In the News

USDA Should be First to Comply with White House Executive Orders to Rein in The Administrative State

Coral Gables Resident Can Move Forward With Suing City Over Use Of Automated License Plate Readers
CORAL GABLES (CBSMiami) – A Coral Gables resident who is suing the city over its use of automated license plate readers can move forward with the lawsuit. A judge recently denied the city’s request to dismiss the case. “Even though I’m considered to be a good citizen,...

USDA Withdraws RFID Requirement
The United States Department of Agriculture has apparently reversed course on the issue of radio frequency identification (RFID) for cattle. In April of 2019, APHIS posted a factsheet to provide producers with information about the Agency’s guidelines and goals...

Deep State Guide to Resisting Trump’s Executive Orders on Guidance Document Abuse
[R]egulatory overreach gravely undermines our constitutional system of government. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats must not be able to operate outside of the democratic system of government…imposing their own private agenda on our citizens. A permanent federal...

More Shields and Fewer Swords in Realm of Federal Regulation
Yesterday the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) held a fascinating event on one of their marquee cases, Baldwin v. United States (read more in my postfrom last month—it’s the second of the four cases discussed). The case involves the Internal Revenue Service issuing...

Harriet Hageman on CSC Radio: NCLA Represents America’s Ranchers Against USDA Overreach

Executive Orders Address Federal Overreach
In his ongoing promise to roll back unnecessary regulations, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Wednesday to improve transparency and fairness surrounding federal regulatory guidance.Trump’s executive orders, “Bringing Guidance out of the Darkness” and...

Trump Undercuts Guidance Procedure for Federal Regulations
President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon signed executive orders that will change how federal agencies issue guidance documents, which they can use to set regulatory policy without going through the normal lengthy public comment and review process.Agency guidance...

R-CALF seeks injunction against USDA’s electronic animal ID plan
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – The Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) and four ranchers from Wyoming and South Dakota recently launched a lawsuit to stop implementation of a federal livestock traceability program. Some background: In...

NCLA Wins Stay Pending Appeal from Fifth Circuit in Post-Lucia Case
WASHINGTON - It took barely a couple of hours after oral argument on the motion in New Orleans, for a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to issue an order staying the SEC’s enforcement proceedings against NCLA client Michelle Cochran, according...

The Federalist Hit With Labor Complaint Over Founder’s Tweets
The federal government wants the publisher of conservative online magazine The Federalist to delete his apparently anti-union June 6 tweet.Ben Domenech tagged the magazine’s handle and relayed a thought about the first person who might want to organize their...

Calif. Donor Info Law Unnecessary, 14 States Tell High Court
California’s law requiring charitable organizations to disclose donor information is unnecessary to regulate such organizations and should be blocked, 14 states supporting a conservative advocacy group affiliated with billionaire activist Charles Koch told the U.S....

Group Asks Supreme Court to Weaken Legal Authority of Administrative State
WASHINGTON—A civil rights group filed papers with the Supreme Court on Sept. 23 urging it to tear away at the legal underpinnings of the modern administrative state.The Washington-based New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a petition for certiorari, or review, with the...

Orlando police seek access to massive database of license plates, concerning privacy advocates
The Orlando Police Department could soon have access to a massive database of license plate numbers of cars collected by privately owned cameras across the country. City council members on Monday approved a request by OPD to purchase access to a commercial database...

SEC Judges’ Due Process An ‘Empty Promise,’ 5th Circ. Told
An accountant alleging the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's in-house judges are unconstitutionally protected from removal has told the Fifth Circuit that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling suggests a lower court was wrong... Read the full article here.

DC Group Sues to Stop Arizona Agency Chiefs From Overruling Administrative Law Judges
A Washington, D.C., organization is challenging the ability of the heads of state agencies in Arizona to discard the conclusions of independent hearing officers.The new lawsuit filed Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court contends that a caregiver at a group home...

Lucia’s Latest ALJ Fight Thrown Out Of Federal Court
Raymond Lucia, who successfully argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative law judges had been appointed unconstitutionally, was less triumphant in California federal court on Wednesday...Read the full article...

SEC Defends Its Judges’ Removal Protections At 5th Circ.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission defended its in-house judges Friday, telling the Fifth Circuit the U.S. solicitor general has explained the processes for removing the agency’s administrative law judges can be interpreted as constitutional...Read the full...

Five Places in Miami Where You’re Being Surveilled
Protecting your private data in 2019 is a struggle, to say the least. Even something as innocuous as an app that makes your face look old might secretly store all of your photos and create a database of faces in a Russian basement somewhere. It's next to impossible to...

WSJ Letter to the Editor in Response to NCLA Commentary: The SEC Should Follow Its Own Rules for Guidance
Mark Chenoweth’s and Peggy Little’s “Secret Laws for the Powerful” (op-ed, July 24) focuses on regulation without notice-and-comment rule-making. Unfortunately, despite the Trump administration’s pronouncements to the contrary, this practice continues. The Securities...

Texas Woman’s Suit Against SEC Tossed Out of District Court, Heads to Appeal
FORT WORTH -- U.S. District Court judge John McBryde dismissed a Coppola, Texas, woman’s complaint against the Security and Exchange Commission but one of her attorneys said there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Michelle Cochran should not have been put...

TTB Label Regulations Infringe Brewers’ Civil Liberties
Summer backyard barbecues aren’t complete without cold beer. Perhaps the tradition is rooted in colonial America’s love of suds. Americans over the age of 15 consumed 34 gallons of beer per capita per year back then, and pubs and taverns were vital community gathering...

Mark Chenoweth on the Upcoming SCOTUS Decisions
Mark Chenoweth was on Fox News to talk about the upcoming Supreme Court decisions in Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor, Gamble v. U.S., and the controversial 2020 Census Citizenship Question.

Gundy v. United States: Revisiting the Nondelegation Doctrine, or Not?
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Gundy v. United States disappointed some observers who were hoping that the Court would use the case to reinvigorate the nondelegation doctrine. Instead, the Court upheld the federal government’s authority under the Sex Offender...

Daily Dicta: Mark Cuban Strikes Again in SEC Fifth Circuit Appeal
Never one to miss a chance to kick the SEC, the celebrity billionaire signed on to an amicus brief, this one filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by a team from Paul Hastings.Mark Cuban knows how to hold a grudge.Written by Jenna GreeneOriginally...