Doug and Mary Ketchum moved to Tennessee so they could own and operate a mom-and-pop liquor store there. Doing so would enable them to meet their two main goals:  earning a living and doing so in a way that gives them the flexible schedule they need to take care of their severely disabled and ailing…

State and local authorities cannot treat Americans like ATMs. There are instead federal constitutional limits to the many fines, fees and forfeitures that states and localities impose.  That is the principle that Tyson Timbs and the Institute for Justice established at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the…

On December 12, 2018, the Montana Supreme Court struck down that state’s new scholarship tax-credit program—solely because some of the children receiving scholarships attend religious schools. The Institute for Justice (IJ) petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari in this case on March 12, 2019, arguing that the Montana Supreme Court’s decision violates the federal…

In 2008, the Institute for  Justice and the Goldwater Institute teamed up to challenge Arizona’s punitive  system of funding campaigns with taxpayer money.  The consolidated challenges to the  “matching funds” provision of Arizona’s so-called “Clean Elections” Act  eventually made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on March 28, 2011,  heard argument in Arizona…

Susette Kelo dreamed of owning a home that looked out over the water. She purchased and lovingly restored her little pink house where the Thames River meets the Long Island Sound in 1997, and had enjoyed the great view from its windows. The Dery family, up the street from Susette, had lived in Fort Trumbull…

On April 4, 2011, in a major victory for school choice efforts nationwide, the United States Supreme Court dismissed this frivolous legal challenge to Arizona’s Individual Scholarship Tax Credit, which provides tens of thousands of school children the opportunity to attend the private school of their parent’s choice.

Juanita Swedenburg, Virginia vintner and member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, successfully waged the nation’s leading legal battle to reestablish the American ideals of unfettered interstate commerce, especially on the Internet. With the help of the Institute for Justice, Swedenburg challenged discriminatory laws that existed only to protect the monopoly power of large,…

On June 27, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Cleveland’s school choice program in the most important education decision since Brown v. Board of Education.  The court’s ruling in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris removed the federal Constitution from the legal arsenal of teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents and opened the door…