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Archive | Due Process Clause Property Rights

New Yorker Article on Asset Forfeiture Abuse

By on August 5, 2013 4:31 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

The New Yorker has an interesting article on asset forfeiture abuse, describing how law enforcement authorities routinely use it to seize property from people who have never been convicted of any crime, and often have not even been charged:

On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove with her two young sons and her boyfriend, Ron Henderson, on U.S. 59 toward Linden, Henderson’s home town, near the Texas-Louisiana border….

Near the city limits, a tall, bull-shouldered officer named Barry Washington pulled them over….

The officers found the couple’s cash and a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law, and escorted them across town to the police station. In a corner there, two tables were heaped with jewelry, DVD players, cell phones, and the like. According to the police report, Boatright and Henderson fit the profile of drug couriers: they were driving from Houston, “a known point for distribution of illegal narcotics,” to Linden, “a known place to receive illegal narcotics.” The report describes their children as possible decoys, meant to distract police as the couple breezed down the road, smoking marijuana. (None was found in the car, although Washington claimed to have smelled it.)

The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell… told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or

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Regulatory Takings and “Lochnerism”: An Observation

By on February 28, 2013 9:08 am in Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights, Regulatory Takings, Uncategorized

It is often argued that regulatory takings doctrine is a form of “Lochnerism” and a revival of “substantive due process” constraints on economic regulation.  So, for instance, in his Dolan v. Tigard dissent, Justice Stevens traces the history of the doctrine to the Lochner period and finds the roots of regulatory takings doctrine in late-19th century substantive due process.

The so called “regulatory takings” doctrine . . . has an obvious kinship with the line of substantive due process cases that Lochner exemplified. Besides having similar ancestry, both doctrines are potentially open ended sources of judicial power to invalidate state economic regulations that Members of this Court view as unwise or unfair.

As a historical matter, Justice Stevens was correct that the first decisions obligating states to compensate  landowners for the taking private property for public use  (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago) and holding that the regulation of land use could require compensation if it “goes too far” (Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon) date from the so-called “Lochner era.”  Curiously enough, the authors of these two opinions are, respectively, Justice John Marshall Harlan and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.  Why is this curious?  Because Justices Harlan and Holmes wrote the two dissenting opinions in Lochner.  So while contemporary commentators and critics may see regulatory takings doctrine as Lochnerism reborn.  Those who challenged Lochner at the time apparently saw things differently. [...]

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Property Owners Prevail in Important Asset Forfeiture Case

By on January 25, 2013 3:02 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

A federal district court in Massachusetts has ruled in favor of the property owners in United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, an important asset forfeiture case. This is the case where the federal government sought the forfeiture of a motel on the grounds that a few of the motel’s customers had bought or sold illegal drugs on the premises – even though there was no evidence that the owners knew about the sales or facilitated them in any way. I previously discussed the case in this post, and it was also the focus of a Washington Post column by George Will.

Magistrate Judge Judith Dein’s opinion emphasizes the unusually extreme facts of this case as a basis for ruling that the motel was not eligible for forfeiture:

After reviewing the scores of cases cited by the parties, I find this case to be notable in several critical respects, including (1) the Government has identified only a limited number of isolated qualifying drug-related incidents spread out over the course of more than a decade, none of which involve the Motel owner or employees; and (2) the witnesses unanimously confirmed that no efforts were undertaken to work with the Motel owner to try and reduce drug crimes at the Property prior to the institution of the forfeiture action, nor was any warning given as to the possibility of forfeiture prior to suit being filed. As a result, the instant case is easily distinguishable from other cases where the “draconian” result of forfeiture was found to be appropriate.

The decision is based on statutory grounds and does not address the constitutional issues raised by takings targeting innocent property owners. Indeed, Judge Dein reiterates the longstanding, but in my view dubious, doctrine that “it is not necessary that the forfeited property [...]

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Asset Forfeiture Abuse Revisited

By on January 21, 2013 6:47 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

John Ross of Reason has a nice article summarizing the problem of asset forfeiture abuse, as exemplified by dubious practices in the nation’s capital:

Jerrie Brathwaite was not in her car when Washington, D.C. police seized it in January 2012. She had lent her 2000 Nissan Maxima to a friend, and that friend was pulled over, searched, and found to be in possession of drugs. A year later, Braithwaite—who has never been charged with a crime—still doesn’t have her car back, and no one from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will return her calls.

Brathwaite, 33, is knee-deep in the murky world of civil asset forfeiture, where confiscated cars, cash, and other property disappear into police coffers, and where legal recourse for owners is confusing, slow, and expensive. Under civil forfeiture, police can seize property from people who are never convicted—much less charged with—a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where the government must prove property was used in the commission of crime, civil forfeiture law presumes an owner’s guilt….

Brathwaite’s situation—and the MPD’s behavior—are not uncommon. Civil forfeiture is a national problem. Law enforcement agencies seize millions of dollars worth of property each year with little or no due process for owners. In all but six states property owners are considered guilty until proven innocent. State law typically allows law enforcement to keep most or all of the proceeds from forfeiture—an enormous incentive to police for profit.

I previously wrote about this problem here, here, and here. In 2009, the Supreme Court heard a case addressing the question of whether forfeiture policies that give owners little or no opportunity to challenge the seizure of their property violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bans states from depriving people of “life, liberty, or property, without due process [...]

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The Rise of Asset Forfeiture Abuse

By on August 23, 2012 4:55 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

Co-blogger Orin Kerr describes a planned effort by one local government to raise revenue by increasing asset forfeitures through the use of drug-sniffing dogs. Unfortunately, this is just one example of a growing trend of using asset forfeiture as a fundraising tool for law enforcement agencies. In this recent post, I rounded up many sources documenting the problem, including excellent articles by Radley Balko and George Will, and this report by the Institute for Justice. Asset forfeiture laws frequently victimize property owners who haven’t even been convicted of any crime, and in some states give them little or no opportunity to challenge the forfeiture of their possession, thereby flagrantly violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which denies government the power to take away property without “due process of law.” This column by Steven Greenhut is a good summary of the problem:

Few groups of “sinners” were singled out in biblical accounts more than “tax collectors,” who were not merely state agents collecting revenues that taxpayers rightfully owed to the government. They were the source of particular loathing because they were extortionists, who profited personally by shaking down as much money from citizens as possible…

The Gospel accounts provide an early lesson in the danger of marrying the profit motive with governmental power. The possibility for abuse is great. Yet throughout the United States, government agencies increasingly rely on “civil forfeiture” to bolster their strained budgets. The more assets these modern-day tax collectors seize, the more money they have for new equipment and other things….

If, for instance, your neighbor borrowed your green Buick and sold some marijuana to an undercover agent, the law enforcement agency can seize the car. The owner might not have done anything wrong, but the car was indeed used in

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Adventures in Asset Forfeiture

By on May 21, 2012 12:43 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

Asset forfeiture laws in many states allow the police to seize property that has supposedly been used to commit a crime, and then keep the proceeds for themselves. Often, these laws victimize people who have not been convicted of any crime, and indeed did not even know that their property might have been misused. They also often give the owner little or no opportunity to challenge the seizure, thereby flagrantly violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Needless to say, such perverse incentives lead to many abuses, as documented in a 2010 report by the Institute for Justice.

Two excellent recent articles by George Will and Radley Balko describe some particularly egregious examples.

Here is Will:

Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: “What country are we in?” He and his wife, Pat, are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language….

In the lawsuit titled United States of America v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts, the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in 1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery….

Since 1994, about 30 motel customers have been arrested on drug-dealing charges. Even if those police figures are accurate — the police have a substantial monetary incentive to exaggerate — these 30 episodes involved less than 5/100ths of 1 percent of the 125,000

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Fifth Circuit Rules that Due Process Clause Property Rights Cases Can be Filed in Federal Court

By on May 17, 2012 3:29 pm in Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights, Regulatory Takings

In the recent case of Bowlby v. City of Aberdeen, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause property rights claims can be filed in federal court, despite the fact that the Supreme Court’s 1985 Williamson County decision bars many Takings Clause property rights claims from federal courts.

Robert Thomas of the Inverse Condemnation blog has a good summary of the relevant issues:

If you tried to explain the practical results of Williamson County’s ripeness requirements to someone not familiar in the last 30 years of regulatory takings jurisprudence, they would probably think you were joking….

[U]nder Williamson County, a property owner alleging a violation of her express federal constitutional right prohibiting takings without just compensation cannot bring that federal constitutional claim in a federal court. Instead, she is first required to present her state claim for compensation to a state court before she can even think of a federal action. And if she loses in state court, she will be deemed to have also litigated the federal claim, even if she expressly did not. Williamson County’s rationale was that there is no violation of the Fifth Amendment by a state or local government unless and until the property owner could both show that there was a taking, and that the state had denied compensation. So, you see, you have to lose your state takings claim to ripen your federal takings claim….

Williamson County gets particularly bizarre when courts extend it beyond the takings clause, since what thin justification exists for the rule is grounded in the language of the Fifth Amendment. Yet, the lower federal courts regularly apply it to Equal Protection and Due Process Claims, somehow transforming Williamson County from a limited takings requirement to a full-blown bar to the

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Unanimous Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Property Owners in Sackett v. EPA

By on March 21, 2012 1:41 pm in Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

The Supreme Court today issued a unanimous decision in favor of the property owners in the important case of Sackett v. EPA [HT: GMU law student Matthew Roberts]. The opinions in the case (an opinion for the court and two concurring opinions by Justices Ginsburg and Alito) are available here. Justice Alito’s concurring opinion includes a particularly clear description of what was at stake:

The position taken in this case by the Federal Government—a position that the Court now squarely rejects—would have put the property rights of ordinary Americans entirely at the mercy of Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) employees.

The reach of the Clean Water Act is notoriously unclear. Any piece of land that is wet at least part of the year is in danger of being classified by EPA employees as wetlands covered by the Act, and according to the Federal Government, if property owners begin to construct a home on a lot that the agency thinks possesses the requisite wetness, the property owners are at the agency’s mercy. The EPA may issue a compliance order demanding that the owners cease construction, engage in expensive remedial measures, and abandon any use of the property. If the owners do not do the EPA’s bidding, they may be fined up to $75,000 per day ($37,500 for violating the Act and another $37,500 for violating the compliance order). And if the owners want their day in court to show that their lot does not include covered wetlands, well, as a practical matter, that is just too bad. Until the EPA sues them, they are blocked from access to the courts, and the EPA may wait as long as it wants before deciding to sue. By that time, the potential fines may easily have reached the millions. In a nation that values due

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Clark Neily (Institute for Justice) Guest-Blogging This Week

By on October 10, 2011 7:16 pm in Constitutional Law, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Economic LIberties

I’m delighted to report that Clark Neily of the Institute for Justice will be guest-blogging this week, about IJ’s “judicial engagement” project. IJ is one of the leading libertarian public interest law firms in the country, and I’ve always much respected their work.

As readers of this blog doubtless know, both conservatives and libertarians are split on the degree to which courts should act aggressively in reviewing legislation for constitutionality, as opposed to deferring to legislative action, especially in the area of so-called “substantive due process.” My sense is that different bloggers on this blog themselves disagree on this subject; and I suspect that I wouldn’t always agree with IJ’s broadest positions on this. But I much look forward to Clark’s explanation of IJ’s views, and I think our readers will find them interesting as well. [...]

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George Mason ACS Supreme Court Preview Panel

By on September 26, 2011 10:15 am in Constitutional Law, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

On Tuesday, I will be appearing at a Supreme Court preview panel sponsored by the George Mason University School of Law American Constitution Society. The other two presenters are Prof. Michael Seidman (Georgetown) and Prof. Stephen Vladeck (American). The panel will start at 4 PM, and take place in Room 221 at the George Mason law school building. It is open to both GMU students and the public.

Each panelist will focus on one important upcoming case within his area of expertise. I plan to talk about Sackett v. EPA, an important property rights case. The other two panelists will focus on United States v. Jones, a Fourth Amendment case, and Douglas v. Independent Living Center, an important preemption/health care case. We will also, of course, take questions about other issues that the Court is likely to address. [...]

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A small correction for Sandefur

By on October 17, 2010 4:04 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights, Supreme Court, Uncategorized

Timothy Sandefur  produces important research on economic liberty. I’m pleased that the Independence Institute, where I work, recently hosted an event for him to promote his book. I’m also happy that he has become part of the team of Cato Institute writers, which I have been part of since 1988. As a contributing editor of Liberty, I have followed his writing since he was a law student. And of course I commend Eugene for inviting him to guest-blog for VC. However, one item in his blogging appears to me to be erroneous:

When talking about “substantive due process,” as I’ve been doing, one must address a number of myths about that theory that, sadly, are so common that many law students are never even taught what the theory even means.

I.

Here is a good example: “the Supreme Court has never in its entire history tried to derive [substantive due process] from the text of the Constitution.” Nelson Lund & David B. Kopel, Unraveling Judicial Restraint: Guns, Abortion, and the Faux Conservatism of J. Harvie Wilkinson III, 25 J.L. & Pol’y 1, 3 (2009). Now, whether one accepts or rejects the idea of “substantive due process,” this claim is just false. The Supreme Court had repeatedly explained how substantive protections arise from the Constitution’s text.

The quote is not precisely accurate, and here, the lack of precision leads to a serious error. In the article that Sandefur cites, Nelson Lund and I were discussing and criticizing Roe v. Wade. After a quote from Roe about “the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty,” we then wrote: “This was presumably a reference to the doctrine of substantive due process, which the Supreme Court has never in its entire history tried to derive from the text of the Constitution.”

Our statement as [...]

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Unclear Outcome in Key Supreme Court Property Rights Case

By on June 17, 2010 4:55 pm in Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has just issued its opinion in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, a key property rights case. Unfortunately, the most important constitutional issue at stake – what, if any government actions count as “judicial takings” remains mostly unresolved. I summarized the facts of the case here:

Under Florida’s Beach and Shore Preservation Act (the Act), the state government is required to establish “renourishment” projects to restore waterfront land that has become “critically eroded.” Once the projects are complete, the Act gives the state title to any newly dry land that has been cleared as a result of the project’s pushing back the waterline. This deprives waterfront property owners of their previously existing right to ownership of land up to the “mean high water line” (MHWL). This is exactly what happened to the six waterfront property owners in Florida’s Walton County, whose holdings abutted a renourishment project established in the area. The property owners formed a group called Stop the Beach Renourishment, which is the petitioner in this case.

The project established in their area resulted in the creation of additional dry land between the property owners’ holdings and the ocean – land which was claimed by the state. The property owners argued that the state’s acquisition of land inside the MHWL constitutes a taking that requires compensation under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Florida Supreme Court ruled against the property owners, holding that state law did not give them the right to own all property up to the new MHWL created by the project. The property owners now argue, in the U.S. Supreme Court, that the Florida court decision amounts to a “judicial taking” that deprived them of property rights through a sudden and unexpected revision of state

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So Why Not Roe?

By on June 17, 2010 1:50 pm in Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Just Compensation Clause, Property Rights, Rehabilitating Lochner

In today’s Stop the Beach opinion, Justice Scalia (joined by the other three conservatives) criticizes Justice Kennedy for arguing that what Scalia consider “judicial takings” should instead be handled as violation of the Due Process Clause:

The second problem is that we have held for many years (logically or not) that the “liberties” protected by Substantive Due Process do not include economic liberties. See, e.g., Lincoln Fed. Labor Union v. Northwestern Iron & Metal Co., 335 U. S. 525, 536 (1949). [EDITOR: But cf. Schware v. Board of Examiners, 353 U. S. 232 (1957) h/t Tim Sandefur]

The “logically or not” part gets me; Justice Scalia is not a lower court judge. If he think it’s not logical to strictly segregate economic and non-economic rights, he has the power to do something about it.

Imagine, instead, Justice Kennedy writing this sentence in an abortion case, in response to Scalia:

The second problem is that we have held for many years (logically or not) that the “liberties” protected by Substantive Due Process include the right to have an abortion.

Roe has been around for thirty-seven years now, and it’s high time the conservative Justices stop pretending that a decades-old opinion, on which there is huge cultural reliance (as sexual mores have changed in part to reflect the availability of abortion) is somehow less “precedential” than equally bad opinions from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

Of course, Scalia does have an answer to this analogy–we should avoid any decision reminiscent of the dreaded “Lochner era”: “Justice Kennedy’s language … propels us back to what is referred to (usually deprecatingly) as “the Lochner era.”

And here’s my response to Scalia, from the second to last paragraph of my forthcoming “Rehabilitating Lochner:”

Lochner serves as a uniquely important negative exemplar of

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New Institute for Justice Report on Asset Forfeiture

By on April 6, 2010 11:10 pm in Asset Forfeiture, Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

The Institute for Justice, a prominent libertarian public interest law firm, has an important new report detailing the many abuses of property rights in the asset forfeiture system. Here are a few of the key findings:

In most states and under federal law, law enforcement can keep some or all of the proceeds from civil forfeitures. This incentive has led to concern that civil forfeiture encourages policing for profit, as agencies pursue forfeitures to boost their budgets at the expense of other policing priorities. These concerns are exacerbated by legal procedures that make civil forfeiture relatively easy for the government and hard for property owners to fight. For example, once law enforcement seizes property, the government must prove it was involved in criminal activity to forfeit or permanently keep it. But in nearly all states and at the federal level, the legal standard of proof the government must meet for civil forfeiture is lower than the strict standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” required for criminal convictions…..

[I]n most places, owners bear the burden of establishing their innocence. In other words, with civil forfeiture, property owners are effectively guilty until proven innocent….

Finally, federal civil forfeiture laws encourage abuse by providing a loophole to law enforcement in states with good laws for property owners: “equitable sharing.” With equitable sharing, state law enforcement can turn over seized assets to the federal government, or they may seize them jointly with federal officers. The property is then subject to federal civil forfeiture law—not state law. Federal law provides as much as 80 percent of the proceeds to state law enforcement and stacks the deck against property owners. Thus, the equitable sharing loophole provides a way for state and local law enforcement to profit from forfeitures that they may not be able to under

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Asset Forfeiture: “A License to Steal”

By on February 1, 2010 2:36 am in Due Process Clause Property Rights, Property Rights

Radley Balko has an interesting article in Reason detailing the many abuses of the asset forfeiture system, which often allows police to seize property without compensation – even in cases where the owners have not been convicted of any crime:

Over the past three decades, it has become routine in the United States for state, local, and federal governments to seize the property of people who were never even charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. Nearly every year, according to Justice Department statistics, the federal government sets new records for asset forfeiture. And under many state laws, the situation is even worse: State officials can seize property without a warrant and need only show “probable cause” that the booty was connected to a drug crime in order to keep it, as opposed to the criminal standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, owners of seized property all too often have a heavier burden of proof than the government officials who stole their stuff.

Municipalities have come to rely on confiscated property for revenue. Police and prosecutors use forfeiture proceeds to fund not only general operations but junkets, parties, and swank office equipment. A cottage industry has sprung up to offer law enforcement agencies instruction on how to take and keep property more efficiently.

As I have argued elsewhere, many such seizures are a fairly blatant violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars state seizures of “property” without “due process of law.” In many cases, the authorities hold on to the seized property for months at a time without giving innocent owners any opportunity to contest the seizure whatsoever. If that isn’t deprivation of property without “due process,” it’s hard to see what is. The Supreme [...]

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