Tag Archives: Fourteenth Amendment
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SCOTUS Opinion: Law Allowing Labor Unions Access To Private Land Deemed An Unconstitutional Taking
California enacted a regulation allowing labor organizations a limited duration right to access private farms to solicit support from farm workers thereon. Two such farmers filed suit seeking an injunction, arguing that the regulation was an unconstitutional per se physical taking without compensation. The district court and Ninth Circuit denied relief on the basis that the regulation did not allow ... Read More
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SCOTUS Opinion: Court Abolishes Non-Unanimous Criminal Convictions
The Supreme Court had previously ruled in Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972), that the Sixth Amendment did not forbid non-unanimous verdicts in state criminal trials. Today, only Louisiana and Oregon still permit non-unanimous convictions. In Ramos v. Louisiana, a 6-3 majority of the Court, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, discarded that precedent and held that the Sixth ... Read More
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SCOTUS Opinion: Court Blocks The Citizenship Question From The 2020 Census Questionnaire For Now
The Constitution requires a census to be taken every 10 years, and Congress delegated that task to the Secretary of Commerce. In 2018, the Secretary announced that he would reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire, a question that had been included in almost every census up through 2000. Opposition to the question claimed that the question would ... Read More
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SCOTUS Opinion: Under Due Process Clause, State Cannot Tax Foreign Trust Solely Because A Beneficiary Resides In the State
A family trust was created in New York state, with the trustee also located in New York, to distribute assets to the children of the trust creator under the trustee’s sole discretion. One of those children moved to North Carolina. The trustee then divided the trust into three separate trusts, one for each child, retaining full power and discretion over ... Read More
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Eighth Amendment Applies To State Civil Forfeitures
Tyson Timbs pleaded guilty to dealing in heroin in Indiana, for which the maximum fine was $10,000. The State sought to use civil forfeiture to seize his SUV, which Timbs bought for $42,000, which was allegedly used to move the heroin. The state trial court denied the State’s request as violative of the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines, but ... Read More