Imagine that you are a successful small-business entrepreneur.

And then imagine that the government was forcing you to spend $30,000 to build something utterly useless just to prove that you were serious about your business.  Sound crazy?  That is essentially what is happening to Minnesota funeral-home entrepreneurs:

Verlin Stoll is a classic American entrepreneur.   Although he’s only 27 years old, Verlin opened his first business, Crescent Tide funeral home, in St. Paul last April.  He prides himself on being “a different kind of funeral and cremation service” by providing high-quality funeral goods at a lower cost than his competitors.

With basic services at merely $250, Verlin saves his customers serious money.  The bigger funeral homes on average charge ten times as much.  Indeed, Crescent Tide is one of the only businesses in the area that benefits low-income families who cannot afford the high prices of the big funeral-home companies.

Predictably, Verlin’s business model is a success.  And he wants to expand on that success by hiring new employees and building another business so even more Minnesotans can benefit from his services.  Unfortunately, there’s an obstacle standing in his way:

Big government.

Minnesota refuses to let Verlin build a second funeral home unless he first builds a $30,000 embalming room.  He doesn’t have to actually use the room, it just has to be there.  As Institute for Justice economic liberty expert Katelynn McBride explains: (more…)

This past weekend marked the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United.  Protesters, dubbed Occupy the Courts, gathered at the Court to voice their disapproval of the decision:

As Institute for Justice campaign finance expert Paul Sherman explains in the video above:

The irony of those protests is that you had groups of people getting together to speak out against a Supreme Court decision that protected the right of people to get together and speak out.

Indeed, people should not lose their right to free speech simply by exercising their right to freely associate.   And when people group together—be it on the steps of a courthouse, in the form of a trade union or as a corporation—they don’t lose their freedom to speak out.

Occupy the Courts protesters also mistakenly believed that the Citizens United ruling held that “money is speech.”  In fact, the Court never said that.  Rather, it ruled correctly that money facilitates speech.  And if the government has the power to control how much money you can spend speaking, then it effectively can control your speech.

Importantly, the law in question in the Citizens United case empowered the government to fine and even imprison ordinary people for engaging in certain types of speech.   The government argued in court that it had the power to ban videos and books.  I don’t believe that many Americans, including the Occupy the Courts protesters, think the government should be in the business of banning books.

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May the city of New Orleans subject local tour guides to hundreds of dollars in fines and five months in jail for engaging in unauthorized talking?

This is the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) seeks to answer in a federal lawsuit filed on December 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  Four New Orleans tour guides are joining forces with IJ to strike down New Orleans’ tour guide licensing scheme as a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights:

According to First Amendment expert Matt Miller of the Institute for Justice, seen the above video:

The government cannot be in the business of deciding who may speak and who may not.  The Constitution protects your right to communicate for a living, whether you are a journalist, a musician or a tour guide.

New Orleans requires every tour guide to pass a history exam, undergo a drug test and pass an FBI criminal background check every two years merely for speaking.  People who give tours without a license face fines up to $300 per occurrence and five months in jail.

City officials are currently breaking up tours led by guides that don’t have the government’s permission.

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Lisa Martinez was forced to shut down her businesses or face five years in prison.   Her crime?   Teeth whitening.

This week, Lisa and others are fighting back in a big way:

In 2008, Lisa opened Connecticut White Smile in the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Conn., where she sold an over-the-counter whitening product and provided a clean, comfortable place for customers to apply the product to their own teeth, just as they would at home.

As it turns out, teeth-whitening services are popular and increasingly available at spas, salons and shopping malls all across the country. People are so eager to use these services because they provide great results at a fraction of the cost that dentists charge.

As Lisa puts it:

My customers loved my convenient location and affordable prices.  Owning my own business gave me a flexible schedule that allowed me to spend more time with my family.

Unfortunately, as happens all too often, happy customers + happy entrepreneurs = unhappy special interests.

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The Minnesota chapter of a national civil liberties legal group is going to court to fight for the property rights of a Winona man who’s got other battles on his hands:  He’s currently serving as a U.S. advisor in war-torn Afghanistan. The Institute for Justice (IJ) will ask a Minnesota District Court in Winona to strike down a city ordinance prohibiting Ethan Dean, now on his fifth tour of duty in the Mideast, and three other homeowners from renting out their property.

“This is a law that started in Winona and has spread to other cities in Minnesota and what we need to do is stop this trend before it goes any further,” said Anthony Sanders, staff attorney with IJ’s Minnesota chapter. “The right to rent out your home is a fundamental property right, a traditional and accepted use of your property and Winona is trampling on that.”

The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota reported earlier this year on Dean’s campaign on the home front against the controversial Winona ordinance known locally as the “30 percent rule.” Dean says the ordinance is a double whammy.  By restricting rental properties to only 30 percent of houses per block, it deprives homeowners of rental income. Without a rental permit, houses are also less appealing to prospective buyers. Dean says the ordinance has cost him more than one opportunity to sell his $139,000 house, located in a prime rental area in this college town.

“I don’t really understand how someone believes they have the right to tell someone else how and what they can do with their home, but it is a strange world at times, I guess,” Dean told FFM at the time. City officials view the measure as a way to preserve the single family character of city neighborhoods particularly near Winona State University by regulating the number of houses rented mainly to college students. Complaints over student parties, vandalism and absentee landlords led to the imposition of the ordinance in 2005.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s working right now and it’s helping to address our problem of density of rental properties around the downtown core area and Winona State,” city council member Debbie White told FFM earlier this year. “We’ve been losing residences and homes and trying to keep a balance in our neighborhoods.”

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It’s just a piece of cotton thread.

And yet, in order to use that simple piece of thread in Arizona for the popular practice of removing unwanted facial hair, the state’s Board of Cosmetology demanded that highly skilled entrepreneurs sit through 600 hours of classroom instruction—with a price tag of up to $10,000.

And here’s the kicker:  not one hour of instruction teaches anything about threading:

Thankfully, five Arizona threading entrepreneurs teamed up with the Institute for Justice and fought back. And this week, they proved that you can stand up to government officials to defend your civil rights—and win.

As Institute for Justice Arizona Chapter Executive Director Tim Keller explains in the video above:

Threading is such a safe and sanitary practice that Arizona’s neighboring states – California, Utah and Nevada – have all exempted braiders from their states cosmetology licensing schemes.   Our goal is to restore the right to earn an honest living to its proper role as a fundamental right in Arizona.

And so last June, the entrepreneurs and IJ filed a lawsuit challenging the Board’s requirement that Arizona threaders first obtain a cosmetology license in order to use a single piece of cotton thread to remove facial hair.  And now those same entrepreneurs have joined the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in asking a Superior Court judge to sign a Consent Judgment that will end the litigation and prevent the Board from requiring threaders to become licensed cosmetologists.

Once the Consent Judgment is signed, every threader in Arizona will be able to work without fear of citations, fines or harassment from the Board.

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Even if you are not a free market advocate, anyone who has ever had to wait to hail a cab will appreciate this story.

[MILWAUKEE] The City of Milwaukee limits its number of taxicab licenses to 321, and the Institute for Justice is suing to have the cap removed.

“If you break that cap, they’re going to have competition from a lot more people,” said Anthony Sanders, attorney for the Institute for Justice. “It will take away their monopoly and high value of those permits.”

The Institute filed the lawsuit in Milwaukee County Court on Tuesday morning.  It claims the cap results in a “taxi cartel” that holds a monopoly over the industry in Milwaukee, stifling competition and driving up rates.

The only way to currently get a taxicab permit in Milwaukee is to buy one from an existing taxi company.  They charge $150,000 for one.

People who drive for Milwaukee’s cab companies pay a weekly rental fee, which can cost as much as a thousand dollars a week.  One former driver who is working with the Institute said he only took home $15,000 the last year he drove a cab.

Sanders anticipates a hard fight from the city over this issue that could last a couple years.

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What is the most important part of the 11th Circuit’s recent ruling on The Affordable Care Act?  You might think it was the individual mandate being struck down.  But it was actually this:  Judicial engagement.

For the first time in our nation’s history, a federal court used the term “judicial engagement” in a ruling striking down federal legislation.   This is a cause for celebration because—regardless of one’s political leanings—we should all agree on the need for engaged judges.  (And regarding the individual mandate, we all know that it will ultimately reach the Supreme Court.)

As the nation’s leading legal advocate for liberty, the Institute for Justice enters courtrooms across America determined to vindicate our most precious rights.  And all too often, our opponents argue that judges should ignore facts or even make them up to justify what the government is doing.

Conservatives, liberals and libertarians should all be able to agree that we need judges that are serious about judging and examining the real facts about what our government is doing.

Today it is fashionable to laud judicial decisions that line up with one’s worldview—and condemn those that do not as “judicial activism.”  So it comes as no surprise that E.J. Dionne referred to the 11^th Circuit ruling on the individual mandate in the Washington Post as “the latest episode of rampant conservative judicial activism.”

But as constitutional expert Robert McNamara points out at The Corner, such responses miss the point.  The 11^th Circuit ruling was fundamentally about the role of courts and when our courts should step in to limit legislative power.

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Tomorrow, Florida has a golden opportunity to strike a major blow for economic liberty.

The vital question is this:  Will Republican senators live up to their promises to remove job-killing regulations and red tape, or will they cave in to powerful special interests and high-paid lobbyists?

On Friday, the Florida Senate will vote on HB 5005, a House bill that removes needless licensing requirements for several harmless trades—including hair braiders, outdoor theater workers and interior designers.

But as the video above explains:

The legislature set out to [remove] unnecessary licensing laws, including one that makes is a crime to practice interior design without a college degree and a two-year apprenticeship . . . . Lobbyists for the American Society of Interior Designers are trying to derail reform efforts by stirring up trouble in Tallahassee before the legislative session ends this Friday.

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) represents less than three percent of all designers, but its members have designated themselves as spokespeople for the entire industry.   And for the last 30 years, ASID has spent millions of dollars on a coast—to-coast lobbying campaign designed to legislate potential competitors out of business.

This 30-year fight all comes down to the Florida Senate tomorrow.

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When you think about a highly aggressive cartel teaming up with politicians to pass protectionist laws that kick entrepreneurs out of work, you probably don’t think about interior designers.

But you should.

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) represents less than 3 percent of all designers, but its members have designated themselves as spokespeople for the entire industry. ASID has spent over 30 years and millions of dollars lobbying from coast to coast for interior design licensing schemes.  Not surprisingly, the schemes they propose would force all interior designers to have the exact same credentials as required for membership in ASID.

The group has worked relentlessly to enlist state legislatures in its campaign for total industry cartelization. The Institute for Justice has documented these efforts in a study titled “Designing Cartels.”

Florida is ground zero right now in this epic battle.

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Georgia has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws and practices in the country.  This morning, five Atlanta citizens teamed up with the Institute for Justice to change that.

Civil forfeiture threatens the property rights of all Americans.  These laws allow government officials to seize your home, car, cash or other property upon the mere suspicion that it has been used or involved in criminal activity.

In an attempt to ensure civil forfeiture is subject to public scrutiny, Georgia law requires local law enforcement agencies to annually itemize and report all property obtained through forfeiture, and how it is used, to local governing authorities.

But many—perhaps most—local Georgia law enforcement agencies fail to issue these forfeiture reports.  Today, the Institute for Justice issued a report of its own: Forfeiting Accountability: Georgia’s Hidden Civil Forfeiture Funds. It finds that among a random sample of 20 law enforcement agencies, only two were reporting as required.  Of 15 major agencies in Georgia population centers, only one produced the required report.  Yet federal data show Georgia agencies taking in millions through forfeiture.

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In a state where thousands of properties have been threatened and continue to be threatened, California is in desperate need of meaningful eminent domain reform that will respect the rights and property of its residents. The preceding legal overview in California demonstrates just how difficult it is for private property owners to defend themselves against California’s redevelopment machine, which siphons billions and billions of dollars into a closed economic system that benefits private parties and hurts not only property owners, but all taxpayers as well.

You really have to see this one to believe it:

The video above was just released by the Institute for Justice. It begins with an elderly woman lamenting:

When my son came back from Kuwait he couldn’t believe it.  He said, “Mom, what’s going on?” And I said, well they want to get rid of us and they’re finally doing it.  He was upset.  He said, “I’m sorry, I’m halfway around the world to help other people and I can’t even help my own mom keep her own home.”

For the past ten years, township officials in Mount Holly have been destroying a close-knit community called the Gardens.  They’ve been recklessly bulldozing select individual row-houses — even when they are attached to occupied homes — to make way for fancier homes for richer people.  The current owners have never been offered a place in the new redevelopment, or enough money to buy comparable home nearby.

A new Institute for Justice study, available here, shows that this redevelopment project may result in a loss of one million dollars every year, one tenth of the township’s budget.

Despite these terrible conditions, the community never gave up hope.  They continued to fight against all odds for their cherished neighborhood.   And on Wednesday, a federal court came to their defense.

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In Michigan, police were caught on tape stealing private property:

What do you want to take in the basement?  Do you want to take the drums and all that (expletive), or no?

The police took three pages worth of property that included a 52” flat-screen TV, a DVD player, two computers, a camera and several DVDs.

Why does this kind of abuse happen?  The answer is civil forfeiture.

In the United States, if the government suspects that you committed a crime, officials can arrest you and put you on trial.  The government must then prove you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But if the government suspects that your property was involved in a crime, under civil forfeiture laws officials can take and sell your property.  In most instances, they get to pocket the proceeds.  Importantly, they don’t have to prove you did anything wrong.  This sounds bizarre, but with civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

As civil forfeiture expert Scott Bullock explains in the above video:

You cannot give the very people who are out there enforcing the laws a direct incentive to try to take homes, cars, currency, and other property from citizens.  Under the law in over 40 states, police and prosecutors are allowed to keep all or most of the property that they seize.  So this gives them a very direct incentive to go out and take as much property from citizens as possible.

This explains why one of the police officers caught on tape says, “If Luke comes down here, he’s gonna wanna take everything . . . he’s gonna give us a chance to frickin’ take all this stuff.”

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There’s a bad law on the books that is costing lives every single day.

Cancer patients from around the country have teamed up with a world-famous doctor, a non-profit and the Institute for Justice in a major federal lawsuit against the U.S. Attorney General to change that.

This week, we argued before the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  (You can listen to the audio of the argument here.)

As our client Kumud Majumder wrote this Monday in the USA Today:

My 11-year-old son, Arya, was an angel who transformed my life. His death from leukemia last April took away not just my only child, it also took away my very heart and soul, and triggered the collapse of my 23-year marriage.

Arya’s tragedy happened in part because of a lack of bone marrow donors. Each year, as many as 3,000 people in the U.S. die waiting for a bone marrow donor match. A significantly higher number of people die from complications arising from partially matched donors. This is largely avoidable, and the shortage of donors is made worse by a federal law that I and other families of cancer patients are fighting in federal court.

There is chronic shortage of bone marrow donors in the United States.   The sad reality is that cancer patients die every day as a result.  More people would likely donate their bone marrow if we did one simple thing:  compensate them.

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Dale Smith has been cutting hair for over 50 years.  The Oregon barber is well-known in his hometown for walk-in appointments and $8 cuts — at least, until he got shut down by bureaucrats from Oregon’s Board of Cosmetology.

Dale’s crime?  He forgot to renew the barber license he earned 54 years ago.

The bureaucrats are saying that in order for Dale to return to work, he has to pass a 75-question examination, similar to the one he passed in 1957.  Further, he has to demonstrate to their satisfaction that he still knows how to cut hair:

Dale had to post a sign in his window saying that he was closed until further notice.  He doesn’t want to cut through all the red tape and isn’t sure what he’ll do next.

As Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Clark Neily explains in the video above:

Americans have a constitutional right to earn a living in the occupation of their choice, free from unreasonable government interference.  What happened to this man is the very definition of unreasonable.  A properly engaged judiciary is one that takes rights seriously, including the right to earn a living.  And it says to government officials, you have to treat people reasonably.  You have to respect their constitutional right to earn a living.

Of course, Dale is not alone.  In November, IJ economic liberty expert Paul Sherman spoke about armed government agents raiding barbershops and handcuffing barbers in front of their clients.  Big Government readers know that occupational licensing abuse is rampant in America.

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The Institute for Justice has been vindicating the rights of entrepreneurs for the last twenty years.

Across the country, IJ has teamed up with casket makers, florists, hairbraiders, horse teeth-floaters, interior designers, sign-hangers, taxi-drivers, trash haulers, vintners and numerous other Americans to secure their basic right to earn an honest living.

This week, we are proud to announce a new, nationwide effort in our fight for economic liberty:  Our National Street Vending Initiative.

From coast to coast, we will team up with mobile food vending entrepreneurs whenever their rights come under attack, filing lawsuits and engaging in grassroots activism and media efforts.

In conjunction with the launch of this initiative, we have filed a major federal lawsuit against the city of El Paso Texas:

For thousands of years, vending has been a way for entrepreneurs to provide for themselves and their families.  In the United States, this ancient trade is more popular than ever.  By 2007, over 760,000 vending businesses were operating in the country.  And consumers love them, so they continue to grow.

The Economist magazine predicted that in 2011 food vendors would create “[t]he biggest shift in America’s culinary landscape” and that “some of the best food Americans eat may come from a food truck.”

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What do you get when you mix bureaucrats with a bunch of adorable puppies?

In Kim Houghton’s case, you get a major First Amendment lawsuit.

Kim Houghton decided after a successful, 20-year career in advertising that she wanted more.  She wanted to realize her American Dream and become an entrepreneur in a business focused on dogs.

She had the gumption to quit her job and make her dream come true:  Wag More Dogs is a high-end canine daycare located next to a popular dog park in Arlington, Virginia.  Kim commissioned an outdoor mural on her wall that has cartoon dogs, bones and paw prints as a way to give something back to the park she’d frequented for years, and build up some good will for her new business.

The mural was a big hit.  After all, who doesn’t like puppies?   Things were smooth for a few months.

And then Arlington bureaucrats got involved.

Officials blocked Kim’s building permit and told her that she could not open unless she painted over the mural or covered it with a blue tarp.

Her crime?

Painting a piece of art that—in the eyes of government officials—had too strong a “relationship” to her business.

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On Tuesday the Institute for Justice went to federal court to find out.

Two years ago IJ teamed up with three Philadelphia tour guides to file a major First Amendment lawsuit seeking to vindicate the freedom to speak in Philadelphia.

Ann Boulais, Mike Tait and Josh Silver sued because officials passed a law making it illegal for anyone like them to give a tour of much of the city’s downtown area without first passing a test and obtaining a government license—that is, getting the government’s permission to speak.

The case immediately sparked nationwide interest.  Robert McNamara, the First Amendment expert who filed the case, appeared on shows like All Things Considered and Marketplace to point out that the Constitution protects our right to communicate for a living, whether we are speaking out as bloggers, journalists, stand-up comedians or tour guides.

The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page feature:

Feeling tyrannized, Ms. [Ann] Boulais and two fellow guides summoned the constitution’s protections by suing the city in Philadelphia Federal court. The history test, they claimed, breached the Bill of Rights — a set of rules, as any good guide should know, that took effect while Congress sat here at 6th and Chestnut streets, on Dec. 15, 1791.

Of course, the guides are quick to point out that officials are violating fundamental American liberties in the very place those liberties were first enshrined in our Constitution.

In 2009, a year after the suit was filed, the city asked a federal judge to dismiss the case.  Their reason?  They had not allocated money in their 2009 budget to enforce the law right away.

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Carl Mitz is a third-generation horseman.  The Texan is widely known as one of the nation’s best horse dentists.  He’s treated the teeth of over 100,000 horses and has clients in over 30 states.

But Texas bureaucrats tried for years to shut him down.

In a classic case of economic protectionism, Carl and all other Texas equine dentists were told they had to spend up to $100,000 and four years at veterinary school, where they would learn next to nothing about caring for horses’ teeth, or else abandon their occupation.  To top it off, they were threatened with massive fines and even jail.

Instead of giving up his American Dream, Carl teamed up with other Texas horsemen and the Institute for Justice to fight for their right to earn an honest living.

And this week, they won.

On Tuesday, a Texas judge struck down the effort by the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners to put equine dentists like Carl—known as floaters—out of business and leave the state’s approximately one million horses without proper dental care.

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