a work trip, Bexar County, Texas, deputies used a phony traffic violation and bogus dog alert as an excuse to pull Alek over, interrogate him, and search his truck in a fishing expedition for evidence of a crime.
New Documents Undermine Government’s Demand for Task-Force Immunity to Shield St. Paul Police Officer
After unearthing previously-withheld documents, IJ and Hamdi Mohamud renewed her fight to hold St. Paul Police Officer Heather Weyker accountable for having Mohamud unjustly arrested and imprisoned for two years.
Micro School Entrepreneur Struggles to Make Sense of Zoning
New micro schools popped up across the U.S. during the pandemic. But local zoning codes make it difficult and expensive for micro school entrepreneurs to find the space they need to teach children.
Welcome to Short Circuit’s new podcast! Although we won’t be doing this every podcast, given its name we can’t help but begin by ranting about unpublished opinions. Why are they “unpublished” again? And perhaps that made sense at one point but in the age of the Internet, is that really true anymore?
How does the Fourth Amendment apply to the gazillions of pieces of data stored on our phones? Then, in a very different search, a D.C. police officer asks a guy to show his waistband. Were the officer’s requests seizures? Searches? Unreasonable?
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