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Taxi Day for IJ at 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals

September 21, 2016

Seizure vs. Forfeiture: A Crucial Distinction

September 22, 2016

Less than 1% of 8,000 charities rated have received at least 14 consecutive 4-star ratings

Seizure vs. Forfeiture: A Crucial Distinction

IJ Amicus Brief Alerts High Court to Abuse of Civil Forfeiture Using Drug Dogs

Although related, seizure and forfeiture are not interchangeable. This difference is important. Law enforcement lobbyists routinely conflate the two in their attempts to oppose forfeiture reform. For instance, in 2015, the president of the California Police Chiefs Association argued that a reform bill considered by the California Legislature would affect the ability of police “to seize…

Taxi Companies Cannot Block Competition, but They Could Compete

IJ client Dan Burgess drives for ridesharing companies uberX, Sidecar and Lyft and is fighting to defend his economic liberty.

Taxi companies that have been trying to limit competition from ridesharing services are being presented with a much better alternative. As it turns out, deregulating the traditional cabs is a more effective (and constitutional) way to compete with increasingly popular ridesharing names like Uber and Lyft. The taxi companies have made it clear that being…

Taxi Day at 7th Circuit in Chicago

Taxi cab fleet Freedom Ride 10-30-12 034 Modified

The rise of Uber and other ridesharing services shined a light on how the taxicab industry has created artificial barriers to entry into the market. Those barriers to entry were the focus of two court cases heard by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. One case challenged Milwaukee’s repeal of the cap on…

NYPD Has No Idea How Much Cash It Seized, Claims Transparency Would Lead to “System Crashes”

The New York City Council’s Public Safety Committee considered a bill on Thursday that would shine a light on the NYPD’s seizure activity. Under legislation proposed by Councilmember Ritchie Torres, and co-sponsored by 37 councilmembers, the NYPD would have to submit reports each year disclosing the amount of cash, vehicles, wallets, phones and other types…

Maryland Homeowners Fighting Back Against City Land Grab

The city of Cumberland, Maryland, appears to be peaceful and thriving to drivers passing through on I-68. But, a dozen homeowners in the Rolling Mill neighborhood are locked in a battle with the city. The fight began more than a year ago when the city chose the neighborhood as an ideal location for redevelopment. ABC7…

Listen Up Feds: Get Out of the Way and Save Lives

Paying bone marrow donors for their time and money has the potential to save thousands of lives every year. What’s more, compensation has virtually no downsides. Yet the federal government is still fighting to stop it. Proposed federal regulations would prohibit Hemeos, a health care startup, from using compensation to help people in desperate need of a marrow transport. This…

USA Today: We Need More Lawyers Like IJ

Glenn Reynolds, better known as Instapundit, gave the Institute for Justice high-praise in his most recent column for USA Today: One group that I’ve admired for years is the Institute for Justice, a free-market public-interest law firm that works to protect people, mostly poor people, from the heavy hand of the state. Writing that “we…

When the government gets in your way, have you ever stopped and asked why?

EVERYTHING

Watch the Institute for Justice’s award-winning short film spotlighting the importance of compensating bone marrow donors.

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Our Issues

School Choice

School choice is simply the idea that all parents, regardless of means, should enjoy the freedom to choose what schools their children attend.
more on this issue »
Economic Liberty

The right to earn a living in the occupation of your choice without unnecessary government interference is at the heart of the American Dream.
more on this issue »
First Amendment

We seek to defend the free flow of information—information that is indispensable to our democratic form of government and to our free enterprise economy.
more on this issue »
Private Property

Respecting the right of private property is essential to a just and prosperous society. But government at all levels—local, state and federal—routinely infringe on these rights.
more on this issue »

John Rosemond

John Rosemond’s lawsuit defends freedom of speech and freedom of the press from government officials who believe that it can be a crime in America to express an opinion in a newspaper.

Jean Soderlind

Tour guides are storytellers, and the government can’t be in the business of deciding who is (or who is not) allowed to tell stories.

Charlie Birnbaum

Charlie Birnbaum is fighting to keep his family home in Atlantic City, N.J., which has been in his family for 50 years. But New Jersey wants to take it for the benefit of a bankrupt casino.

Kim Billups

Kim has everything she needs to run her tour guide business in Charleston—except the government’s permission to talk.

Archdiocese of Newark

The Archdiocese of Newark is one of the largest in terms of population in the U.S., with nearly 1.3 million Catholics and 219 parishes. The Archdiocese is fighting a New Jersey law that makes it a crime to sell monuments, such as headstones, to their parishioners.

Randy Sowers

Randy Sowers has run a dairy farm in Frederick County, Md. since 1981. But in 2012, the IRS seized the farm’s bank account because the Sowers deposited the cash in amounts under $10,000.

Hinga Mbogo

For more than 30 years, Hinga Mbogo has been fixing the cars of Dallas residents at his shop on Ross Avenue. But the city is trying to shut him down by using an oppressive and little-known zoning process called “amortization.”

Jeana and Jack Horner

Jeana and Jack Horner are among the hundreds of people each year who find themselves caught in Indianapolis’s forfeiture machine.

Lyndon McLellan

Lyndon McLellan has spent more than a decade running L&M Convenience Mart in rural North Carolina. Then, without any warning, agents from the IRS seized his entire bank account, totaling more than $107,000.

Senator Lisa Torraco

Senator Lisa Torraco, a Republican representing Bernalillo County, N.M., was the initial sponsor for the Forfeiture Reform Law in the State Senate.

Laura Pekarik

IJ client Laura Pekarik is an entrepreneurial dynamo who owns and operates the Cupcakes for Courage food truck.

Jane Astramecki

IJ client Jane Astramecki, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, runs a home baking business. But Minnesota’s restrictive cottage food law bans her from earning more than $5,000 a year and from selling her treats at venues other than farmers’ markets and community events.

Jeffrey, Richard and Mitch Hirsch

Brothers Jeffrey, Richard and Mitch Hirsch owned Bi-County Distributors Inc., a small distribution business in Long Island, N.Y. The IRS used a legal process called civil forfeiture to seize their entire bank account—more than $446,000—even though they had done nothing wrong. After the brothers filed a lawsuit, the IRS returned their hard-earned cash.

Terry Dehko and Sandy Thomas

Terry Dehko and his family have owned and operated the Schott’s Market in Fraser, Mich., for 35 years. The Dehkos had $35,000 taken from them by federal law enforcement officials through a process known as civil forfeiture.

Markela Sourovelis

Kriss Marion

Kriss Marion is the founder of her local farmers’ market in Blanchardville, Wisconsin. But under the state’s ban on selling home-baked goods, Kriss must instead give her extra baked goods away or feed them to her pigs and chickens.

Carl and Joy Gamble

Norwood, Ohio wanted to bulldoze Carl and Joy’s home of more than three decades to make way for a private developer.

Dan Burgess

IJ client Dan Burgess drives for ridesharing companies uberX, Sidecar and Lyft and is fighting to defend his economic liberty.

Ron Hines

The First Amendment should apply to licensed professionals who give advice over the Internet.

Joyce Osborn Wilson

Joyce is banned from offering Alabamians a comfortable and clean place to use the prepackaged, teeth-whitening products she sells to customers.

Mike Warfield

Fed up with Charleston’s endless series of trivial questions, Mike is standing up for his First Amendment right to talk to paying customers without first getting the government’s permission.

Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts

Miami Shores Village, Fla., told Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts to remove their front-yard vegetable garden or face $50 a day in fines. But trees, fruit and garden gnomes are just fine.

Ash Patel

Salamata Sylla

The Washington Department of Licensing ordered IJ client Salamata Sylla to obtain a time-consuming and irrelevant cosmetology license for hair braiding. IJ sued on her behalf and forced the Department to adopt a rule exempting braiders.

Mark Zaniewski

Mark owns the Metro Marathon service station in Sterling Heights, Mich., which has been in the family for 40 years. But in 2013, the IRS seized over $70,000, even though Mark violated no law.

Chip McElroy

Chip owns Live Oak Brewing, based in Austin, Texas. Established in 1997, Live Oak has been brewing craft beer long before its current surge in popularity. Now he is fighting a Texas law that forces craft brewers to give up millions of dollars of valuable property to politically connected beer distributors.

Isis Brantley

For decades, Isis Brantley has fought for her right to braid hair and to pass on her knowledge to others. She successfully sued the state of Texas after it attempted to force her to turn her braiding school into a barber college.

Christos and Markela Sourovelis

Chris and Markela Sourovelis worked their whole lives to build a home for their family. Officials in Philadelphia then tried to use civil forfeiture to take it all away, even though Chris and Markela did nothing wrong.

Regino Soriano

Regino Soriano owns a popular food truck named El Bandolero, but his plans to expand have been significantly restricted by San Antonio’s city’s 300-foot rule.

Larry Miller

Larry Miller has been fighting for the rights of Atlanta’s vendors for the past twenty-five years.

Ocheesee Creamery

Mary Lou Wesselhoeft and her husband Paul Wesselhoeft own Ocheesee Creamery, a small creamery in the Florida Panhandle. Because of the all-natural dairy philosophy that Mary Lou follows, she added nothing to the creamery’s skim milk. But a state agency wants her to use a confusing and misleading label that labels the milk something it is not: “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed.”

Ricardo Quintanilla

Ricardo Quintanilla operates Tacos el Regio but San Antonio’s vending restrictions make it difficult to operate.

Grace Granatelli

After obtaining her private certifications in canine massage therapy, Grace started volunteering with rescue agencies and adoption events to provide canine massage for ailing and neglected dogs. She later turned her volunteer hobby into a business, which she named Pawsitive Touch.

Keith Westphal

IJ clients Keith Westphal and Joyce Osborn Wilson are banned from offering Alabamians a comfortable and clean place to use the prepackaged, teeth-whitening products they sell to customers.

Cynthia Perry

IJ client Cynthia Perry wants to send her daughter, Faith, to a private school in North Carolina, but she cannot afford the tuition on her own. She needs the financial lifeline of an Opportunity Scholarship.

Nikki McGowan

Nikki McGowan owns and operates the Madame BBQ food truck. She is challenging Baltimore’s 300-foot rule because it prevents her from successfully operating in the city.

Jim and Cliff Courtney

Jim and Cliff Courtney have a plan to bring economic prosperity to their small community. Unfortunately, the state of Washington has sunk their plan with a law that requires them to obtain a certificate of “public convenience and necessity” from the state in order to pick up and drop off passengers.

IJ By the Numbers

4 Litigation Pillars

Economic Liberty
Property Rights
School Choice
Free Speech

Support

92% from individuals
8% from foundations

5 U.S. Supreme Court cases since 2002, including 4 victories

IJ is currently litigating 43 cases in 26 states and Washington, D.C.

Active Cases |

Closed Cases

7 offices

95 employees, including 43 attorneys

Attorneys

Staff

1040 Partners giving $1,000 or more each year

Over 8,000 individual donors

= 25 donors

$20 million budget in FY16

FY15 Budget Breakdown

83%: Programs

10%: Management

7%: Development

75 legislative reforms secured

40 national awards for communications

70%

Success Rate

Through litigation and legislation

IJ strategic research cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and in 162 articles in scholarly, law, and policy publications.

64 eminent domain projects and blight designations defeated by IJ activism.

Behind the Scenes at IJ

Let Them Bake!

Home bakers (along with IJ’s activism team) rallying at the New Jersey State House for the right to sell their delicious baked goods.
Livestream

Behind the scenes at our Facebook livestream for the premiere of our film, “Everything.”
Eminent Domain Fight

Taken at today’s press conference in Ogden, UT. The city is trying to say this home (and others in the neighborhood) is “blighted.”
Victory for Entrepreneurs!

Governor Matt Bevin signing S.B. 269, which exempts natural hair braiders in Kentucky from needing to obtain a cosmetology license. IJ’s activism team helped Kentucky hair braiders organize to demand reforms to the state’s cosmetology licensing laws.
Liberty in Action

IJ Attorney Rob Pecolla teaching a crowd of concerned homeowners and tenants about their 4th Amendment right to refuse unconstitutional city inspections.

Institute for Justice

Homepage

Taxi Day for IJ at 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals

Seizure vs. Forfeiture: A Crucial Distinction

Less than 1% of 8,000 charities rated have received at least 14 consecutive 4-star ratings

Institute for Justice | Update | September 22, 2016

Chris Dobrogosz | Update | September 22, 2016

Matt Powers | Update | September 21, 2016

Nick Sibilla | Update | September 20, 2016

Matt Powers | Update | September 19, 2016

Chris Dobrogosz | Update | September 19, 2016

Matt Powers | Update | September 14, 2016

When the government gets in your way, have you ever stopped and asked why?

EVERYTHING

Watch the Institute for Justice’s award-winning short film spotlighting the importance of compensating bone marrow donors.

SUPPORT OUR WORK

The National Law Firm for Liberty

Our Issues

School Choice

Economic Liberty

First Amendment

Private Property

IJ By the Numbers

4 Litigation Pillars

Support

5 U.S. Supreme Court cases since 2002, including 4 victories

IJ is currently litigating 43 cases in 26 states and Washington, D.C.

7 offices

95 employees, including 43 attorneys

Attorneys

Staff

1040 Partners giving $1,000 or more each year

Over 8,000 individual donors

FY15 Budget Breakdown

83%: Programs

10%: Management

7%: Development

75 legislative reforms secured

40 national awards for communications

70%

Success Rate

Through litigation and legislation

IJ strategic research cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and in 162 articles in scholarly, law, and policy publications.

64 eminent domain projects and blight designations defeated by IJ activism.

Behind the Scenes at IJ

Let Them Bake!

Livestream

Eminent Domain Fight

Victory for Entrepreneurs!

Liberty in Action

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Litigating for Liberty.

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