The Seventh Amendment guarantees all citizens the right to a jury trial in federal civil cases where the amount in controversy exceeds $20. Selective incorporation—the process by which provisions in the Bill of Rights are applied against the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—has led to the application of the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth (in part), Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the states over the last century. Almost all of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated against the states, but the Seventh Amendment’s provisions have not. That means that each state decides the circumstances in which its litigants are entitled to a civil jury trial.

In Humboldt County, California, numerous property owners have found themselves subject to massive fines—sometimes of millions of dollars—for various violations of county codes. Notably, many of these landowners are factually innocent. In one case, a landowner was fined for a violation committed by the previous owner that the state never recorded. Humboldt County has levied hundreds of millions of dollars in fines (which is sufficient to state an Excessive Fines claim, according to the Ninth Circuit), but the law provides no practical way for defendants to challenge these egregious fines.

Humboldt County does not provide jury trials to adjudicate these fines. Indeed, officials boast that the adjudicators of these challenged fines have “never ruled against the government.” What’s more, victims of these massive fines often find themselves waiting months or years for a hearing—while fines continue to accrue at $10,000 per day. At the same time, the County refuses to grant the necessary permits to cure the violations. This leaves landowners with few realistic options.

If the Seventh Amendment were incorporated, states and local governments like Humboldt County would be required to provide jury trials to adjudicate such fines. The Supreme Court set out the modern test for whether a constitutional right should be incorporated in McDonald v. Chicago (2010). As the Court explained, the key question is whether the right at issue is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty” or “deeply rooted in history and tradition.” The Seventh Amendment easily passes this test. Only one case, decided over a century ago, stands in the way of incorporation: Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad Company v. Bombolis (1916).

Bombolis held that the Seventh Amendment could not be incorporated against the states. However, this case was decided before the modern era of incorporation. In fact, the Supreme Court claimed in Bombolis that the entire Bill of Rights applies only to the federal government and not to state governments. That opinion even asserted that the exclusive application of these amendments to the federal government was “[s]o completely and conclusively … settled … that to concede that they are open to contention would be to grant that nothing whatever had been settled as to the power of state and federal governments or the authority of state and federal courts.” As it turned out, the Supreme Court soon began to recognize the incorporation of one part of the Bill of Rights after another over the course of the next century. In retrospect, Bombolis’s unqualified rejection of incorporation appears self-refuting.

A group of plaintiffs subject to fines in Humboldt County has filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to overrule Bombolis and incorporate the Seventh Amendment jury right against the states. And Cato has filed an amicus brief in support of these victims of Humboldt County’s code-enforcement regime. In our brief, we argue that—especially after Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy (2024)—it is time to overturn Bombolis and apply the Seventh Amendment to the states.

Now that almost every provision in the Bill of Rights is labeled as “fundamental” and applied against the states, the Supreme Court should incorporate the protections of the Seventh Amendment to the states as well. Incorporation of the Seventh Amendment is especially important given the outsized role played by the judicial systems of state and local governments in the lives of their constituents. Incorporation of this important right will help put an end to the egregious violations of the Constitution that currently occur in Humboldt County and elsewhere. The Supreme Court should take this case and finally overrule Bombolis’s outdated reasoning.