With politicians and government agencies continuously devising new ways to collect, store, aggregate, and search individuals’ selectively shared private information, the time for [the Supreme] Court to affirm Fourth Amendment protections is at hand.
[The Iowa Supreme Court] should hold that the Iowa Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, prohibits the government from using the toehold of a tax debt to take more than what is owed without just compensation.
The Supreme Court has routinely looked to the common law when determining what the home encompasses for Fourth Amendment purposes. Doing so here confirms that a tenant’s apartment is his dwelling just the same as a standalone house. As such, it receives all the protections conferred by the common law, including curtilage protections.
The Court should decline adopting the County’s theory... [and] ensure the Takings Clause continues to provide protection to this state’s vulnerable population, not merely those who are savvy enough to understand the legal system and who are able to predict problems long before an actual taking of private property occurs.
Louisiana’s Constitution draws a bright line against using expropriation to take private property for the exclusive use and benefit of a private enterprise. [Plaquemines Port Harbor] crossed that line. Because the project can proceed through an ordinary, voluntary transaction—and because the Port seeks only to insert itself to capture private revenue—this taking is precisely the abuse the post-Kelo amendments were enacted to forbid.
People should not be deprived of their homes or vehicles or large sums of money without adequate notice of the confiscation, delivered in a way most likely to reach them. ... The changed world of communications warrants revisiting existing standards of adequate notice. The petition squarely presents the issue and warrants th[e Supreme] Court’s review.
If the government takes away a property owner’s fundamental right to exclude, in whole or in part, it is a categorical physical taking that is contrary to the Fifth Amendment without regard to any other facts or circumstances. While the lack of available housing may be a public problem, these private property owners cannot be singled out to bear the burden of fixing it. The trial court’s decision should be affirmed.
“By granting Okello Chatrie’s petition, this Court can clear up the confusion about two issues, helping ensure uniform Fourth Amendment protection for sensitive data belonging to users of services which have become integral to our specialized, technologically advanced economy.”