Articles

At the end of June, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling in Haaland v. Brackeen, deciding that the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and its controversially unequal treatment of Native American children in child custody disputes survives constitutional scrutiny—for now. However, the decision also serves as a call to reconsider the reaso ...

Some federal regulator or another thinks you’ve broken the law. What happens next? You might think that they file charges in a federal court and the judicial system takes over to determine whether you’re guilty. That would be a reasonable assumption, since Article III of the Constitution vests judicial power in the judicial branch. But ...

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) has been called “the most unconstitutional law in America,” and for good reason. The 1978 law hasn’t aged well. ICWA is a complicated law, but in essence, it creates a separate and inferior child-welfare system for “Indian children.” Last week, the Supreme Court issued a decision in ...

On May 11, the Supreme Court issued a somewhat convoluted decision in National Pork Producers Council & American Farm Bureau Federation v. Karen Ross. The case raised a significant question: can California – or any other state – enact statutes whose primary function is to dictate standards and conduct that occur in other states  ...

On May 1, the US Supreme Court granted certiorari in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which is sure to send shockwaves through the administrative state. At issue is the doctrine known as Chevron deference, which requires that courts defer to federal agency interpretation of statutes. It sounds like legalese, but in practice, Chevron deference ...

On April 14, the US Supreme Court unanimously handed a loss on a silver platter to the administrative state. In Cochran v. SEC and Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC, the court concluded the executive adjudication schemes set out in the Securities Exchange Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act don’t displace a federal district court’s  ...

If it is not already, the U.S. Supreme Court should be skeptical of California’s illegal decree issued to the nation’s pork producers. On Oct. 11, the Court heard over two hours of oral argument in National Pork Producers Council & American Farm Bureau Federation v. Karen Ross. … ...

It was Thanksgiving of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when a Tucson mom named Sarra headed to her grocery store to pick up a turkey. She’d brought her 7-year-old son and his 5-year-old friend along for the ride. But the store was asking people to stay outside to slow the spread of COVID-19, unless they were … ...

Every year, government agents descend on people’s homes threatening them with huge fines if they do not divulge intimate details about their lives. The American Community Survey (ACS) is sent to about 3.5 million randomly selected Americans every year. It demands personal information such as how many beds, cars and phones the household has. I ...