http://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro amast@cato.org (Andrew Mast) The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace. Toward that goal, the Institute strives to achieve greater involvement of the intelligent, concerned lay public in questions of policy and the proper role of government. en-us http://www.cato.org/people/images/lowres/shapiro.jpg http://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro Ilya Shapiro 100 151 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/brief-HHA-v-Florida-21012.pdf Cato's third Supreme Court brief in the Obamacare litigation concerns the issue of whether the Anti-Injunction Act prevents federal courts from timely reviewing Congress's most egregious attempt to exceed its power to regulate interstate commerce. The AIA bars courts from enjoining "any tax" before that tax is assessed or collected. One would think that such a law would have no application to the penalty that enforces the individual health insurance mandate, which is not a tax but rather a punishment for not complying with the mandate. Accordingly, most of the courts to consider the issue have found the AIA to be inapplicable to individual mandate challenges. Moreover, the government itself has long conceded that the AIA does not bar these suits. A Fourth Circuit majority and the dissenting Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the D.C. Circuit, however, reached a contrary conclusion, reasoning that the AIA applies to all exactions assessed under the Internal Revenue Code, including "penalties." Out of an abundance of caution, and because the AIA may be a jurisdictional bar, the Supreme Court appointed an amicus curiae to argue for the position that the AIA bars these suits. The plaintiffs here — the 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business, and several individuals — have advanced several strong arguments for why the AIA doesn't apply. Cato's brief expands on one of those arguments: that the words "any tax" in the AIA do not include "penalties" simply because they may be codified in the Code. First, we demonstrate that the Supreme Court has always held that "taxes" and "penalties" are not interchangeable for AIA purposes. Second, we show that, with one exception, all of the cases cited in the amicus briefs filed by two former IRS commissioners, Mortimer Caplin and Sheldon Cohen — which appear to have heavily influenced the Fourth Circuit and Judge Kavanaugh — concerned penalties that were statutorily defined as taxes. This refutes the commissioners' erroneous claim that those cases concerned penalties that were not defined as taxes. As we say in our brief, "the influence of Amici Caplin & Cohen's [D.C. Circuit] brief is surpassed only by its misdirection." The one exception is the Mobile Republican case (Eleventh Circuit 2003), which we explain is properly understood as applying the AIA to penalties that enforce substantive tax provisions. In short, the AIA cannot bar suits to enjoin the individual mandate penalty because that penalty neither is defined as a tax nor enforces a substantive tax provision.

]]> Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14094 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/KvR-brief.pdf One of our oldest laws, the Alien Tort Statute (1789), grants federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits brought by aliens for actions “in violation of the law of nations.” Courts have differed in their method of interpreting this “law of nations”—an old way of saying “international law”—and thus in their decisions on what behavior violates it and the types of defendants who may be liable. Recent ATS litigation has thus ignited a debate over the role of judges in applying international law. Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum presents the question of whether, under the ATS, the law of nations can be applied against an entity that is not a natural person: a corporation. In this case, 12 Nigerians sued Royal Dutch and its Shell subsidiaries, alleging that Nigerian soldiers committed human rights abuses on the companies’ behalf between 1992 and 1995, purportedly in response to demonstrations against oil exploration. The district court dismissed most of the claims but let certain others proceed. The Second Circuit dismissed the case entirely, holding that the ATS's jurisdictional grant does not extend to cases against corporations, which are not liable for crimes under the law of nations. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case. Cato has now filed a brief arguing that the ATS must be interpreted in a manner consistent with Congress’s original jurisdictional grant. This interpretation, supporting the Second Circuit’s ruling, maintains the Constitution’s separation of powers—which gives Congress the power to determine the scope of federal courts’ jurisdiction. Allowing courts to expand their jurisdiction without Congress’s consent would create a “democracy gap” that would be particularly serious here, where the case involves issues of foreign affairs that are appropriately the province of the political branches. The Supreme Court made clear in Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc. (1999) that evolving methods of interpreting international law do not inform the ATS’s jurisdictional reach, which has not changed since 1789. Nonetheless, lower courts are split on whether corporations may be liable for the sorts of violations at issue here, largely due to their varied interpretive methods. In our brief, we urge the Court to clarify the proper method of interpreting the law of nations under the ATS. We argue that Judge José Cabranes, a leading international law jurist (and Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s mentor) who authored the Second Circuit’s Kiobel decision, set out the correct interpretive method in an earlier case, Flores v. Southern Peru Copper Corp. (2003). Judge Cabranes’s reasoning in Flores embodied both the guidance that the Supreme Court would give in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004) and the teachings of classical theorists like Grotius, by defining customary international law as “composed only of those rules that States [countries] universally abide by, or accede to, out of a sense of legal obligation and mutual concern.” Judge Cabranes used as relevant evidence the States’ formal lawmaking actions, such as international conventions that “establish[] rules expressly recognized by the contesting states” and international custom where the States adhere “out of a sense of legal obligation.” He further acknowledged that the method used in 1789 to interpret what comprised the law of nations defined both the claims and the parties cognizable under international law. By looking to the proper sources, Judge Cabranes correctly concluded that corporations cannot be held liable for violations of international law for ATS purposes, and in so doing recognized the constitutional checks that prevent courts from expanding their own jurisdiction.

]]> Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14077 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14063 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14063 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Morgan-v-Swanson-brief.pdf If the First Amendment means anything, it is that school officials may not prohibit students from handing out gifts with Christmas messages due to the religious content of those messages. Nonetheless, the Fifth Circuit held en banc that student speech rights are not "clearly established," and that therefore two Plano, Texas officials could invoke qualified immunity to shield themselves from liability for doing so. The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief supporting the students' request that the Supreme Court hear their case — our third brief in this long-running saga. We argue that educators have fair warning that viewpoint-based discrimination against student speech violates the First Amendment and thus may not invoke qualified immunity. While the Fifth Circuit held that a constitutional right must have previously been defined with a "high degree of particularity" in a case that is "specific[ally] and factually analogous" to be clearly established, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that neither "fundamentally similar" nor "materially similar" cases are required and that general statements of law can give fair warning. Indeed, if the Fifth Circuit's qualified-immunity standard is upheld, it will be so difficult to establish fair warning for unconstitutional actions that qualified immunity will cease to be "qualified." Student speech rights were clearly established by the foundational student-rights case of Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969), wherein the Court held that student speech cannot be suppressed unless the speech will "materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school," subject to limited exceptions. Such exceptions include lewd or vulgar speech, or speech that may reasonably be viewed as advocating unlawful drug use. Certainly the student speech at issue here, which included Christmas greetings written on candy-canes, and pencils and other small gifts with messages like "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so," does not fall under those exceptions. We further argue that the same standard for determining whether a law is clearly established should determine whether a court can look to non-binding precedent; if Supreme Court and relevant-circuit precedent is on point, courts should not look to authority from other jurisdictions. These standards maintain the proper balance between providing officials with fair notice of behavior that could result in civil liability and ensuring that individuals have legal recourse when their rights are violated.

]]> Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14052 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/FvHHS-Brief.pdf Cato's second Supreme Court amicus brief in the Obamacare litigation concerns the issue of whether the health care law's Medicaid expansion is a proper exercise of the Constitution's Spending Clause. That is, states must now accept a comprehensive reorganization of Medicaid or forfeit all federal Medicaid funding—even though the spending power is circumscribed to preserve a distinction between what is local and what is national. If Congress is allowed to attach conditions to spending that the states cannot refuse in order to achieve an objective it could not outright mandate, the local/national distinction that is so central to federalism will be erased. Joining the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, Pacific Legal Foundation, Rep. Denny Rehberg (chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies), and Kansas Lt. Gov. Jeffrey Colyer (also a practicing physician), we argue that, in requiring states to accept onerous conditions on federal funds that it could not impose directly, the government has exceeded its enumerated powers and violated basic principles of federalism. California is at risk of losing $25.6 billion in annual federal funding, for example, and together the states stand to lose more than a quarter trillion dollars annually. On average, states would have to increase their general revenue budgets by almost 40% in order to maintain their current level of Medicaid funding. The 1987 case of South Dakota v. Dole, however, prohibits such a coercive use of the spending power and recognizes that "in some circumstances the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which 'pressure turns into compulsion.'" Indeed, the states' obligations, should they "choose" to accept federal funding and thus commit themselves to doing the government's bidding, are far more substantial than those the Supreme Court invalidated in New York v. United States and Printz v. United States (which prohibit federal "commandeering" of state officials). Moreover, the Congress that enacted the original Social Security Act, to which Medicare and Medicaid were added in the 1960s, recognized that social safety has always been the prerogative of the states and should continue to be done under state discretion. Medicaid itself was narrowly tailored to serve particularly needy groups. In short, if Obamacare does not cross the line from valid "inducement" to unconstitutional "coercion," nothing ever will. Just as the Commerce Clause is not an open-ended grant of power, the Spending Clause too has limits that must be enforced.

]]> Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14013 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14021 Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14021 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14009 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=14009 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13995 Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13995 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/NSvS-Brief.pdf The Obamacare litigation has arrived on the big stage: the Supreme Court. The first opportunity for those opposing the legislation to weigh in comes on the issue that will be the last one the Court considers, "severability." That is, if the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional, what (if any) of the rest of the law must fall with it? On one hand, even in the absence of a severability clause, the Court should avoid striking down an entire law when only one small part is declared unconstitutional, particularly if the remainder of the law is unrelated to the defective bit (imagine an omnibus spending bill). On the other, the Court cannot go provision-by-provision and execute some sort of judicial line-item veto (creating a new law completely unrecognizable from what Congress enacted). Many think that the rules in this area are unclear, but the analysis boils down to two questions: (1) Can the remainder "fully operate as law"? and (2) Would Congress have passed the remainder? In our brief, joined by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and co-authored by Prof. Richard Epstein, we examine these questions with a focus on Titles I and II of the law, which contain all the key provisions relating to Obamacare's fundamental transformation of the national health care system: the requirement that insurers cover people with preexisting conditions ("guaranteed issue"), the requirement that premiums be assessed by a "community rating" formula, the creation of state insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansion, premium supports, etc. Put simply, knocking out the individual mandate renders this whole package inoperable; the brave new health care world would not work as a matter of basic economic principle. As policy experiments in various states have proven, without an individual mandate, guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions foster a "death spiral" because healthy people wait until they get sick or injured before buying under-priced insurance that they cannot then be refused, causing premiums to increase and costs to explode. The individual mandate is thus so interwoven with other crucial provisions that it cannot be excised without destroying the entire Obamacare structure. Appreciating this mechanism, the government has conceded that guaranteed-issue and community-rating are indeed inextricably tied to the individual mandate—it has to given its constitutional claim that the mandate is a necessary means of implementing a lawful regulation of interstate commerce—but a close analysis of the law reveals that the interoperability goes much further. And Congress knew this; there is no way it would have otherwise passed this law. Thus, to aid the plaintiffs' arguments regarding broader non-severability, our brief shows that the individual mandate is so central to the overall legislation that if it falls, those key Titles I and II must go with it.

]]> Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13994 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/HQ-Brief.pdf Over the past decade, more than a dozen states have forced independent contractors who are paid through Medicaid to join public-sector unions. In 2003, Illinois unionized home healthcare workers and imbued the Service Employees International Union with the right to collect compulsory fees from the workers' paychecks. Democracy is thus being turned on its head: the elected representatives for the people of Illinois have chosen a sub-representative for some of the people and given that sub-representative a taxing power. In so doing, they have severely impaired home healthcare workers' First Amendment right of association and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Without limits on government's ability to forcibly unionize people who indirectly receive government-funded compensation (an increasingly large group), more and more citizens will have to interact with their representatives through a government-designated intermediary (a union); our democracy will become even more dominated by special interests than it is now. Cato, joined by the National Federation of Independent Business and the Mackinac Center, filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to address this issue and vindicate the First Amendment freedoms upon which a thriving democracy depends. We argue that the forcible unionization of home healthcare workers serves none of the compelling purposes for public-sector unionization that have been articulated by the Supreme Court. Because the Court has long recognized that unionization impinges certain constitutional rights, it has limited public-sector collective bargaining to those situations which advance the aims of promoting "labor peace" and eliminating "free riders." Labor peace is promoted by limiting competing workplace interests from bargaining over the conditions of employment — for example, two unions at the same workplace representing different colleagues. Free riders are non-union employees who enjoy the benefits of union-achieved gains without paying into the union's war chest. But neither aim is promoted by a system, such as Illinois's, in which employees work in different locations and in which the customer — the disabled person paying the homecare worker through a Medicaid disbursal — still controls every crucial aspect of the employment relationship, including hiring and firing. This last fact is most telling: the Illinois law only allows collective bargaining for higher wages and more generous benefits. That is, the law is only about speech — petitioning the government for higher wages and benefits — and does not address workplace conditions at all. As more and more states push to unionize more workers who indirectly receive government money — campaigns that, in face o dwindling private-sector union membership, have been called "labor's biggest victory in over sixty years" — it is vital that the Supreme Court articulate a limiting principle on this practice. Otherwise, more and more of us will be forced to interact with our representatives only through government — appointed bodies.

]]> Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13983 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/magner-brief.pdf The federal Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful "[t]o refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer ... or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin." Magner v. Gallagher addresses the question of whether the FHA's ban on racial discrimination can be violated by someone who does not actually engage in racial discrimination: Owners of rental properties in St. Paul, Minnesota brought this suit claiming that the city's enforcement of its housing code — ensuring that rental units were safe and otherwise habitable — violated the FHA because the repairs and maintenance necessary to comply with the code would increase rents and price out many of their African-American tenants. Unable to show that the housing code intentionally discriminated based on race, however, the owners argued — and the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals accepted — a "disparate impact" theory under which a plaintiff need only show that an otherwise neutral practice has a disproportionate effect on some racial group. Cato has now joined the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Center for Equal Opportunity, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute on an amicus brief supporting the city's request for Supreme Court review and arguing that the statutory language and congressional intent of the FHA preclude disparate impact claims. We argue that extending such claims to the FHA "would deeply intrude on the authority of state and local governments, and render much of their housing policies illegal," and "would inappropriately alter the federal-state balance in far-reaching ways." Indeed, disparate impact claims would preclude all institutions subject to the FHA — public and private — from implementing many practical policies. For example, "because [the FHA] applies to financial institutions, banks and mortgage companies would be pressured to provide loans to unqualified applicants in order to avoid disparate impact liability. Similar actions played a key role in triggering the mortgage crisis of 2007-2008." Moreover, the disparate impact doctrine directly conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantees by forcing government agencies "to engage in unconstitutional race-conscious decisionmaking" in order to avoid liability under the Act. In short, allowing disparate impact claims under the FHA would both lead to adverse economic consequences and create new constitutional tensions.

]]> Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13977 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/PerryvPerez-brief.pdf The decennial redrawing of electoral districts consistently produces extensive litigation. The most notable cases this cycle come, as they often have, from Texas. A number of activist groups challenged the Texas legislature's maps for state house, state senate, and congressional districts, alleging racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a special three-judge federal district court in San Antonio. At the same time, Texas is seeking in another three-judge district court in D.C. the "preclearance" of its maps that it needs to implement them under the VRA's Section 5. Enacted in 1965 to combat pervasive discrimination against black voters in the South, the VRA has exceeded expectations in excising that shameful phenomenon. Its application now, however, stymies the orderly implementation of free and fair elections, particularly in jurisdictions subject not only to the general prohibition on race-based voter discrimination, but also the Section 5 preclearance requirement. Originally conceived as a check on states where discrimination was prevalent in the 1960s, preclearance requires certain jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before changing any election laws. (The Section 5 list is bizarre: six of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy — and certain counties in three others — plus Alaska, Arizona, and some counties or townships in five other states as diverse as New Hampshire and South Dakota. Curiously, (only) three New York counties are covered, all boroughs in New York City. What is going on in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan that is not in Queens or Staten Island?) To obtain preclearance, proposed changes may not result in "retrogression," a reduction in minority voters' ability to elect their "preferred" candidates. Section 5 was originally a valuable tool in the fight against systemic disenfranchisement, but now facilitates the very discrimination it was designed to prevent. Indeed, the prohibition on retrogression effectively requires districting that assures that minority voters are the majority in a set number of districts — an inherently race-conscious mandate. The law, most recently renewed in 2006 for another 25 years, is based on deeply flawed assumptions and outdated statistical triggers, and flies in the face of the Fifteenth Amendment's requirement that all voters be treated equally. In any event, because the D.C. court here had not yet ruled on preclearance, the San Antonio court felt obligated to draw "interim" maps for use pending final adjudication of both the Section 2 and 5 cases. Texas filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, arguing that the lower court insufficiently deferred to the Texas legislature's maps. Now on an expedited briefing and argument schedule, Cato filed an amicus brief supporting neither side and arguing that this case demonstrates all that is wrong with the VRA as it currently exists — highlighting the tension between the VRA and the Constitution and the practical difficulties that conflict engenders for election administration. Put simply, the VRA's success has undermined its continuing viability; courts and legislatures struggle mightily and often fruitlessly to satisfy both the VRA's race-based mandate and the Fifteenth Amendment's equal treatment guarantee. We also point out that Section 5's selective applicability precludes the establishment of nationwide districting standards, confounding lower courts and producing different, often contradictory, treatment of voting rights in different states — in large part because Sections 2 and 5 themselves conflict with each other. We note that regardless of the outcome of this litigation, it is unlikely that Texas will have fully legal electoral maps in time to administer the 2012 elections in a fair and efficient manner. These difficulties — constitutional, statutory, and practical — disadvantage candidates, voters, legislatures, and courts, and undermine the VRA's great legacy of vindicating the voting rights of all citizens. The Court should thus schedule this case for broader reargument on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act as presently conceived.

]]> Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13971 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Home-Concrete-brief.pdf Since the foundational administrative law case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), courts have given significant deference to executive agency interpretations of federal law. United States v. Home Concrete & Supply tests whether there are any meaningful limits on such deference. The case involves a group of taxpayers who initiated a number of transactions designed to reduce their tax liability by allowing a financial entity they created, Home Concrete, to increase its tax basis and reduce its taxable gain from the sale of certain assets. In June 2003, the IRS ruled that the taxpayers' use of Home Concrete in this way was improper and issued an adjustment to their tax return (requiring payment of back-taxes). Having missed the standard three-year limit for such actions, however, the IRS argued that the adjustment was timely under a tax-code provision that extends the statute of limitations to six years if the taxpayer "omits from gross income an amount properly includible therein which is in excess of 25 percent of the amount of gross income stated in the return." Despite the Supreme Court's having long ago held otherwise, Colony v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1956), the IRS argues that an overstatement of basis qualifies as an omission under that tax provision. Further, during the course of this litigation, the Treasury Department issued a new regulation "clarifying" the provision in a way that supported the IRS's argument. The IRS now argues that this new regulation is controlling and should be retroactively applied to Home Concrete's 1999 returns. After (mostly) winning at the district court, the IRS lost before the Fourth Circuit and asked the Supreme Court to review the case—which involves one of many similar applications of the relevant tax provisions. The Court took the case and now Cato has joined the National Federation of Independent Business on a brief supporting the taxpayers, arguing that sanctioning this sort of ad hoc rule-making would undermine the rule of law and the separation of powers. We note that "[t]he government's position is that this regulation is due judicial deference" but the Supreme Court has "consistently held that where a statute has an unambiguous meaning, an agency's contrary interpretation is not entitled to deference." As Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson noted in his Fourth Circuit concurrence, "agencies are not a law unto themselves" and the government's position in this case "seems to [be] something of an inversion of the universe and to pass the point where the beneficial application of agency expertise gives way to a lack of accountability and a risk of arbitrariness." In deciding Chevron, the Supreme Court surely never intended to undermine the very structure of the Republic and unleash an administrative state wholly a law unto itself.

]]> Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13948 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/AGFC-Brief.pdf The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission owns and operates 23,000 acres of land as a wildlife refuge and recreational preserve; the preserve's trees are essential to its use for these purposes. Clearwater Dam, a federal flood control project, lies 115 miles upstream. Water is released from the dam in quantities governed by a pre-approved "management plan" that considers agricultural, recreational, and other effects downstream. Between 1993 and 2000, the government released more water than authorized under the plan. AGFC repeatedly objected that these excessive releases flooded the preserve during its growing season, which significantly damaged and eventually decimated tree populations. In 2001, the government acknowledged the havoc its flooding had wreaked on AGFC's land and ceased plan deviations. By then, however, the preserve and its trees were severely damaged, so AGFC sued the government, claiming damages under the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause. The district court awarded $5.8 million in lost timber and reforestation costs based on the substantiality of the government's flooding and the foreseeability of the damage it caused. The Federal Circuit reversed that decision, holding that the flooding of private land can never be a taking unless that flooding is permanent. It further held that, in determining whether the government's intrusion on AGFC's land was permanent or temporary, courts must focus on the character of the policy behind the intrusion rather the effects of the intrusion itself. A taking cannot have occurred here because each deviation from the plan constituted a "temporary" policy, the court concluded, so AGFC had no constitutional remedy. AGFC is asking the Supreme Court to review its case; the Court itself has recognized that something less than a permanent invasion of land can constitute a compensable taking. Cato joined the Pacific Legal Foundation on an amicus brief urging the Court to hear the case and uphold the Fifth Amendment rights of property owners whose land is destroyed by the federal government. Our brief highlights the conflict between the Federal Circuit's decision and both Supreme Court and lower court precedent. First, an invasion of land by flooding is no different from an invasion of land by any other means. Second, the government's self-professed "intent" that a possible taking be "temporary" should have no bearing on whether a Fifth Amendment remedy exists when that taking has, in fact, occurred. Instead, the relevant inquiry should be whether the government caused permanent damage and, if so, how much. The Federal Circuit's new rule — that, so long as it might be "temporary," no government flooding can be remedied under the Fifth Amendment — runs afoul of the letter and spirit of a constitutional provision meant to compensate property owners for government intrusions on their land. We urge the court to grant AGFC's petition and maintain constitutional protections for private property.

]]> Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13938 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13905 Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13905 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/KCPA-Brief.pdf This case is quite similar to the occupational licensing case of Locke v. Shore, in which Cato also filed a brief, except that the speech-licensing regulation here concerns not artistic expression but rather the dissemination of consumer-demanded commercial information — specifically, rental property listings that are free to the public. The Missouri Real Estate Commission, acting on a complaint by a licensed realtor, decided that Kansas City Premier Apartments, which provides local rental listings, was acting as an unlicensed real estate broker and was therefore subject to fine and even criminal prosecution. (Before KCPA began operations, it had asked the Commission whether it needed a license and did not receive a clear answer other than that it was a "grey area" of law.) KCPA challenged the Commission's decision on First Amendment grounds, but the trial court found it to be constitutional without giving a reason for its conclusion. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the trial court after simply presuming the constitutionality of the speech restriction — contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp. that "[t]he party seeking to uphold a restriction on commercial speech carries the burden of justifying it" — and placing the burden of proving unconstitutionality on KCPA. Cato has now joined the Pacific Legal Foundation on a brief supporting KCPA's request that the U.S. Supreme Court hear the case. Our brief notes that "this case combines the nationally important commercial speech issue with the equally nationally important question of the extent to which the Constitution tolerates occupational licensing." We explain the difficulties that the Court's "commercial speech doctrine" has caused and argue for a movement toward greater protection for collective and commercial speech, and away from a confusing four-part test established in a 1980 case called Central Hudson. As in Locke, this latest case raises the question of whether occupational licensing schemes that have an effect on speech are constitutional. Also as in Locke, an infinite array of professionals and ordinary people could get caught up in this regulation, including even a friend helping another friend find an apartment. Beyond the technical legal points, the case implicates broader policy issues such as the right to earn a living and the impact that speech monopolies have on consumers. Indeed, the consumer impact may be even more apparent here than in other occupational licensing cases because so many people struggle to find affordable apartments and other rentals in this economy — not to mention over the course of their lives.

]]> Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13904 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Adkins-brief.pdf mens rea (mental culpability, rather than, for example, incidental possession) requirement, people convicted under them have come forward en masse to ask state courts to reexamine their convictions. As described in the background to a previous brief, the district court held that these sorts of laws offend the constitutional guarantee of due process. Florida's Supreme Court has consolidated over 40 appeals resulting from that federal court decision (which itself is now on appeal). Cato has once again joined the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, ACLU, Drug Policy Alliance, Calvert Institute for Policy Research, Libertarian Law Council and 38 law professors on a brief supporting the rights of persons convicted under the "strict liability" statutes. We urge the Florida Supreme Court to follow the federal district court's lead and strike down laws prohibiting the sale, possession, or delivery of illicit substances without requiring mental culpability. That court now has the opportunity to reverse these unwarranted convictions and purge a nationally singular stain on civil liberties.]]> Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13895 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Harmon-brief.pdf Harmon v. Kimmel challenges New York's law on the grounds that it is an arbitrary and unsupportable regulation amounting to an uncompensated taking that violates the Fifth Amendment. Jim Harmon's family owns and lives in a five-story brownstone in the Central Park West Historical District. The Harmons inherited the building — and along with it three rent-controlled tenants. Those tenants have occupied apartments in the building for a combined total of 91 years at a rate 59% below market. In their lawsuit, however, the Harmons face many unfriendly precedents that have given states free reign to regulate property, to the point that it is occupied on an essentially permanent basis while surviving Fifth Amendment scrutiny. One way to challenge some laws is to argue they are so arbitrary and poorly justified that they violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Because this is an especially difficult type of challenge to bring, Cato joined the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute on a brief supporting the Harmons' request that the Supreme Court review lower-court rulings against them. Although the Court has ruled that the Takings Clause does not permit challenges based on claims that the alleged taking fails to "substantially advance legitimate state interests," the Due Process Clause is an independent textual provision. We thus clarify the relationship between property rights and due process, arguing that a law which advances no legitimate governmental purpose can be challenged under the Due Process Clause. To hold otherwise would be to deny property owners any meaningful avenue for defending their property from onerous and irrational regulations.]]> Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13894 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/FCCvFox.pdf Who controls the content of TV and radio broadcasts, parents or the FCC? In the 1978 case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, the Supreme Court held that, because over-the-air broadcast media is like an "unwanted intruder" in the home that is uniquely accessible to children, the FCC has a role in maintaining the cleanliness of the transmissions. Because of these unique characteristics, the regulation of broadcast media was held to a lesser constitutional standard than other types of media. That ruling was largely based on the technology of the time: three channels, little cable, and no VCRs, much less Internet, DVDs, and satellite TV. Since that time, the FCC has regulated broadcasts under that lower constitutional standard, including fining stations for so-called "fleeting expletives" uttered by celebrities on live awards shows, the infraction from which this case springs (it was Bono, then Cher, then Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie). This case is visiting the Supreme Court for the second time. In 2009, the Court ruled that an FCC rule against "fleeting expletives" was not an unlawful under administrative law, the law governing executive agencies' power. On remand, the Second Circuit struck down the rule on First Amendment grounds, largely on the reasoning that Pacifica had been obviated by technological change. Cato has joined forces on an amicus brief with a wide range of groups advocating freedom in technology policy — the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, and TechFreedom — to underscore for the Court just how different the world is today from 1978. While the groups joining the brief do not necessarily agree with each other all the time, we agree on this fundamental truth: broadcast media (the most prominent way we become informed) should not receive watered-down First Amendment protection. We point out how the existence of Video-On-Demand services like Netflix, DVRs, Internet sites like Hulu, as well as massive access to DVDs, has radically transformed how we consume media. Broadcast media is no longer an "unwanted intruder," but more like an invited guest. Moreover, with the existence of parental control mechanisms like the V-Chip, parental locks included in cable and satellite boxes, and even services like "TV Guardian" — which filters live TV based on the closed-captioning signal — parents have all the tools at their disposal to ensure that children aren't exposed to fleeting expletives or anything else unwanted. So why does the FCC need a vague and overbroad rule that could not pass heightened scrutiny and can only survive under a watered-down First Amendment standard? We live in a world that few could have imagined in 1978. It's time for a new rule that gives broadcast media the same level of speech protection as any other kind.

]]> Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EST http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13841 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Shelton-filed-brief.pdf Florida is so zealous in pursuing the war on drugs that its laws classify the possession, sale, and delivery of controlled substances as offenses not requiring the state to prove that the defendant knew he had possessed, sold, or delivered those substances. In the current case, state prosecutors convicted Mackie Shelton of transporting cocaine under one of these "strict liability" statutes, the trial judge having instructed the jury that the state only needed to prove that Shelton delivered a substance and that the substance was cocaine. Shelton successfully challenged the constitutionality of that state law in federal court, where the district judge overturned the conviction and noted that "Florida stands alone in its express elimination of mens rea as an element of a drug offense." Florida appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Cato has joined the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, ACLU, Drug Policy Alliance, Calvert Institute for Policy Research, and 38 law professors in a brief supporting Shelton's position. The Supreme Court has recognized only limited exceptions to the general rule that criminal culpability requires mens rea (a guilty mind). These "strict liability" crimes fall under the rubric of "public welfare offenses" and are typically what most people would not consider "serious," such as traffic violations and selling alcohol to minors. Policymakers justify dispensing with mens rea requirements in such contexts by citing the need to deter businesses from imposing costs on society at large, or the burden that having to prove mens rea in these sorts of cases would overwhelm courts, or that the penalties are relatively small and carry little social stigma. Florida's legislature, however, went well beyond the normal boundaries of public welfare offenses in imposing strict liability for drug crimes that can carry significant prison terms — and thus violated the due process of law and traditional notions of fundamental fairness. As an alternative argument purporting to save its drug laws, Florida points to the availability of affirmative defenses, that these defenses (e.g., "I didn't know it was cocaine") to a presumption of guilty intent take the statute out of the (constitutionally dubious) strict liability category. But a state may not simply presume the mens rea element of a crime: In Patterson v. New York (1977), for example, the Court held that prosecutors cannot reallocate the burden of proof by forcing a defendant to prove an affirmative defense. In requiring defendants to prove that they are "blameless" in these sorts of drug crimes, Florida's statutes fail constitutional muster. We urge the Eleventh Circuit to affirm the district court and declare the offending state law unconstitutional.

]]> Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13818 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/FINRA-filed-brief.pdf As protestors across America condemn Wall Street for its greed and corruption, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to examine a ruling that holds some of Wall Street's biggest regulators immune from suit. In 2006, the National Association of Securities Dealers and the regulatory arm of the New York Stock Exchange consolidated to form the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). NASD and FINRA are "self-regulatory organizations" (SROs), because the Securities and Exchange Commission charges them with regulating their own members — a set-up that is supposed to protect investors and the public. But NASD officers may have achieved the consolidation (and thereby received huge bonuses) by misstating material facts on a proxy solicitation, which induced member firms to give up some of their voting powers in exchange for a payout. Remarkably, the Second Circuit held that a lawsuit against NASD for the alleged fraud could not proceed because the defendants had sovereign immunity. Yes, SROs should be immune for their actions as quasi-government regulators. For example, immunity is appropriate for government actors like judges, who must have some protection from private suit to do their jobs properly. But judges are not immune for things they do in their private lives — they can be sued just like anyone else. The Second Circuit, however, held that SROs, which have expansive and varied powers, enjoy absolute immunity even for actions that are merely "incident to" their regulatory duties. That is, suits involving private corporate actions cannot proceed if they are incident to actions taken in a governmental capacity. In this case, the court found that the voting-rights changes were "incident to" FINRA's regulatory activities because they were part of a plan to make a larger entity that would also have regulatory duties. This case raises serious constitutional issues about the role the judiciary plays in ensuring that SROs remain faithful to their delegated duties of protecting investors and the public. Because SROs are quasi-private actors, they have incentives to act in their own best interests — rather than in the public interest — and they do not have to be as transparent as fully public agencies. Further, the executive branch, including the SEC, has failed to hold SROs accountable for their self-serving behaviors. As we see from this case, the judiciary provides the sole opportunity for SRO accountability. Cato, joined by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has now filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to review Standard Investment Chartered, Inc. v. NASD. Accountability among branches of government — the separation of powers and checks-and-balances — is a central tenet of our constitutional structure, and is especially important for SROs, which exercise great power over financial markets. Our brief argues that the judiciary remains the last check on SROs' unbridled power and that the Second Circuit erred in failing to hold these SROs accountable.

]]> Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13804 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Shore-brief.pdf The latest example of liberty-reducing occupational licensing schemes comes to us from Florida, where a law restricts the practice of interior design to people the state has licensed. Those wishing to pursue this occupation must first undergo an onerous process ostensibly in the name of "public safety." In reality, the law serves as an anti-competition measure that protects Florida's current cohort of interior designers. Our friends at the Institute for Justice have pursued a lawsuit against the law but lost their appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. Cato has now joined the Pacific Legal Foundation on a brief asking the Supreme Court to review that ruling. The lower court got it wrong not just with respect to the right to earn a living, however, but also on First Amendment grounds. That is, interior design, as a form of artistic expression, is historically protected by the First Amendment. Indeed, interior designers are measured primarily on the value of their aesthetic expression, not for any technical knowledge or expertise. This type of artistry is a matter of taste, and the designer and client usually arrive at the end result through collaboration and according to personal preferences. Thus, the designer-client relationship has little in common with traditionally regulated professions such as medicine, law and finance, where bad advice can have real and far-reaching consequences — but even then, the Supreme Court has emphasized the First Amendment implications of placing "prior restraints" on expression through burdensome licensing schemes. Instead of following that precedent, however, the circuit court carved out a constitutionally unprotected exception for "direct personalized speech with clients." Florida's "public safety" justification is similarly weak, given that the state has presented no evidence of any bona fide concerns that substantiate a burdensome licensing scheme that includes six years of higher education and a painstaking exam — instead relying on cursory allegations that, for example, licensed designers are more adept at ensuring that fixture placements do not violate building codes. Finally, the Eleventh Circuit's ruling disregarded the infinite array of auxiliary occupations the Florida law subjects to possible criminal sanctions: wedding planners, branding consultants, sellers of retail display racks, retail business consultants, corporate art consultants, and even theater-set designers could all get swept in. The state has already taken enforcement actions against a wide spectrum of people who are not interior designers, including office furniture dealers, restaurant equipment suppliers, flooring companies, wall covering companies, fabric vendors, builders, real estate developers, remodelers, accessories retailers, antique dealers, drafting services, lighting companies, kitchen designers, workrooms, carpet companies, art dealers, stagers, yacht designers, and even a florist. This dragnet effect also suggests that the law is too broad to survive constitutional scrutiny.

]]> Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13782 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Corboy-brief.pdf Rice v. Cayetano, the Supreme Court struck down race-based voting requirements for certain state officers because government schemes that distinguish between "native Hawaiian" and "Hawaiian" are racial classifications that must pass "strict scrutiny" to be deemed constitutional; they must be narrowly tailored to achieve a truly "compelling" purpose (a standard nearly impossible to meet). Yet that exact same category of "native Hawaiian" — whose frighteningly archaic definition is "any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778" — was used in the Hawaii Homes Commission Act to distinguish those who can hold certain leases that are subject to little or no property tax. A group of Hawaiians who do not meet the state's definition of "native Hawaiian" and therefore suffer under the explicitly race-based law decided to challenge these property-tax exemptions. After paying their taxes, these plaintiffs sought refunds on the grounds that the classification scheme violates the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court of Hawaii, however, ruled that they didn't have standing — a legal doctrine that determines who can bring a claim — to challenge the taxes on the ground that they had not yet asked for the leases (for which they were indisputably ineligible due to not having enough "blood of the races" flowing through their veins). A lower state court had even ruled that the classification was not race-based — that it merely distinguishes leaseholders and non-leaseholders, even though Hawaiians without the sufficient "blood quantum" cannot be leaseholders! The group of taxpayers now seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court. Cato, joined by the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, the Goldwater Institute, and Professor Paul M. Sullivan, filed a brief urging the Court to take the case and rectify Hawaii's explicitly unconstitutional taxation scheme. We argue that, after Hawaii's state judiciary refused to address the issue of racial discrimination head-on, only the U.S. Supreme Court is in a position to guarantee the constitutional protections that Hawaiians have lived under for over a century (since Hawaii became a territory). Only by taking this case and overturning the racially charged definition can the Court continue to ensure that Hawaii is a state that "neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."]]> Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13773 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/US-v-Jones-filed-brief.pdf As technology advances — and law enforcement adapts these advancements to police work — courts will be asked to apply the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in new and varied situations. In 2004, the FBI, as part of a joint task force, suspected Antoine Jones of dealing drugs. To verify their suspicions, agents secured a warrant allowing them to attach a GPS tracking device to Jones's car (but then attached it after the warrant had expired, and in Maryland rather than the warrant's operative jurisdiction of D.C.). The FBI used this device to monitor and record the car's every movement for nearly a month before finally arresting Jones. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the FBI's action was unconstitutional because it violated Jones's "reasonable expectation of privacy" — the two-part Fourth Amendment standard developed in the landmark case of Katz v. United States. The "reasonable expectation of privacy" doctrine holds that if a person has an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and that expectation is one society is prepared to accept, then the Fourth Amendment protects the object of that expectation. The court found that the long-term round-the-clock GPS surveillance, even of a vehicle always on public roads and in locations readily observable by a cop on the street, was qualitatively different than a temporary stakeout or other conventional surveillance. The government successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case, and the Court added the issue of whether installing the GPS device was itself a Fourth Amendment violation, quite apart from the monitoring. Cato filed a brief supporting Jones and arguing that the Court should take this opportunity to strengthen Fourth Amendment protections by finding unconstitutional the government's continuous and long-term tracking of someone's vehicle without a valid warrant. This case affords the Court an opportunity to revisit the "reasonable expectation of privacy" standard — which has dominated this area of law for over 40 years but is a misinterpretation of Katz that has proven unworkable. Standing alone, the "reasonable expectation" test reverses the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment by putting the onus on citizens to prove the reasonableness of their expectations instead of examining the reasonableness of government action. By measuring the actions an individual takes to shield his information against the reasonableness of the government's actions in piercing that shield, the Court can simplify this area of law from one measuring esoteric "expectations" to one examining a straightforward factual question. Moreover, the government's conversion of Jones's property — his car — into a surveillance device acted as an unreasonable seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes because it deprived Jones of a valuable property right, the right to exclude others from his property. Similarly, using his car then to collect information and track Jones then became an unreasonable search. Thus, even if the Court continues to adhere to the "reasonable expectations of privacy" test, it should recognize the sanctity of Jones's property and find the warrantless GPS-attachment and -surveillance unconstitutional.

]]> Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13734 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13708 Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13708 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Bond-Brief-Final.pdf A lost episode of Jerry Springer found its way into the Supreme Court's 2010-11 term in the case of United States v. Bond. Mrs. Bond, upset by the pregnancy that resulted from an affair between her husband and her erstwhile best friend, decided to take revenge. A trained microbiologist working at a chemical manufacturer, Mrs. Bond tried to poison her husband's mistress by dusting her door knobs, mailbox, and car handles with dangerous, possibly lethal chemicals. Upon being caught by (federal) postal inspectors, Mrs. Bond was charged with violating the law Congress passed to implement an international chemical weapons treaty. (There are no generally applicable federal attempted murder statutes, so prosecutors had to get creative to remain in federal court.) But if general criminal statues are beyond Congress's powers, as even the most ardent federal-power activist must acknowledge, how did Congress have the power to pass the law that ensnared Mrs. Bond? — who, whatever her character flaws, was not selling chemical weapons to terrorists (the treaty's target). Mrs. Bond thus hoped to challenge her conviction by arguing that Congress did not have the power to pass the law in question. The Third Circuit, however, ruled that she did not have standing — a legal doctrine defining who has the right to bring a claim — to challenge the law on federalism grounds. Cato filed a Supreme Court brief supporting Mrs. Bond's position and arguing that it makes no sense to deny standing to someone challenging a law under which she is being prosecuted. The Court unanimously agreed and remanded the case back to the Third Circuit, to finally hear arguments over whether the statute is beyond congressional power. Cato has now reentered the fray, in a brief authored by Georgetown law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz and joined by the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. We again support Mrs. Bond's claim that the law under which she was charged is beyond Congress's enumerated powers. The main obstacle to this argument is the 1920 case Missouri v. Holland, a short and not completely clear opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that has been interpreted to mean that Congress can expand its enumerated powers via the Treaty Clause. In other words, even though Congress does not have the power to pass, for example, general criminal statutes, if Congress ratifies a treaty calling for such statutes, its power increases beyond constitutional limits. We argue that this is an astounding manner in which to interpret a Constitution that creates a federal government of limited powers. Not only would this mean that the Executive has the ability to expand congressional power by signing a treaty, but it would mean that foreign governments could change congressional power by abrogating a previously valid treaty — thus removing the constitutional authority from certain laws. We also point out how the most influential argument supporting Missouri v. Holland is based on a clear misreading of constitutional history and that the ruling is in deep tension with other cases. We're in a constitutional quagmire that can only be escaped by limiting or overturning Missouri v. Holland.

]]> Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13704 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13694 Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13694 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/KnoxFiledBrief.pdf As recent events in Wisconsin have demonstrated, public-sector unions are powerful political constituencies that can shape government to their ends. The Service Employees International Union, for example, the defendant in this case, has been ranked by OpenSecrets.org as the fifth biggest "heavy hitter" in federal politics in terms of campaign spending. In 2005, the SEIU initiated a mid-year campaign against two California ballot measures, one that would cap state spending and another that would restrict the use of union dues for political purposes. In states such as California that do not have "right to work" laws, unions are allowed to take dues from non-union workers to finance collective-bargaining activities that, arguably, benefit all employees. Since 1977, however, unions have not been allowed to take dues from non-union members to pay for pure political advocacy without adequate protections for possible dissenters. In order to distinguish political money from collective-bargaining money, the Supreme Court requires that a "Hudson notice" be given to all non-union workers. This notice gives non-members the opportunity to challenge political expenditures. But when the SEIU began garnishing 25-33% more wages to fight the California ballot initiatives, it issued no new Hudson notice, effectively forcing 28,000 non-member employees to finance its political speech. As Judge J. Clifford Wallace wrote in dissent from the Ninth Circuit's ruling in favor of the SEIU, "it is undeniably unusual for a government agency to give a private entity the power, in essence, to tax government employees." Now before the Supreme Court, Cato joined the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and the Mountain States Legal Foundation, on a brief supporting the non-union workers and arguing that the Court should focus not on the extent of the burden Hudson places on unions (as the Ninth Circuit did) but on the paramount reasons why the notice requirements exist in the first place: to ensure that an individual's right to speak or remain quiet receives the protection it deserves. As Judge Wallace put it, "the union has no legitimate interest ... in collecting agency fees from nonmembers to fill its political war-chest." We also highlight the numerous unscrupulous tactics that unions have used over the years that violate the rights of dissenting workers—the same kind of rights that the Ninth Circuit treated with indifference. Finally, in light of the extreme political power that unions enjoy, the Court should find that the only way to adequately protect the rights of dissenting workers is to require that all non-union members must "opt-in" to any garnishment of wages for political purposes.

]]> Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13680 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/ColonyCove-brief.pdf When state and local governments violate federal constitutional rights (e.g., First Amendment free speech), they can be sued in federal court — except when that government action violates the Fifth Amendment's protections for property rights. Under the Supreme Court's decision in Williamson County v. Hamilton Bank, individuals and businesses alleging unconstitutional takings by state or local governments are required to exhaust state review procedures — seeking redress from the very officials who harmed them — before turning to federal courts. This constitutional anomaly is evident in Colony Cove v. Carson, where the operators of a rental property in California alleged an unconstitutional taking when the local rent control board refused to approve an increase in rent to allow their business to operate profitably. California law forecloses judicial review of the findings of rent control boards, so municipal governments have an unchecked license to determine whether such businesses may operate: A property owner's sole recourse is to appeal to the very rent control board who forbade her from charging a profitable rent in the first place. These "review" procedures, like some others across the nation, are wildly insufficient. Even more significantly, once a takings claim has been fully heard in state proceedings per Williamson County's command, it is usually barred from federal review based on various prudential doctrines. The result is the indiscriminate exclusion of takings claims from federal courts, a situation that invites opportunist states to usurp private property rights. Seeking to afford citizens across the nation the opportunity to assert Takings Clause claims in parity with other constitutional rights, Cato joined the New England Legal Foundation, National Federation of Independent Business, Institute for Justice, Goldwater Institute, and Professors James Ely and Richard Epstein in filing an amicus brief supporting the California property owners' petition for Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit's ruling against them. We argue that Williamson County should be overruled because it relegates takings claims to second-class status despite the constitutional first principle that uniform protection of individual rights is vital to our system of government. At the very least, the Court should require federal reprieve when state procedures for rectifying a taking are futile — as they were here. Finally, we argue that the Court should correct lower courts' misinterpretation of Williamson County, which puts property rights jurisprudence at odds with Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (a statute that gives people access to federal courts when a state denies them their constitutional rights).

]]> Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13672 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/Mayo-brief.pdf Doctors and researchers regularly perform blood tests to determine the effectiveness of various drugs. The resulting correlations between the test results and patient health have recently become the subject of numerous "process" patents. That these patents have been upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit represents a dangerous expansion of traditional patent law. This expansion threatens to stifle free markets and infringe on individual liberty. In Mayo v. Prometheus, the Court will address the important question of whether someone can patent the process of observing correlations between blood test results and patient health. The primary legal issue here is whether naturally occurring correlations are patentable as "process" patents simply because the methods used to administer prescription drugs and test blood may involve "transformations" of body chemistry. Cato's amicus brief, joined by the Reason Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argues that these patents are not "processes" as the term was originally understood in the Patent Act of 1952. We liken medical-diagnostic patents to other abstract-process patents — such as software and business-method patents — that have resulted in financial losses for firms and discouraged innovation, and argue that enforcing these patents "will only serve to further slow the economy, retard technological innovation, distort the free market, and place human health at risk." Moreover, upholding the patents at issue will impermissibly restrict public-domain activity because the final step in a medical-diagnostic patent is an entirely mental one that will be violated whenever a doctor performs a previously public-domain medical test after learning about the patented correlation. Our brief thus closes by arguing that the Court should also consider the profound First Amendment implications in allowing processes whose final step is entirely mental to be patented. "The Court has repeatedly recognized that the First Amendment protects freedom of thought as well as freedom of speech." Unlike copyrights, patents lack traditional free-speech safeguards (such as exceptions for "fair use") and, therefore, the Court should reject medical-diagnostic patents as impermissibly restricting the freedom of thought.

]]> Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13654 http://www.cato.org/pubs/legalbriefs/PPL-MontanaLLC-v-Montana.pdf amicus brief supporting that request, which the Court granted. Now that the case is before the Court, Cato has joined the Montana Farm Bureau Federation, American Farm Bureau Federation, and National Federation of Independent Business on a brief supporting the property owners. We are chiefly concerned with two parts of the Montana Supreme Court's ruling: First, the court incorrectly evaluated navigability for the purpose of establishing title — finding the entirety of the rivers at issue navigable (and thus belonging to the state) because portions of them are — contravening the legal standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Utah (which analyzed the riverbeds section-by-section to achieve a "precise" assessment of navigability). Second, the court effectively transferred a substantial quantity of land from private owners to the state — a judicial taking that violates either the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments (as the Court described in the recent Stop the Beach Renourishment case, in which Cato also filed a brief). In short, the Court should reaffirm the Utah standard for navigability in the context of establishing title and protect private property owners against judicial takings. By doing so, it would send a strong message to state courts across the nation that judicial usurpations of property rights are just as unconstitutional as those undertaken by other branches of government.]]> Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13645 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13587 Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EDT http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13587