On a Tuesday morning in February 2025, federal agents descended upon Ayala's Mini Market, a convenience store in Glendale, Arizona, that offered check cashing, money transfer, shipping, and cellphone repair services along with standard items such as groceries, snacks, sodas, and cigarettes. The agents, who worked for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), seized three computers, five cellphones, and business records, plus about $460,000 in cash and checks. They did not say why.

Twenty months later, the store's owner, Mario Ayala, still has not received a definitive answer to that question. Nor has the government told him what it plans to do with his property or how he can try to get it back. That Kafkaesque situation is unconstitutional, Ayala's lawyers at the Institute for Justice argue in a motion and memorandum they filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. The motion seeks the return of the property seized from Ayala's business, saying there is no legitimate reason for the government to keep it.

"The government can't take your stuff, disappear, and then never explain itself," says Institute for Justice attorney Betsy Sanz. "For over a year and a half, the government has been holding Mario's money and property. This prolonged seizure violates the Fourth Amendment and federal law. The government cannot hold onto your property indefinitely without explanation so it can eventually take it permanently using civil forfeiture."

The raid on Ayala's store happened while he was visiting his ailing father in Mexico, who died a couple of months later. After Ayala's wife and son called to tell him what had happened, he rushed back to Arizona, where he tried to figure out why his business had been targeted by the IRS and the DHS. That was harder than you might think.

Ayala "has heard nothing from the government since they raided his business and seized his property," Sanz and her colleagues note in their memorandum. When the agents left, they told Ayala's son that "the business would receive a letter within thirty days," the memorandum says, but "no letter came," and the government "has not told Mario why it took his property or why it refuses to return it."

The agents left a one-page inventory of the property they took, including the computers, cellphones (two of which belonged to Ayala's customers), documents, and currency, although it did not specify the amount of money. They also left the first page of a warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge, which contained no information about the crime they were investigating or the property they were authorized to seize. It referred to attachments that might have clarified those points, but the attachments were missing.

Ayala still has not seen those attachments. But on the same day the agents raided his store, they also searched 18 other businesses in the Phoenix area, all of which offered money services. Judging from the warrants served on three of those other businesses, which were signed by the same magistrate judge at the same time on the same day as the warrant for Ayala's Mini Market, the legal justification for the searches was suspected violations of 31 USC 5324, which makes it a felony to "structure" a financial transaction with the intent of "evading" federal reporting requirements.

The Bank Secrecy Act requires that financial institutions report cash transactions involving more than $10,000 to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Although that mandate is aimed at money laundering, someone can be guilty of structuring even without evidence of any other crime if he deliberately tries to avoid triggering a FinCEN report by breaking up a transaction into amounts below the threshold. As far as Ayala can tell, the search of his store was based on nothing more than suspicion of structuring.

If so, Ayala's lawyers argue, the IRS agents who participated in the raid violated a 2019 federal law that bars the agency from seizing money when structuring is the only suspected crime. Congress passed that law in response to IRS forfeiture abuses highlighted by the Institute for Justice. "For the IRS to legally seize property based on a structuring offense, it must also have an added suspicion of some other criminal act," Sanz et al. note. "Yet the IRS seized Mario's property, apparently on the sole suspicion of a structuring violation."

That is not the only legal problem with the seizure. Assuming the government plans to seek forfeiture of Ayala's money based on an alleged connection to criminal activity, it missed a crucial deadline. The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) requires the federal government to notify property owners of attempted forfeitures within 60 days of the seizure. That deadline passed a year and a half ago, and Ayala still has received no such notice.

"This notice is crucial because it informs a property owner that the government intends to forfeit his property and triggers his ability to respond by filing a claim or administrative petition," Ayala's lawyers note. If the government fails to meet that requirement, CAFRA says, it "shall return the property."

The government can seek extensions of the CAFRA deadline "only if there is reason to believe that notice may have an adverse result," such as "endangering the life or physical safety of an individual," "flight from prosecution," "destruction of or tampering with evidence," "intimidation of potential witnesses," or "otherwise seriously jeopardizing an investigation or unduly delaying a trial." None of those conditions applies in this case, Sanz et al. say, and their client "is unaware of the government seeking any such extension here."

Another possible rationale for keeping Ayala's property is that the government needs it as evidence in a criminal investigation. But his lawyers argue that the seized items "have no independent evidentiary value."

The government "cannot claim that it is holding the cash as evidence of the suspected structuring offense, because the government—in the usual course—does not continue to hold the physical cash it seizes but rather promptly deposits it," the memorandum says. "To prove the suspected offense here, the government would present evidence documenting the amounts and frequency of transactions and evidence that the defendant intentionally evaded reporting requirements. No fact the government must prove to establish a structuring offense becomes more or less provable by the government's continued possession of Mario's money."

Although "the checks and business documents that the government seized from Mario may at first have had some evidentiary value," Sanz et al. say, it could have long since returned the originals and kept copies. As for the computers and cellphones, "the government has had ample time to extract and copy" any relevant information.

While the benefits of keeping Ayala's property seem highly dubious, the cost to him has been severe. The seizure of the checks and currency wreaked havoc with his business model, which relies on money received for transfers to cash checks, which in turn are scanned and used to pay the companies that handle the transfers.

"The search and seizure of Mario's property upended his business," the memorandum says. "He had to keep his business closed until March 1, 2025, to replace the seized computers and to figure out how they could keep the business open. He took $50,000 of his own money out of the bank so that he could keep cashing customers' checks. When that ran out, the business had to stop cashing checks for a long time, losing customers."

Ayala "also had to come up with $112,097.20 to pay the money transmitters to cover the balance that had accrued while he was away," his lawyers add. "Since all the cash and cashed-but-unscanned checks had been seized, Mario needed to pay this money to the transmitters on his own. Though he did ultimately pay back all the money transmitters over the following month, the consequences of the raid damaged Mario's business relationship with one of the money transmitters he had formerly worked with, InterMex. Today, the business can no longer offer InterMex as an option for money transfers."

Ayala's business "is now finally stable, but it is still not doing as well as it was before the raid," Sanz et al. say. "Mario has changed the way he runs his business because of the raid. He now scans every customer's cashed check to send it to the money transmitters as soon as it is cashed, rather than collecting [checks] and scanning them together as they previously did. He constantly worries that his business will be targeted again."

In the 20 months since the raid, the government has not filed a forfeiture action or even notified Ayala that it intends to do so. Nor has it filed any criminal charges related to the seizure, as far as Ayala knows. "The government has no lawful reason to retain
Mario's property," his lawyers say, "and this Court should exercise its equitable jurisdiction to order its return."

The motion relies on Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g), which says "a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property or by the deprivation of property may move for the property's return." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Arizona, has adopted four criteria for granting such a motion: whether the government "displayed a callous disregard for the constitutional rights of the movant," whether "the movant has an individual interest in and need for the property he wants returned," whether "the movant would be irreparably injured by denying return of the property," and whether "the movant has an adequate remedy at law for the redress of his grievance."

All of those factors count in Ayala's favor, Sanz et al. argue. Ayala's interest in the property and the injury he is suffering are clear, as is the absence of any other remedy. As for the first criterion, "the government can neither forfeit Mario's property nor justify holding it as evidence, so its continued retention is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment," the memorandum says. "And its nearly 20 months of silence, without any notice or any forum in which to contest the seizure, offends due process. At every turn, the government has 'callous[ly] disregarded' Mario's constitutional rights."

Ayala immigrated to the United States from Mexico in 1991 and struggled for years to make a go of his business, which was successful enough at the time of the raid that he planned to open a new location devoted to cellphone repair. That plan is now on hold because of the financial difficulties caused by the seizure.

"This business is my American Dream, and the government took years of my hard work without telling me what I did," Ayala says. "This raid hurt me and my family. I hope this lawsuit gets my money back and helps make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else."

The post The Feds Took $460,000 From This Arizona Convenience Store Owner and Never Explained Why appeared first on Reason Magazine.

One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.

It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.

"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.

U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.

A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.

Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.

The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."

Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.

The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there are contradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.

Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.

"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.

Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.

The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesman told Reason earlier this year.

But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.

"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media. 

Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been a major nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.

The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against two alleged arsonists, citing National Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.

But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose a rarely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.

"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel Richman told The New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about." 

The post Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Since 1871, a federal statute has authorized Americans to sue state and local officials for violating their constitutional rights. But since 1982, thanks to the court-invented doctrine of qualified immunity, such claims have been allowed only when they allege violations of "clearly established" law.

Because courts often require plaintiffs to meet that standard by citing precedents involving closely similar facts, qualified immunity can prove insurmountable even for victims of outrageous abuses. But as two recent cases illustrate, there are limits to this license for misconduct, meaning officials may still be held accountable when they flout longstanding constitutional principles, even when they do so in novel ways.

In 2022, Mario Rosales and Gracie Lasyone sued two Alexandria, Louisiana, police officers, Samuel Terrell and Jim Lewis, alleging that they had pulled Rosales over without legal justification. The cops ordered Rosales and Lasyone, his girlfriend, out of the car and detained them for 21 minutes, during which they grilled the couple about illegal drugs, frisked Rosales, and instructed him to empty his pockets.

Terrell and Lewis sought refuge in qualified immunity. But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Rosales and Lasyone had plausibly alleged several Fourth Amendment violations, including a stop based on a "fabricated traffic violation," an improperly prolonged detention, and unjustified searches.

In reaching that conclusion, the 5th Circuit relied mainly on a 1968 decision in which the Supreme Court said police may detain someone only if they reasonably suspect he is involved in criminal activity and may frisk him only if they reasonably suspect he is "armed and dangerous." Assuming the facts alleged in the lawsuit are true, the three-judge panel unanimously held, Terrell and Lewis had failed both of those tests.

When the officers stopped Rosales, the principles that the 5th Circuit applied had been the law of the land for more than half a century. Terrell and Lewis nevertheless argued that "any constitutional violation arising from the traffic stop was not clearly established," which gives you a sense of the chutzpah that qualified immunity invites.

Police commonly pull drivers over, ostensibly for traffic violations, in the hope of implicating them in drug crimes. A case that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit considered this month involved a much more unusual scenario: a judge who locked two children in jail cells because he was frustrated by their resistance to a parental custody decision.

During a 2019 hearing in Taney County, Missouri, a divorced couple agreed that the mother would have primary custody of their two children, then 12 and 14. But contrary to that agreement, the children did not want to go home with their mother, which led to an argument in the courthouse lobby.

Judge Eric Eighmy intervened, telling the children they had to leave with their mother and repeatedly warning them that they could end up in foster care if they refused to do so. When that did not work, Eighmy jailed them until they became more cooperative.

"The time spent in the holding-cell area was between twenty and forty minutes," the 8th Circuit noted. And since Eighmy did not have probable cause to believe the children had committed any offense, "much less one that justified placing them in a holding cell," the court said, their confinement clearly violated the Fourth Amendment.

If so, Eighmy argued, he had no way of knowing that. The 8th Circuit panel unanimously disagreed: "As we put it over a decade and a half ago, long before the events in this case, 'it is clearly established that a warrantless arrest, unsupported by probable cause, violates the Fourth Amendment.'"

Notably, the 8th Circuit did not think the bizarre details of the case counted in Eighmy's favor. "We are not concerned about the lack of a prior case" with "fundamentally similar" facts, it said. "Indeed, given how clear the law is, it would have been surprising to find one."

© Copyright 2026 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

The post 2 Recent Cases Illustrate the Limits of a Doctrine That Often Blocks Civil Rights Claims appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Last July, President Donald Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on various Canadian goods, a list he subsequently expanded to include additional imports, some of which he banned outright. His legal justification was Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which Congress approved in 1930. Section 338 authorized tariffs in response to discriminatory trade practices. But in the 96 years since it was enacted, no president had ever used it to impose tariffs.

Why is that? According to a lawsuit that the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed on Tuesday in the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT), the answer is clear: Section 338 was superseded by subsequent legislation that likewise targeted discriminatory trade barriers, beginning with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 and culminating in Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Section 301, the current remedy, includes requirements that Trump apparently sought to dodge by invoking Section 338 instead.

That maneuver is illegal, the LJC argues. "Congress already gave the executive branch a tool for responding to unfair foreign trade practices: Section 301, which requires an investigation, public comment and other safeguards," says Jeffrey M. Schwab, the LJC's director of litigation. "The administration cannot skip those protections by reaching for a 1930 statute that no president had ever used to impose a tariff."

Why not? "Where provisions in two acts are in irreconcilable conflict, the later act, to the extent of the conflict, constitutes an implied repeal of the earlier one," the lawsuit says. "Where a later act covers the whole subject of an earlier one and is clearly intended as a substitute, it operates similarly as a repeal. And a specific policy embodied in a later federal statute controls the construction of an earlier one even absent express amendment."

Even if Section 338 somehow survived congressional approval of contrary laws, the LJC adds, Trump's tariffs exceed the authority it grants. And if Trump's interpretation of Section 338 were correct, the lawsuit says, the provision would violate the nondelegation doctrine, which bars Congress from delegating its tariff power to the president without providing "an intelligible principle" to guide and constrain his exercise of it.

Trump's Section 338 tariffs, in short, are "the Administration's latest attempt to exercise, through a statute never designed for the purpose, the tariff power that the Constitution assigns to Congress." That pattern should be familiar by now.

Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump claimed to have discovered a previously unnoticed delegation of extensive tariff authority in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention import taxes and had never been used to impose them. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it, and last February the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all.

Trump responded to that decision by immediately announcing similarly broad tariffs under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which addresses "fundamental international payments problems" caused by "serious United States balance-of-payments deficits." In May, the CIT ruled that the new tariffs were illegal because Trump had failed to "identify balance-of-payments deficits within the meaning of Section 122."

Trump then switched to Plan C, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act, which authorizes tariffs in response to a foreign "act, policy, or practice" that is "unreasonable or discriminatory" and "burdens or restricts" U.S. commerce. He claimed that provision justified tariffs on 86 trading partners, accounting for nearly all U.S. imports, because they had failed to "impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor." The CIT is currently weighing challenges to those tariffs, including an LJC lawsuit.

Trump's Section 338 tariffs have now added to the CIT's caseload. The LJC represents Gellert Global Group, an importer that was hit hard by those taxes after Trump added cheese to the list of disfavored Canadian goods. The lawsuit asks the CIT to certify a class of importers, numbering in "the hundreds, if not the thousands," that likewise have been clobbered by Trump's 50 percent tariffs.

Since Trump obviously is aware of Section 301, why did he resort to a never-used, seemingly obsolete provision to justify the tariffs on imports from Canada? As the LJC notes, Section 301 requires an investigation by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, "consultation with the foreign country concerned, notice, public comment, a hearing, and determinations within statutory deadlines." It also requires "that action be equivalent in value to the burden imposed, that duties be preferred over other import restrictions, and that actions terminate after four years absent a request for continuation and review."

Can Trump avoid those constraints by invoking Section 338 instead? The LJC thinks not: "Congress did not intend to leave in place a parallel authority that would allow the President to impose the same remedies, for the same conduct, free of every one of those safeguards."

Section 338 has been "impliedly repealed," the LJC argues. "At a minimum, Section 301 controls where, as here, the President seeks to respond to foreign practices within Section 301's scope, and the President may not impose duties in response to such practices while disregarding the procedures and limits Section 301 imposes. Because the President did not proceed under Section 301, the Section 338 Tariffs are unlawful whether or not Section 338 survives."

Even if you ignore subsequent legislation, the LJC argues, the Canadian policies that Trump cited when he announced the tariffs do not qualify as "discrimination" under Section 338. "Canada's motor vehicle surtax and its provinces' alcohol purchasing decisions are responses to tariffs that the United States imposed on Canada, not discrimination by Canada against the United States," it says. Trump also complained that Canada treats European cheese imports more favorably than U.S. cheese imports. But "when Congress enacted Section 338, a preference granted under a reciprocal agreement was not 'discrimination.'"

Section 338 "addresses discrimination: measures that single out United States commerce for worse treatment than the commerce of the world at large," the lawsuit says. "It is not a general authorization to impose tariffs whenever the President disagrees with a trading partner's policies, or whenever a trading partner responds to tariffs the United States has imposed on it."

Trump also was unfazed by Section 338's requirement that the president set duties to "offset" the costs imposed by discriminatory practices, which implies proportionality. Rather than attempt that, the LJC notes, Trump imposed "the statutory maximum rate of 50 percent without tying it to any measured burden."

As interpreted by Trump, the lawsuit warns, Section 338 authorizes the president to "impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on any products of any country that extends better treatment to any other country in any respect—including through any of the hundreds of preferential trade agreements to which the United States is not a party—or that responds to tariffs the United States has imposed on it." Yet Section 338 "contains no clear statement authorizing that power," contrary to the "major questions" doctrine, which applies to assertions of executive authority with "vast economic and political significance."

If Section 338 conferred the sort of unfettered authority that Trump is claiming, the LJC says, it "would supply no intelligible principle constraining the exercise of Congress's power to lay duties." His reading "would convert a narrow, fact-dependent provision into an effectively unrestricted delegation of Congress's tariff power," which would be "an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power."

This case "is not about the president," says LJC CEO Sara Albrecht. "It is about the presidency. No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the limits Congress required."

The post Trump's 50% Tariffs on Canadian Goods Illegally Rely on a Superseded Statute, a Lawsuit Argues appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Matt Gaetz resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2024, shortly before the House Ethics Committee released a report accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017, when he was 35, and "regularly pa[ying] women for engaging in sexual activity with him." The probe was widely discussed as a sex trafficking probe, but the ethics committee "did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute," per its report.

Now two women have filed a civil lawsuit accusing Gaetz of sex trafficking.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, says that Gaetz and two other men (Joel Micah Greenberg and Christopher Dorworth) broke federal anti-trafficking laws by using "their public office, power, and wealth to prey on the economic vulnerability" of Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2.

Gaetz, who now hosts The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News Network, said many of the suit's allegations against him are false. "The lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn't allow me to confront my accusers," he said. "Now I will finally have that chance."

On X, Gaetz posted an image of three women in bikinis seated next to bottles of beer and looking at the ocean and wrote "Jane Doe Strikes Again! Two adult women sued me today alleging they were sex trafficked to the Bahamas. I'm shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram."

Jane Doe Strikes Again! Two adult women sued me today alleging they were sex trafficked to the Bahamas. I'm shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram. https://t.co/HPvX2xypzs

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 15, 2026

This does not seem like especially helpful behavior from a public relations perspective, to say nothing of whether it's legally wise to for Gaetz to be posting to social media about the suit against him.

But Gaetz's point isn't entirely off base. The actions described in the suit against him are hardly what most people would consider sex trafficking.

Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 were adult women willingly advertising on Seeking Arrangement, a site aimed at connecting young women with rich men for mutually beneficial relationships. And by their own account, that is what went down. They were taken on trips and paid thousands of dollars while hanging out, partying, and having sex with Gaetz and his friends.

Needless to say, advertising on a sugar baby website does not make you fair game for forced prostitution or sexual assault. But nowhere in the lawsuit are forced prostitution or sexual assault alleged.

Instead, we get sentences like this: Gaetz and the other defendents "led [Jane Doe 1] to believe they could solve her financial problems as long as she kept performing sexual acts for them and their associates," states the suit. But "the money never came as a single payment that would have solved Jane Doe 1's financial issues."

So…it's sex trafficking because he didn't pay her enough at one time? I don't think that's how the law works.

Overall, it's a stretch to say that Gaetz's actions as described in this suit fall under the scope of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Under federal law, sex trafficking must involve an element of force, fraud, or coercion, and/or must involve commercial sex involving someone who is under age 18.

In this case, both alleged victims were in their 20s at the time of the alleged trafficking. No element of force or fraud is claimed. And the type of "coercion" alleged seems more appropriate for a college debate than a courtroom.

There was no suggestion that harm would come to the women or their families, that a job or housing would be lost, or that failure to engage in sexual activity with Gaetz and his friends would result in some sort of other (physical, reputational, legal, etc.) harm befalling them. There was nothing on Gaetz's end that would seem to arise to "coercion" under federal trafficking statute, which defines it as involving "threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person," a scheme to make someone believe that serious harm will befall them if they don't comply, or abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process.

The suit contains a lot about Greenberg—a former tax collector who is in prison after pleading guilty to charges that include sex trafficking—and comparatively little about Gaetz. It seemingly attempts to make up for the lack of direct allegations against him by noting findings from the Ethics Committee, even though that committee specifically said it could not find evidence of sex trafficking.

Gaetz is accused of having sex with Jane Doe 1 at a party while Jane Done 1 was on MDMA. But the suit does not accuse Gaetz of foisting drugs on her, simply saying "controlled substances circulated at the party, and Jane Doe 1 took MDMA during the evening." Nor does it say that anyone forced Jane Doe 1 to be at the party or to have sex with Gaetz.

Gaetz is also accused of paying Jane Doe thousands of dollars—never directly after sex or as a direct quid pro quo, but during the same time period during which he was having sex with her. The payments were labeled things like "Being my friend," "Being awesome," "Here," and "Just because," the suit says.

And Gaetz is accused, along with the other defendants, of paying to fly Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2—whom Greenberg met through the sugar baby website and introduced to Gaetz—"to Venice Beach, Miami, Las Vegas, the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and New York City" and paying for their hotel rooms. The suit does not say that they were forced or coerced on these trips, merely that the trips exposed them to "men they would never otherwise have met, and every part of that access, from the flights to the hotel rooms, was paid for by men, including the Defendants, who expected sex in return."

The women's lawyer told the Associated Press that there was "an exploitative power imbalance," because on one side you had a congressman and some other powerful men and on the other "young financially vulnerable women in their early twenties."

Morally speaking, that might be relevant. And for a congressman, it may have been grounds for sanction. But the fact that these women were younger and less financially successful does not make a relationship between them and Gaetz de facto "coercive" or illegal.

Age gaps in relationships—even substantial ones—are not outlawed. And relationships in which an older man is attractive precisely because he has more money and power than the younger female involved, and offers to spend it lavishly, are not uncommon. The idea that this violates federal criminal law simply showcases how distorted our ideas of sex trafficking have become.

---

In the News

Children have a fundamental right to access the internet, says India's Supreme Court. The Free Press Journal reports:

"The safety of our children and their freedom are not at odds with each other. Our children are entitled to both," the court observed.

The bench explicitly recognised the right to access and use the internet as a fundamental right under Article 21, which protects life and personal liberty, read with Article 19(1)(a), which guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

Meanwhile, in the U.S.: "A federal appeals court panel has ruled that Florida's 2024 law restricting access to social media for teens is likely constitutional and can continued to be enforced while the legal challenge continues," notes the Florida Phoenix.

We were promised REPEATEDLY that age-verification law was narrow, and would ONLY apply to porn. But— as we warned —it was always a ruse.Since conservatives got their ruling in FSC v Paxton, they've pushed to age-gate anything and everything. It's not going to stop with social media or chatbots.

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T18:24:17.874Z

Florida isn't just using legislation to go after young people's internet freedom more broadly:

Florida is using litigation to implement digital ID through universal age verification - one platform at a time.

Florida's lawsuit against Discord is so far, the most aggressive, in pursuing age verification and surveillance under the guise of "protecting kids."

— Protecting Kids Online (@PKOproject) October 18, 2026

'Appropriate safeguards.' A small change in the language of the Apple App Store's app review guidelines could portend big changes. Via 9to5Mac:

Under Section 1.2, which covers user-generated content, the guidelines now read (changes in bold):

Apps that enable users to create, generate, upload, share, or otherwise contribute content present particular challenges, including intellectual property infringement, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and anonymous bullying.

Apple's new terms add that "Developers who fail to implement appropriate safeguards or fail to remediate identified violations after notice may be considered in violation of the Developer Code of Conduct."

The change is being reported as a crackdown on "nudification" apps, and that certainly seems to be part of it. But the language about going after "developers who fail to implement appropriate safeguards"—combined with the broad warning about user-generated content—could signal a broader intent to crack down on social media platforms and other types of apps that don't implement ID verification or engage in more intense content moderation.

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On Substack

Don't sacrifice due process to outrage. We can't let anger over allegations of gang rape at Cornell convince us to re-implement old Title IV policies that disregard due process, writes Robert Shipley of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

There's a groundswell of demand to "do something" in the wake of the sexual assault claims at Cornell. But amid the outrage and concern over the incident, it's critical to remember that one attempted remedy we actually know will not work is to return to a campus justice system in which the burden of proof is on the accused and basic civil liberties are cast aside. That social experiment has already been run. It failed.

Title IX, the law against sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, was passed in 1972. Debates at the time focused on how it would affect single-sex colleges and college athletics. Explicitly aimed at sex discrimination, the text of the law itself mentions neither sexual assault nor sexual harassment. Those became matters for Title IX gradually over the next couple of decades, as courts determined that sexual assault and sexual harassment were both forms of sex discrimination, and therefore covered under Title IX.

The Jane Doe lawsuit against Cornell and the accused students (as well as a fraternity, a sorority, and a local bar) hit national news at nearly the same time that the Trump administration officially removed the Biden-era regulations from the Federal Register. While almost certainly not related, some have connected the two, citing the Cornell incident to argue that regulations surrounding Title IX need to be changed again to reduce due process protections for the accused.

More here.

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Read This Thread

Not to pick on Sam here, but this is a useful point to highlight some of the impossibility of trust & safety work. Meta actually used to have a program *exactly* like this, BUT it became a central feature of Frances Haugen's Facebook Files as an example of Meta being evil.I'll explain…

— Mike Masnick (@masnick.com) 2026-10-17T20:27:37.894Z

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More Sex & Tech

• A new pair of high-tech sunglasses from Meta "can read your mail, describe the person in front of you, tell you what is on a restaurant menu, and help you find your way home," writes Reason's Reem Ibrahim. "For the approximately 700,000 Americans who are blind, it is potentially life-changing."

• "The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a decision ordering new trials for two people facing human trafficking and sexual services offences, after concluding they should have been able to cross-examine a complainant about the commercial aspect of her prior sex work," reports The Canadian Press. "The case looked at the application of section 276 of the Criminal Code, known as the rape shield law, which limits use of evidence about a complainant's sexual history in court proceedings."

• Markets in everything:

This website lets you attend the wedding of complete strangers

Couples list their weddings and users can buy a ticket to attend https://t.co/8b7EawyFod

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) October 18, 2026

• Reclaim the Net explains Germany's new digital ID.

• The People First Transportation Alliance has been campaigning against robot taxis in D.C. "But just who is behind the group remains unclear, even as it has sought to sway the outcome of a contentious issue with vast sums of money and thousands of jobs at stake across the country," reports The Washington Post.

• From Reason's Meagan O'Rourke: In a race that could flip the U.S. House of Representatives, nobody wants to be the pro-tech candidate.

• A proposed App Store Accountability Act in Idaho "is a de facto digital ID," warns Julie Barrett.

The post Matt Gaetz Lawsuit Shows How Twisted the Term 'Sex Trafficking' Has Become appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Walking through East Cleveland, Ohio, feels a touch like you've wandered onto the set of a postapocalyptic film noir. Grand, gilded homes announce themselves on neighborhood streets, some crowned with turrets, many with windows punched out like missing teeth. Often, no one is home, because no one lives there. It is safer than 1 percent of U.S. cities.

So why did local law enforcement pour considerable time and resources into pursuing a man for a sound truck?

That question is not really a legal one, at least not in the most technical sense. But it is the driving force behind a thorny case a federal court recently resuscitated: Fambrough v. City of East Cleveland, a saga concerning a man whose vehicle became an obsessive target of the East Cleveland Police Department (ECPD) after he used it to campaign for a mayoral challenger.

Some of the facts are in dispute. But the basic gist is as follows: William Fambrough, long a politically engaged East Clevelander, campaigned for Juanita Gowdy—a challenger to then-Mayor Brandon King—by broadcasting messages around the city with his sound truck. That ultimately came to an end after law enforcement impounded the car, cited him for parking and noise violations, and prosecuted him for the latter.

Fambrough sued, alleging the complex legal odyssey set into motion over his step van amounted to First Amendment retaliation, an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and a violation of the 14th Amendment's proscription against selective enforcement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected some of those claims. But it resurrected claims against King and his chief of staff, Michael Smedley—depriving them of qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that inoculates state and local government officials from facing lawsuits if their alleged misconduct was not "clearly established" as illegal in prior case law. It also revived Fambrough's retaliation claim against the city.

As the 6th Circuit summarizes: King "says he received a phone call from a resident who complained about Fambrough's sound truck and someone else's box truck being parked in a residential area," so he told someone to take care of it. Scott Gardner, then the city's chief of police, "was concerned about selectively enforcing" the parking ordinance—which prohibits parking a truck in front of residential property, except for loading or unloading—because it is indeed almost never enforced. This was the beginning of a long pursuit, which ultimately saw a swarm of officers dispatched to Fambrough's house in August 2021 to confiscate the vehicle, allegedly resulting in $6,000 in damage. Fambrough also had to pay $528 in fees to get the damaged truck back.

"All the attention City officials gave Fambrough struck Gardner as unusual," the 6th Circuit notes. "The mayor's office wasn't this attentive even in homicide cases. And considering that the City had around only 50 police officers at the time and had 'serious crime problems,' Gardner thought it was odd to devote this much attention to permitting and parking issues." Based on available data, East Cleveland's violent crime rate is 1,409 per 100,000 residents, about four times higher than the national average.

Yet Gardner ultimately got on board. Smedley phoned him on August 9 "extremely upset," according to Gardner, and told the police chief he was "incompetent" for failing to "take care of" Fambrough's sound truck. Smedley wanted the "utmost enforcement as possible." So Gardner sent an email. "Please, find this vehicle and tow it," he wrote to all of ECPD. "Cite the operator with disturbing the peace and loud music. Please contact me as soon as this is complete to claim a surprise." A surprise!

Police succeeded. "On its face, the email told officers to tow Fambrough's truck regardless of whether it was parked illegally," writes the 6th Circuit. "And the Noise Ordinance authorizes seizure only of 'the sound device used,' and only upon conviction. So Gardner's instruction to tow the truck wasn't authorized by municipal law." The court still held that the seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. It also gave Gardner qualified immunity, ruling it is not clearly established that someone who acts as a conduit for someone else's alleged retaliation—which here came from the mayor's office—is a "responsible party."

Heather McCollough, the city's assistant law director, subsequently prosecuted Fambrough for allegedly violating the noise ordinance. According to a sworn declaration from Fambrough's attorney, McCollough outlined some of Fambrough's offenses on a call: that he "made complaints about the police department" and filed "public records requests," among other issues. Notably, it is legal to do those things. McCollough was typically willing to resolve minor noise complaints, she added, but not so much in this case, because Fambrough needed to "stand down." (He ultimately pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, a reduced charge.)

"Only after [Fambrough] began supporting Gowdy's election was the weight of the law thrown against him," the 6th Circuit writes in its analysis of potential municipal wrongdoing. "And the City's police officers didn't uncover Fambrough's violations of their own accord. Instead, City decisionmakers sent them to Fambrough's home each time to enforce the Parking Ordinance. So the timing of the parking-related enforcement actions supports an inference that Fambrough's political speech was the motivating factor—as does the fact that the City rarely enforced the Parking Ordinance against anyone else despite having plenty of opportunities to do so." Incredibly, a photo of another truck can be seen down the street on the same day law enforcement came to fetch Fambrough's vehicle. (The law also includes pickup trucks, so the city arguably has a lot of enforcement to do if it sincerely believes this law matters.)

King allegedly set the chain of events into motion while Smedley took the driver's seat. "Smedley's pattern of incessantly calling and berating Gardner," the 6th Circuit adds, "clashes with the idea that Smedley was chiefly concerned with minor permitting, noise, or parking issues." After all, if that were true, why would the problem appear to begin and end with one person?

Over five years have passed since the ordeal. Although Fambrough is now potentially closer to getting in front of a jury, he has yet to actually state his case, still burdened by the onerous process government actors invoke to kill such suits before the community can assess the merits. King, meanwhile, won that election. He left office in May 2025, however, after he was found guilty of one count of theft in office, four counts of having an unlawful interest in a public contract, three counts of representation by public official or employee, one count of filing a false disclosure statement, and one count of soliciting improper compensation.

The post He Campaigned for the East Cleveland Mayor's Opponent. Then Police Came for His Truck. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Trump administration's attempts to fast-track construction of the president's long-promised border wall through Texas' remote Big Bend region have ground to a halt amid fierce opposition, protests, and legal challenges from landowners and conservation groups.

A federal judge on Wednesday released an opinion explaining her decision to issue a preliminary injunction blocking border wall construction through the Big Bend area. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone found that the plaintiffs, which included the Center for Biological Diversity and several longtime residents of the region, had shown a substantial threat of irreparable harm if the construction project is allowed to continue.

The Trump administration wants to spend $7.5 billion building additional security infrastructure along a 500-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border running through the Big Bend region, which includes Big Bend National Park. The federal government began sending threatening letters to property owners announcing its intent to acquire necessary pieces of their land this summer, and it waived several environmental regulations, allowing it to put bulldozers on the ground inside the national park by September.

However, numerous groups and local landowners say the border wall project will alter their way of life and permanently scar one of the most rugged and pristine landscapes in the country. The project attracted bipartisan criticism and protests.

Cardone also found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin exceeded his authority when he issued environmental waivers for the project.

The injunction is a temporary reprieve for property owners such as David Keller, an archaeologist and part-time river guide on the Rio Grande River. The original plans for the border wall expansion would have cut through Keller's 10-acre property near Redford, Texas, putting a 30-foot-tall wall on the levee that sits between the river and the rest of his land.

Keller says the Trump administration gravely underestimated how much anger its tactics and attitude would generate.

"It's a level of arrogance—they're just used to being able to bulldoze over people," David Keller says. "They were moving forward as if they weren't expecting any resistance, but boy, they're due for a wakeup call. And they're having it right now."

Keller is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against the DHS by Conserve Big Bend, a coalition of landowners, conservationists, river tour guides, researchers, and other affected parties.

Keller says he's loved wild, open country since he was a child, and as soon as he saw the region in the 1990s, he decided he would find a way to live and work there, which he's done for the past 25 years. "It's visually magnificent," Keller says. "It's incredible. It's like no other place I'd ever seen. It's one of the last unspoiled places remaining in the lower 48."

Keller says it's where he plans on being buried, too, although these days he's unsure whether to say "plans" or "planned." The proposed border construction is an existential threat to the life he's built, he says, and if the wall goes up, he'd likely move.

"I didn't come down here to live in a cage," Keller says.

The proposed border wall would not only block access to the river for farmers, ranchers, and outdoors enthusiasts along the river, as well as block the view into Mexico, it would wreck "the whole feeling of the place, the historical cross-border culture that we've developed," Keller says.

So far, the federal government has not tried to seize any private property in the Big Bend region through eminent domain, although it sent letters to property owners this summer requesting access to survey their land and warning them that it held the option to invoke eminent domain if they did not quickly sell.

Both Keller's and the Center for Biological Diversity's lawsuits argue that the department's justification for building and expediting additional border infrastructure in the Big Bend Region are factually and legally incorrect. The DHS determined that the sector of the border is an "area of high illegal entry."

However, despite making up roughly a quarter of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, the Big Bend sector only accounted for between 0.3 percent and 2.2 percent of total border-wide arrests over the past 30 years.

Cardone cited the low apprehension numbers in her finding that Mullin exceeded his authority to issue the waivers.

"The unrebutted evidence shows that the Big Bend Sector is, by far, the sector with the lowest rate of migrant apprehensions along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, both in terms of gross totals and apprehensions per mile of border," Cardone wrote. "Therefore, if the Big Bend Sector is an area of high illegal entry, so is every other sector, and the waiver authority would apply to the entire U.S.-Mexico border."

The post Landowners in Texas' Big Bend Region Fight Trump Administration's Attempts To Seize Land for Border Wall appeared first on Reason Magazine.

A Missouri judge who locked two children in jail cells because he was frustrated by their resistance to a parental custody decision is liable for violating their Fourth Amendment rights, a federal appeals court ruled this week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit rejected Taney County Judge Eric Eighmy's claim that he was shielded by qualified immunity, a doctrine that blocks federal civil rights claims unless they allege a violation of "clearly established" law.

"A reasonable judge should have known better," Judge David Stras writes in an opinion joined by the two other members of the 8th Circuit panel. "The law was 'clearly established' enough" to "place the issue 'beyond debate.'"

Institute for Justice attorney Dylan Moore, who wrote an 8th Circuit brief arguing against immunity for Eighmy and participated in oral arguments, welcomed the decision. "Every reasonable person knows that a judge can't throw children in jail for no good reason," he said. "Yet Judge Eighmy claimed qualified immunity shielded him from accountability anyway because no prior case told him that imprisoning innocent kids is unconstitutional. That defense is ridiculous, and we are thrilled that the court saw through it. When government officials commit such obvious constitutional violations, qualified immunity should never enter the picture."

The incident at the center of the case happened after an October 2019 custody hearing involving Kadan Rockett, then 14, and his 12-year-old sister, Brooklyn, who had achieved a modicum of fame as magicians performing on America's Got Talent. Their divorced parents, Bart Rockett and Kami Ballard, agreed that Ballard, who at that point lived in Missouri, would have primary custody of the children, while Rockett, who was living in California, would be "responsible for them at the beginning of each month and 'during TV pilot season.'" But Kadan and Brooklyn did not want to go home with their mother, which led to an argument in the lobby of the courthouse.

Eighmy intervened, telling Kadan and Brooklyn to come with him to a conference room, where he informed them that they had to leave with Ballard. "The children would not budge, even after the judge mentioned that the other option was foster care," Stras notes. "Frustrated, Judge Eighmy had the children follow him again, this time to a waiting area in the courthouse's juvenile division." A few minutes later, Eighmy "led them down a hallway to two holding cells."

Outside the cells, Eighmy again threatened Kadan and Brooklyn with foster care, but they were still unmoved. "Lock them up," the judge told an officer, who "patted them down and ordered them to remove their socks and shoes" before confining them in separate cells.

It is not clear exactly how much time Kadan and Brooklyn spent in the cells. The Institute for Justice says "about an hour," while Stras says "the time spent in the holding-cell area was between twenty and forty minutes." In any case, the children's respect for Eighmy's authority had improved by the time he came back. He "asked them one more time whether they would leave with their mother," Stras writes. "This time, they both nodded yes, so he let them go."

In June 2021, Rockett, the children's father, sued Eighmy on their behalf under 42 USC 1983, which authorizes claims against state or local officials who violate constitutional rights under color of law. In his motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Eighmy argued that he was protected by judicial immunity, which is absolute with respect to a judge's official duties. U.S. District Judge Douglas Harpool disagreed, and the 8th Circuit affirmed that ruling in 2023, noting that Kadan and Brooklyn were beyond Eighmy's contempt power because they were not parties to the custody case and that "judges do not do double duty as jailers."

Eighmy reiterated his judicial immunity claim in a motion for summary judgment, and Harpool rejected it again. After the trial began, Eighmy claimed qualified immunity twice, once after all the evidence had been submitted and again after the jury's verdict in favor of Kadan and Brooklyn. Harpool denied him that defense both times.

The jury ultimately awarded Kadan and Brooklyn $5,000 each in damages, and Harpool added about $327,000 in attorney fees. Eighmy appealed again, reiterating his judicial immunity claim. But the appeals court ruled that he had abandoned that argument by failing to raise it during the trial or after the verdict. So Eighmy was left with qualified immunity, which the appeals court said he did not deserve.

Eighmy clearly violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable seizures, Stras says, because he "did not have 'probable cause to believe that [the children had] committed' an offense, much less one that justified placing them in a holding cell. Rather, their only misdeed was one every parent knows well: resisting authority. Even in the context of legal-custody proceedings, refusing to leave with a parent is not a jailable offense. Nor were there 'exigent circumstances' arising out of danger to themselves or others."

Did Eighmy's authority as a judge give him extra leeway? Nope. "Criminal contempt was off the table because the children were neither parties to the custody case nor present inside the courtroom," Stras notes. "Nor could the power to punish a party for violating an injunction have provided the justification, given that Judge Eighmy never issued one."

Eighmy's motive for jailing the children does not change that analysis. "We have no doubt that Judge Eighmy believed he was acting in 'good faith,' and possibly even in the children's best interests, by detaining them," Stras writes. "But good faith in the Fourth Amendment context is about reasonable reliance, either on binding appellate precedent or a warrant issued by a 'neutral magistrate.'"

What about Eighmy's argument that he had no way of knowing his actions were unconstitutional? "The law in this area" was "clearly established," Stras says. "'[I]t would have been sufficiently clear [to] every reasonable official,' Judge Eighmy included, that locking up two children for refusing to follow directions violated the Fourth Amendment. As we put it over a decade and a half ago, long before the events in this case, '[i]t is clearly established that a warrantless arrest, unsupported by probable cause, violates the Fourth Amendment."

That principle was so well established, in fact, that Kadan and Brooklyn, neither of whom had attended law school, took it for granted. "I don't know how you have a right to lock us up," Kadan told Eighmy when he threatened to jail them, according to Rockett's amended complaint. "We have done nothing wrong." The complaint says Brooklyn raised the same point. "How can you just lock up kids?" she asked. "This isn't legal. We've done nothing wrong."

Given Eighmy's obvious disregard for Kadan and Brooklyn's Fourth Amendment rights, "we are not concerned about the lack of a prior case" with "fundamentally similar" facts, Stras says. "Indeed, given how clear the law is, it would have been surprising to find one." He quotes an observation that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made as a 10th Circuit judge: "Sometimes the most obviously unlawful things happen so rarely that a case on point is itself an unusual thing."

The post The 8th Circuit Rejects Qualified Immunity for a Judge Who Jailed 2 Kids for 'Refusing To Follow Directions' appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Thanks to a 2005 DUI conviction in Pennsylvania, Edward Williams permanently lost the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But he did not realize that until a decade later, and his confusion on that point is understandable.

The federal law that stripped Williams of his Second Amendment rights is commonly described as applying to "felons," and Williams' offense was a misdemeanor. But although his sentence did not include any time behind bars, his crime theoretically could have sent him to prison for up to five years. That was enough to trigger 18 USC 922(g)(1), which covers anyone convicted of "a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year."

When a lawyer alerted Williams to that wrinkle, which made his continued ownership of firearms a federal felony, he got rid of his guns. But he did not think that requirement was fair, reasonable, or constitutional, and this week a federal appeals court agreed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit recognized a historical tradition of disarming "physically dangerous individuals" whose possession of firearms would pose a threat to public safety. But it said Williams plainly does not fit into that category.

"The federal government spent nearly a decade trying to permanently disarm a peaceable man over a nonviolent misdemeanor—and it lost bigly," says Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, which supported Williams' lawsuit. "The government does not get to turn a nonviolent conviction into a lifetime ban on exercising a constitutionally protected right."

The 3rd Circuit's en banc decision in Williams v. Attorney General affirms a 2023 ruling by a federal judge who likewise concluded that disarming Williams was unconstitutional. It elaborates on the logic of Range v. Attorney General, a 2023 decision that restored the gun rights of a Pennsylvania man who had been convicted of food stamp fraud. In both cases, the 3rd Circuit held that applying Section 922(g)(1) to the plaintiffs was not "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation"—the Second Amendment test established by the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Writing for the majority in Williams' case, 3rd Circuit Judge Paul Matey acknowledges that the Supreme Court has described "longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons" as "presumptively lawful." But "those longstanding customs restricted the violently dangerous (within which some felons would be included), not felons writ large," he says. "Felons were restricted because they posed a physical danger, rather than for their offense of conviction."

Matey argues that "focusing on physical dangerousness corrects the erroneous argument" that "only law-abiding and responsible citizens can exercise the rights protected by the Second Amendment"—a claim that the Supreme Court rejected in the 2024 case United States v. Rahimi. "We find no history that supports disarming irresponsible people, where 'responsible' is defined by the whim of the sovereign or the will of the majority," he says, alluding to the danger of allowing legislators to whittle away at the Second Amendment by criminalizing an ever-widening range of conduct.

Matey emphasizes "the novelty of forever restricting all felons from possessing firearms for lawful purposes." The original restriction, which Congress approved in 1938 as part of the Federal Firearms Act, applied only to violent crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape, kidnapping, robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon. In 1961, Congress expanded the ban to cover nonviolent crimes punishable by more than a year in prison.

Williams' 2005 DUI conviction qualified for two reasons. He had a prior DUI conviction, stemming from a 2000 arrest in State College. And when he was arrested again in Philadelphia four years later, his blood alcohol concentration was a whopping 0.223 percent. That made his second offense a first-degree misdemeanor, which carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Since then, Williams has stayed out of trouble. "He has done nothing violent, let alone dangerous, for over twenty years, and has held steady employment at the same job for over three decades," Matey notes. Williams drinks only occasionally, and a psychological evaluation found he "has a normal personality, without psychopathology and without addiction or violent tendencies."

The Justice Department nevertheless argued that Williams' continuing disarmament is consistent with the Bruen test, which requires historical analogs that are "relevantly similar" in motivation and scope. In making that case, the government relied mainly on early laws aimed at "habitual drunkards"—the same analogy that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected last June in United States v. Hemani, which involved the federal ban on gun possession by "unlawful" drug users.

Although the Justice Department "acknowledges it may proscribe Williams's possession of firearms only if he 'presently poses a physical danger if armed,'" Matey says, it "offers no evidence to establish this as the aim of the habitual drunkard laws." Those laws, the Supreme Court noted in Hemani, "did not seek to protect the public from violence so much as to protect habitual drunkards from themselves and their families from financial devastation."

Nor did the habitual drunkard laws permanently disarm people, as Section 922(g)(1) does. "Most statutes capped the commitment of habitual drunkards to the state inebriate asylum, prison, or hard labor to a few months or years," Matey notes. "Others provided for an indefinite period of incarceration, but had no indication that upon release individuals continued to forfeit their arms. Rather, once someone was 'safe' to 'go at large,' they were restored to the status of a full rights-bearing citizen."

Contrary to the considerations that the Supreme Court deemed relevant in Hemani, Matey says, the Justice Department "fails to show that Williams threatens to 'misuse[] a gun while intoxicated,' or that he 'poses a danger to himself or others as a result' of
alcohol abuse. In fact, much like those nineteenth-century drunkards released from custody and restored their rights, the record shows that Williams poses no present physical danger from the use of a firearm, or anything else."

The 3rd Circuit is one of three federal appeals courts that have allowed people with nonviolent felony records to argue that Section 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to them. But such challenges have been blocked in six circuits, notwithstanding compelling historical evidence that the law reaches much farther than the Second Amendment allows. So far, the Supreme Court has declined to accept any of the many petitions asking it to resolve that circuit split.

The post The 3rd Circuit Upholds the Gun Rights of a Man Who Committed a Nonviolent Misdemeanor 2 Decades Ago appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Last month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) that required restoration of press passes for 78 journalists employed by three news outlets that President Donald Trump peremptorily banned from the White House on September 18. U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, extended that order on Tuesday, granting a preliminary injunction to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.

While Kelly's TRO was based on CNN et al.'s claim that their sudden banishment violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process, his justification for the preliminary injunction also addresses their argument that revocation of their press passes violated the First Amendment by retaliating against them for constitutionally protected speech and discriminating against them based on viewpoint. Kelly concludes that the plaintiffs "are likely to succeed not only on their due process claim, but also on their two First Amendment claims."

A retaliation claim requires showing that the plaintiff engaged in conduct protected by the First Amendment, that the defendant's action was "sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness" from "speaking again," and that there was "a causal link between the exercise of a constitutional right and the adverse action." Although the government's lawyers did not dispute that the CNN et al.'s journalism is constitutionally protected, they argued that the plaintiffs had failed to satisfy the two other elements.

Kelly disagrees. The "hard passes" at issue in this case, he notes, give journalists unescorted access to the White House "press area," which includes "the briefing room, the press offices, and certain other locations in and around the White House that are open to correspondents." CNN et al. argued that "a hard pass is an important credential because it 'allows a reporter to react to fast-developing news' and gives them 'swift and easy access to key official sources.'" Since "the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes matters a lot as to how, whether, and to what extent they can do their jobs," Kelly says, "it is likely that the open-ended ban here would chill a reporter's work."

Trump's "own comments suggest that he intended the revocation of Plaintiffs'
hard passes to alter their reporting on him, bolstering the case that his action here is sufficient to deter a reporter of ordinary firmness from reporting in the same way she had before," Kelly adds. The day he announced the ban, Trump complained that CNN et al. "purposely write negative news" to "try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration." Although "the ban would go as far as you can," he added, "I'd love it" if "they could straighten themselves out."

The plaintiffs also have shown "there is likely a causal link between the exercise of their First Amendment rights and the revocation of their hard passes and exclusion from the White House press area," Kelly writes. "President Trump likely banned Plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him."

Again, Trump's public comments amply support that conclusion. He explicitly said he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico "as a result of their constant 'reporting' [of] FAKE NEWS," adding that journalists "shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America." When asked whether his decision was motivated by a "particular reason" or "particular story," Trump replied: "No, no. It's really just cumulative stories over the last two years." The problem, he said, was "purposely negative stories."

In a Truth Social post three days later, Trump likewise condemned "Fake News" that he said was "corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control." CNN et al.'s reporters are "Third Rate Clowns" who "purposefully distort, twist, and degrade with everything they write or publish," he added that evening. "Virtually every story about me, or anything having to do with me, is negative, wrong and, in many cases, DANGEROUS for our Country! No matter how GREAT my Achievements, they trivialize and demean."

Trump offered a similar defense of the ban in a September 28 interview with Time. "It's just bad story after bad story," and "most of them are fake," he complained. "I don't think anybody should be forced to bear fake news, constantly bad stories, because I've done great things." Although "I can name 100 great things I've done," he added, "I never get good press. I never get fair press."

The government's lawyers maintained that Trump or another official "would have reached the same decision" based on the "alternative ground" that CNN et al. had violated "minimum professional journalistic standards" by "publishing classified and national security information." Kelly was not impressed by that belated rationale, which no one mentioned until after the news outlets gave the government a copy of their lawsuit.

"There is no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke
Plaintiffs' hard passes on national security grounds," Kelly writes. "Nor at any time has he directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision. When he announced the ban with his post on September 18, he did not mention national security. When he was asked later that day about the 'particular reason' for his action, he did not mention national security."

Trump did mention "national security" in Truth Social posts he wrote the day that CNN et al. filed their lawsuit. But "that expression appears to have been simply another way for him to describe Plaintiffs' alleged inaccuracies and unfairness in their reporting about topics like his achievements or electoral success," Kelly says. "All this suggests that 'national security' was merely a post-hoc justification for the decision, which greatly undermines" the claim that Trump would have "taken the same action in the absence of Plaintiffs' protected speech."

The government also cited letters to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House Press Office, which were sent four days after Trump banned them. Those letters averred that the three news outlets had violated "the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex" by "publishing sensitive or classified information" and "trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues."

The letters "hardly move the needle" on the question of why Trump banned CNN et al. from the White House, Kelly says. They "appear to conflate concerns about otherwise protected speech" with "national security concerns," he notes, and they do not even explicitly say that Trump "made the decision for national security reasons."

Each letter lists specific stories to which the White House objected. But Kelly notes that two reporters "had their hard passes renewed after publishing articles that Defendants cite in their September 22 letters as supporting the potential revocation of their hard passes."

The Trump administration tried to shore up its "national security" justification by submitting a declaration from Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson. While Wilson explains "how the publication of classified and sensitive information can undermine national security," Kelly notes, she "says little to nothing about President Trump's decision to revoke Plaintiffs' hard passes" and does not say "anything about White House press practices or operations."

The defendants "have not really tried to support" the claim that CNN et al.'s reporting "damaged national security," Kelly says, noting that news stories based on "sensitive or classified information" are "commonplace, for better or worse." If Trump "would have banned Plaintiffs from the White House even in the absence of their protected speech," he suggests, "Defendants would not have had to scramble to make their case with unsigned letters and a declarant who does not even work there."

The evidence of retaliation also supports the claim that Trump discriminated against CNN et al. based on viewpoint, which is presumptively unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kelly notes, has held that "the White House Press Area" qualifies as a "nonpublic forum," meaning journalists cannot be excluded because of the views they have expressed.

"It is likely that Plaintiffs were selected by President Trump for revocation of their access to the White House press area because he believes their coverage of him and his administration is generally inaccurate and biased," Kelly writes. "In other words, it was 'an effort to suppress the speaker's activity due to disagreement with the speaker's view,' rather than to vindicate any other purportedly 'compelling governmental interest,' including maintaining professional standards for journalists or protecting national security. Simply put, that is unlawful viewpoint discrimination."

Kelly's decision "is a stinging defeat for Trump's assault on the free press and a powerful vindication of the First Amendment," Caitlin Vogus, senior adviser for advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in an emailed press release. "As Kelly rightly recognized, presidents don't get to use their power to purge journalists because they don't like what they report."

The post A Trump Appointee Says the President Likely Violated the First Amendment by Banishing Disfavored Journalists appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Back in 1983, the Supreme Court declared that "a person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another." That increasingly doubtful proposition underpins a nationwide network of more than 144,000 AI-assisted cameras that track the travels of innocent motorists across the country billions of times each week.

So far, state and federal courts have almost uniformly rejected constitutional challenges to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) installed by companies such as Flock Safety. But in a decision that could signal a shift in the legal treatment of Flock cameras, a federal judge in Oklahoma recently recognized that they enable "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance."

ALPRs are much more sophisticated than the technology that the Supreme Court considered in 1983, when it approved the warrantless use of a radio transmitter that helped police tail a suspected methamphetamine manufacturer's car. Three decades later, by contrast, the Court said police should have obtained a search warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to another drug suspect's car.

The majority opinion in the latter case emphasized the physical intrusion necessary to install the tracker. But five justices embraced an alternative rationale, saying GPS tracking impinges on reasonable expectations of privacy by revealing potentially sensitive information about the target's historical whereabouts.

That theory came to the fore in a 2018 case involving mobile-phone location data collected by cell sites, which the majority said implicated the Fourth Amendment because "individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements." The Supreme Court reiterated that principle this year, extending it to data collected by Google's Location History feature.

"An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location," Justice Elena Kagan said in the majority opinion, "and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information." By similar logic, U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill concluded this month in the Oklahoma case, people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in ALPR records, and police therefore generally need a warrant to search them.

Those databases include "information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times," which police can peruse "on demand," Hill noted. "Freedom from persistent, dragnet-style surveillance while in public is not a foreign concept in our society, and it is a reasonable expectation that society already accepts," as reflected in the Supreme Court's cellphone decisions.

Like cars, cellphones "move in public places where people can see you in plain view," Hill wrote. "But it becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient."

At this point, Hill's decision is an outlier. "It appears that nearly every court examining the issue to date has determined that ALPR technology use is not a search under the Fourth Amendment because people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements on public streets," she noted.

Last month, for instance, a federal judge in California held that ALPR database searches are "clearly distinguishable from and less extensive than the 'near perfect surveillance' achievable" with cell-site or Location History data. And the day after Hill's ruling, a state judge in California rejected a challenge to San Jose's Flock camera network, saying "there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in license plate data collected from cameras directed solely at public streets."

A federal lawsuit involving the same city's ALPR system, which the Institute for Justice filed last April, is still pending. So are challenges to Flock cameras in cities such as Wichita, Kansas, and Norfolk, Virginia.

Even when they reject such lawsuits, courts commonly acknowledge that the legal picture could change as the number and capabilities of ALPRs multiply. If so, it seems likely that Hill will eventually be joined by other judges who recognize the perils of "indiscriminate mass surveillance."

© Copyright 2026 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

The post Other Courts Should Heed a Federal Judge's Warning About Flock-Enabled Mass Surveillance appeared first on Reason Magazine.