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In 2012, various properties in Van Buren County, Michigan became subject to foreclosure for property tax delinquencies. In 2014, the properties were subject to an order of foreclosure and were auctioned off to satisfy the delinquencies. Wayside Church owed $16,750 in back taxes on a parcel it used as a youth camp. When the property was sold for $206,000, Van Buren County kept the $189,250 in surplus as required by Michigans General Property Tax Act. Other taxpayers were similarly situated. For example, Myron Stahl and Henderson Hodgens had their properties auctioned for $68,750 to pay a $25,000 debt and $47,750 to pay a $5,900 debt, respectively.

Michigan law doesnt recognize a right to surplus proceeds from tax sales, so the property owners sued in federal court, alleging that the county violated the Fifth Amendments Takings Clause when it kept the surplus proceeds from the sale of their properties. The district court dismissed the suit, precisely because Michigan law doesnt recognize a right to surplus proceeds in such cases. On appeal, a divided Sixth Circuit dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction. Citing the Supreme Courts ruling in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City (1985), the court held that plaintiffs failure to first pursue avenues of relief in state court barred the door to federal court.

Wayside Church and the other property owners filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to take the case and clarify takings law. Along with the National Federation of Independent Business, Southeastern Legal Foundation, and Prof. Ilya Somin, Cato has filed an amicus brief supporting that petition. We argue that this case provides an excellent opportunity to preferably overrule, but at least reconsider, Williamson Countys requirement that a property owner must first sue in state court to ripen a federal takings claim.

The reality is that Williamson Countys state-remedies requirement results in constitutional absurdity: the very state court decision that a property owner must receive in order to ripen their claim simultaneously bars the owner from (re)litigating the issue in federal court. The Williamson County rule has also proven to be a potent weapon in the hands of manipulative defendants. Since the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that a takings claim filed in state court could be removed to federal court (because of the federal constitutional issue), governmental defendants have removed claims to federal court, and then argued that they should be dismissed as unripe!

The state-remedies rule has no doctrinal basis and is antithetical to the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified to secure constitutional rights against the states and was seen as necessary to curb state government abuses. Fearing state courts could not be trusted to enforce the U.S. Constitution against their own state governments, a federal civil rights law 42 U.S.C. 1983 was then enacted to ensure a federal forum for vindicating federal rights. Yet Williamson County has effectively gutted the protections of both of these Reconstruction-era reforms.

Before Williamson County, there was no rule that required a property owner to resort to litigation in order to ripen a takings claim, and nothing in the text of the Fifth Amendment suggests that litigation in state court is necessary to ripen a takings claim. Instead, the text should be read to recognize a ripened claim the moment property is taken if there isnt a readily available administrative procedure for obtaining just compensation.

The Supreme Court will decide this fall whether to take upWayside Church v. Van Buren County.

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You Should Be Able to Vindicate Federal Property Rights in Federal Court - Cato Institute (blog)

Utah Supreme Court upholds disbarment order against lawyer who filed barrage of 'bizarre' motions Salt Lake Tribune She also alleged the OPC's action against her was unconstitutional and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, claiming she did not have to produce requested documents. After a default judgment was entered against Rose in July ...

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Utah Supreme Court upholds disbarment order against lawyer who filed barrage of 'bizarre' motions - Salt Lake Tribune

This week several groups filed friend of the court briefs supporting PLFs Supreme Court petition inWayside Church v. Van Buren County.

Two of the amicus briefsone by AARP and the other by the Buckeye Institutefocus on the need for the Court to review Michigans unjust tax foreclosure law. Under this unjust and unconstitutional law, Van Buren County took Wayside Churchs property, sold it for $206,000 to pay around $16,750 in property taxes, penalties, fees, and interest. The County then pocketed all of the remaining profit as a windfall. Similarly, the county took the farm and home where Henderson Hodgens grew up, and sold it for $47,750 to pay a $5,900 debt. The County kept the entire profit, even though it already got significant benefit from the penalties and high interest rate due under state law. The amicus briefs offer additional arguments that explain why the County violated the constitution when it took thesurplus profit and why it is important that the Court overturn the practice.

The other two briefsoneby Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and the other by NFIB Small Business Legal Center, The Cato Institute, and Southeastern Legal Foundationask the Supreme Court to review an important jurisdictional issue in this case. As they succinctly explain, this case presents the Supreme Court with a great opportunity to open the federal courthouse doors to individuals who seek to enforce their Fifth Amendment right to just compensation. Congress intended that the federal courthouses be open for these sorts of claims and there is no reasonto deny individuals of that right.

We are grateful for these organizations support and hope the Supreme Court will grant the petition to remedy the injustice suffered by our clients.

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Groups ask Supreme Court to grant PLF's petition in Wayside Church v. Van Buren County - Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) (press release) (blog)

Of the many rebukes Donald Trump received for his performance after the Charlottesville massacre, the collapse of his business advisory councils of corporate leaders may sting the worst. It undermines his core claim of business expertise and skill at managing the economy, and his central boast that he is adept at creating jobs and growth.

Meanwhile, 2,500 miles to the west, DreamHost LLC, a webhosting company in Los Angeles, is resisting a subpoena by the Department of Justice. During the weeks before President Trumps inauguration, the company hosted a site called disrupj20.org, which allowed organizers and potential protesters to discuss, plan, and communicate about demonstrations during the upcoming inaugural weekend. On Inauguration Day, a small band of protesters did clash with police, breaking windows and setting fire to wastebaskets in the streets. Some 200 were arrested and charged with such crimes as rioting, inciting or urging to riot, conspiracy to riot, and counts of destruction of property.

As part of the prosecution, the DOJ has demanded that DreamHost turn over digital information about anyone who visited the disrupt site. According to the company, that will mean revealing information on 1.3 million visitors to the siteincluding the time and date of the visit, the IP address for the visitor, the website pages viewed by the visitor (through their IP address), and even a detailed description of the software running in the visitors computer. This information, together with information from the internet service provider for the IP address, would allow the government to identify the visitor to the website and the specific computers used to visit the website.

The company is resisting the subpoena in court. Its memo opposing the demand makes sobering reading. For one thing, it illustrates the overreach and arrogance of the Justice Department; but for another, its arguments rely overwhelmingly on cases protecting the Fourth Amendment rights of advocacy groupssuch as the NAACP and the ACLUor of for-profit corporations, including Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and even the Washington bookstore company Kramerbooks & Afterwords, Inc.

What links these two news items? In both cases, corporations, or agents of corporations, are displaying good citizenship. Americans fightagainst bigotry, neo-Nazi sympathies, and Big Brother-style surveillanceis, in these two cases, their fight.

Nor is this anomalous. During many recent legal and social battlesfor the survival of affirmative action, for example, or for marriage equality, or for protection of transgender people against punitive bathroom bills, to name a fewlarge consumer companies and professional sports corporations have weighed in on the side of marginalized and endangered groups. Tech companies often speak up when they see threats to online privacy or danger of discrimination against their employees. Pharmaceutical companies have firmly disassociated themselves from the death penalty. And health insurance and hospital corporations were an important force in defeating the administrations plan to gut the Affordable Care Act. In a society where civil society groupschurches, universities, civic groups, and unionssometimes seem enfeebled, corporate voices have made a difference.

Those facts provide a moment to rethink quietly one of the key ideas that floats around among the progressive communitythat corporations are anti-democratic, and that they should be stripped of their constitutional rights.

This demand is at the core of much of the organizing taking place against campaign-finance decisions, such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that have made possible the domination of our politics by wealthy special interests. Many progressives believe devoutly that Citizens United held that corporations are people and money is speech. The answer, they argue, is simply to take constitutional personhood, and constitutional protection, away from these sinister entities.

Consider the Peoples Rights Amendment offered by Free Speech for People, one of the major groups seeking an amendment to roll back Citizens United: The words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities... Move to Amend, another progressive group, proposes inserting this constitutional language: Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

It sounds good. But theres a problem: If the protections of the First Amendment didnt apply to corporations, the CEOs of the dissenting companies above would be opening their companies to legal, open retaliation by the governmentcancellation of contracts, exclusion from government programs, and other measures a spiteful administration could take to punish them. The First Amendment prevents this sort of retaliation against the leaders as personsbut it would offer no shelter to their corporations, which Trump could punish at whim; the corporation itself wouldnt even be entitled to Fifth Amendment due process. No CEO faithful to his or her charge would dare open their corporation to such danger.

And if the Fourth Amendments protection against unreasonable searches and seizures didnt apply to corporations, DreamHost would have been forced to hand over the required information by now. No court could even hear the companys challenge.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney (how I miss him!) saidto general ridiculecorporations are people, my friend. What he meant by that, I believe, was not that Walmart or Unilever is an Iron Giant-style behemoth that can stride around the landscape, but that corporations are made up of people. My corporations class professor, James Cox, used to say that corporations are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-state. The people of these odd societies include not just corporate management or shareholders, but also corporate employees and their families, corporate customers, and people in the communities that create and protect the companies. Large companies need to hire talented workers; they need a diverse workforce to understand and operate in the national and world market; they need to project values that make their customers feel affirmed. Consumer companiesfood and beverage companies like Coca-Cola or retail giants like Walmartcannot afford to drive away whole blocs of customers, incur consumer boycotts, or inspire shareholder revolts.

The campaign finance problem, in fact, has little to do with corporations, and everything to do with the increasing share of Americas wealth held by a few greedy individuals. It is wealthy individuals, far more than giant corporations, who are poisoning our politics. Stripping corporations of rights would do nothing to reduce the power of the Koch brothers, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, or hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer.

As for corporations, Kent Greenfield, a law professor at Boston College, recently wrote that corporations may provide a brake on the political pendulums rightward swing To survive, corporations must be inclusive and multicultural in ways that homogeneous, economically distressed, insular tribes are not.

Greenfield arguesin published essays and a forthcoming bookthat what we need are corporations that are more fully human, not more artificial. He points out that, without any change to the Constitution, states today could amend their corporate laws to require corporations to take account of all their constituencies, and even represent workers and the public on their boards. Such reforms might ensure that corporations would be even more aware of their obligations to serve the interests of the larger societyto practice better corporate citizenship. In 2017, it is remarkable how many of our hopes may depend on that.

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When Corporations Are Good Citizens - The Atlantic

By Nicholas Danforth By Nicholas Danforth August 16 at 4:02 PM

Nicholas Danforth is a senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Centers National Security Project.

The ongoing crackdown on dissidents, journalists and alleged coup plotters in Turkey seems to confirm what many observers have long concluded: Turkish democracy is dead, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more in control than ever.

But it would be a mistake to assume that Turkeys fate will now be a stifling but stable form of civilian authoritarianism. The fragmentation of institutions such as the military, coupled with the erosion of Erdogans democratic legitimacy and the ongoing assault on Turkeys veneer of parliamentary democracy, have left the country unprepared for the shocks it is likely to face in the year ahead. If the situation in the country spirals out of control, the result could easily be violence and chaos rather than a resurgence of democracy.

Until recently, the Turkish state, for all of its problems, enjoyed a strong institutional foundation. And Erdogan, for all his problems, enjoyed a strong electoral mandate. But in April, a referendum marked by widespread allegations of fraud approved a package of proposals that dramatically increases Erdogans powers. This has coincided with the imprisonment of many in the countrys opposition, including leading Kurdish parliamentarians. Erdogan has even threatened to jail Turkeys main opposition leader and used the threat of arrest to fend off challengers within his own base. This raises the question of what will happen when the pretense of democracy becomes harder to sustain. If political grievances and popular frustration can no longer be aired or addressed in parliament, they could quickly spill out onto the streets.

Meanwhile, sweeping post-coup-attempt purges have left the military increasingly distrustful and paranoid, exacerbating fissures that already existed within its ranks. Erdogan has also been working to create a variety of new organizations that are well-armed and personally loyal to him, elevating the possibility of civil conflict. Among other steps, the government has provided better weapons to special forces within the police and intelligence service in case they come into conflict with the military, as some did on the night of the failed coup. Erdogan has also worked to arm and organize private citizens, ranging from party members to newly formed civil-defense groups and existing youth movements such as the Ottoman Hearths. In a future crisis, or even in the face of widespread protests like those of 2013, this proliferation of armed actors increases the odds of a growing conflict with no cohesive national force that could quickly stem it.

As a result of this institutional collapse, Turkeys government, state and society are ill-prepared to respond to the many threats the country is facing.

First, there is the economy. Despite numerous warnings and a dramatic drop in the value of the Turkish lira, the Turkish economy has so far avoided a long-predicted crisis. But this does not mean that the warnings are baseless. Economic growth has long fueled the popularity of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In its absence, Erdogan would need new scapegoats and new ways to prop up his supporters. As part of its post-coup purges, the government has already distributed more than$11 billion in seized assets to pro-Erdogan business people. If the economy falters and the government intensifies these efforts, it could create a vicious cycle of cascading investor confidence.

Turkey also faces a multifaceted terrorist threat that is likely to grow. The Islamic State has carried out a series of bombings in Turkey and has shown a consistent desire to strike targets that will exacerbate Turkeys existing social divisions. As the Islamic State loses territory in Syria and Iraq, many fear it could fall back on its well-entrenched network within Turkey to spread instability and remain politically relevant. More recently, the possibility that Turkey could find itself at war with Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, only intensifies the risk.

Finally, there is also reason to fear that Turkeys long-running conflict with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) could worsen. A particularly violent Kurdish faction recently threatened to launch a new wave of suicide attacks in western Turkey, while Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to attack PKK-linked Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Even if both sides avoid escalation, the government appears unready to seek out a political settlement in part because this would generate a wave of anger among nationalists, the army and Erdogans base. As a result, the government is now forced to walk a narrow path between finding a politically unpopular compromise and continuing a destabilizing war.

The political, military and economic threats facing Turkey are not all of the governments making. But the governments response has consistently succeeded in making them worse. Paradoxically, as Erdogan continues to destabilize the country, he will increasingly come to appear as the only person capable of holding it together. Erdogans followers already believe that he alone can hold back the array of hostile forces tearing their country apart. The worst-case scenario is that Erdogan will push the country to the point where even he is no longer capable of maintaining stability.

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Turkish democracy might be dead and things could soon get a lot worse - Washington Post