Category: reason

This week, the Supreme Court updated its rules. Most attention focused on the new system to check for conflicts of interest. Merits briefs now need to include relevant stock ticker symbols for the parties. This step seems modest, but probably not worth the effort. Only two Justices hold stocks (Roberts and Alito). And they’ve somehow managed to recuse in all the cases they should have recused in. If any case slipped through, the potential conflict was likely unknown to anyone, which raises the question of whether there was a conflict! If a Justice doesn’t actually know that his ruling will help or hurt one of this financial interests, what is the problem? This rule imposes a new burden on litigants, followed by a new administrative burden to the Court, to potentially identify a near-null-set of cases that weren’t already flagged. I agree with Gabe Roth and others that Justices should not hold individual stocks. But Alito and Roberts apparently disagree.

The biggest change is one that does not seem to have garnered nearly enough attention. The Court modified Rule 29 to provide a new standard for a timely brief:

2. A document is timely filed: (1) if it is received by the Clerk in paper form within the time specified for filing; or (2) if it is sent to the Clerk through the United States Postal Service by first-class mail (including express or priority mail), postage prepaid, and bears a postmark, other than a commercial postage meter label, showing that the document was mailed on or before the last day for filing; or (3) if it is delivered on or before the last day for filing to a third-party commercial carrier for delivery to the Clerk within three calendar days; or (4) if it is properly submitted to the Court’s electronic filing system on or before the last day for filing. For a document submitted to the Court’s electronic filing system, required paper copies of the filing must be delivered or mailed to the Clerk through one of the methods in subsections (1)-(3) above within three days of the electronic submission….

Woah! I have long been a critic of the Supreme Court’s byzantine process for printing briefs. Under Rule 33, there are complex rules that govern the paper size, color, and binding for all briefs. These rules were waived in April 2020 during the pandemic, but were restored in July 2021. Most Courts of Appeals have eliminated the requirement to print copies of briefs, but SCOTUS is wedded to history and tradition.

Despite Rule 33’s persistence, the new Rule 29 has some virtue. The paper brief can be filed “three days” after the submission. And the briefs can now be “delivered” by hand or “mailed.” I think this change is significant.

First, I think this approach may add at least one more day to the briefing schedule. In the past, when I’ve worked with a printing company, I’ve had to submit the final brief to the printer one or even two days before the deadline, so there is enough time to print everything and deliver them before the close of business. Now, that time is eliminated. The electronic file can be sent to the printer closer to the electronic filing deadline. It can be filed electronically right before the deadline, and the printing can begin the next day.

Second, parties will no longer have to hire a courier to hand deliver a brief the same day it is filed. Instead, the brief can be filed electronically at the end of the day, then mailed overnight to the Court. I think this step will be a significant cost-saver. Moreover, printing companies may no longer need to keep agents in the nation’s capital.

Third, this step will avoid errors in the printed brief. This has happened to all of us. We scramble to submit a brief, send it to the printer, and as soon as it is filed, we notice an error. Don’t lie. This has happened to you. It happened to me. I called the Supreme Court Clerk’s office, and they offered to print out a white label, and place it over the error in the brief. That was an easy-enough fix. But in more extreme cases, it may be necessary to reprint the entire brief, at significant cost. Now, after the brief is filed at the deadline, it can be reviewed calmly, and any minor nits or errors can be fixed, before it goes to the printer. And presumably, a corrected electronic brief can be filed as well. Of course, this approach lets the parties change filings for up to three days after it is filed. But on balance, it is a good change.

The Supreme Court is taking some serious, positive actions of late. Dare, I say hail to the Chief?

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From People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. v. Nat’l Inst. of Mental Health, decided last week by Judge Paula Xinis (D. Md.):

According to PETA, the Elisabeth Murray lab, under the aegis of Defendants, conducts “torturous and useless” experiments on rhesus macaques (“macaques”) related to improving human mental health treatments. This suit, however, does not challenge Defendants’ treatment of the macaques.

Despite the Complaint’s broadside attack on animal research generally, PETA brings a narrow claim that Defendants have denied PETA’s August 2024 request for installation of a 24-7 audio visual live feed (the “live feed”) of the macaques who are currently housed at the laboratory, in violation of PETA’s First and Fifth Amendment rights. PETA’s August 2024 request demanded that the live feed “contain audio to hear the macaques’ vocalizations and clear video sufficient to see the macaques’ body postures, gestures, facial expressions, and other observable communications while in their cages, in the presence of laboratory staff, when being collected and prepared for experimentation, and while being experimented on.” PETA’s singular justification for demanding the live feed is its purported First Amendment right to “listen” to the macaques’ “speech” and “communications.” …

In addition to a separate administrative law basis, the court also dismissed the claim for lack of standing, reasoning:

PETA’s claimed injury to its First Amendment right to “listen” is not, as pleaded, a legally protected interest sufficient to confer standing. Although the First Amendment “protects both a speaker’s right to communicate information and ideas to a broad audience and the intended recipients’ right to receive that information and those ideas,” the narrower claimed right to “receive speech” requires the plaintiff “show that there exists a speaker willing to convey the information to her,” and that “the listener” maintains “a concrete, specific connection to the speaker.”

Nowhere does PETA establish any authority whatsoever for the extraordinary proposition that the macaques’ sounds and movements constitute protected speech to which a companion right-to-listen exists. Rather, PETA relies on a legion of inapposite law concentrating on the public’s right to receive human speech. But PETA gives the Court nothing that comes close to establishing a constitutional right to receive “non-human primate” sounds or behaviors.

Nevertheless, PETA argues that the macaques can “communicate” their sufferings in complex ways. But PETA does not explain how it has a “specific connection” to the macaques, as speakers, beyond the general averments that the macaques have the capability of communicating to humans. Thus, even if the Court hypothetically accepts that macaques are “willing to convey” information to PETA with a form of constitutionally recognized speech, PETA has failed to articulate a “concrete” and “specific connection” to the macaques such that PETA has suffered a legally protected interest in listening to the macaques sufficient to confer standing….

Defendants noted that PETA could submit a FOIA request “for any existing audiovisual recordings of the macaques,” but PETA argued that “FOIA will not ‘satisfy PETA’s First Amendment right to receive communications directly’ from the macaques.”

S. Nicole Nardone represents the government.

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The state of Washington is contemplating passing a 9.9 percent tax on earned income over $1 million, which would remove it from the short list of states that do not have an income tax. Washington has enjoyed decades of spectacular economic growth and is home to some of the world’s largest tech companies (including Microsoft and Amazon) as a direct result of the absence of state income taxes. The new measure threatens to change all that.

The state constitution currently prohibits an income tax. It treats income as “property,” and the rules of taxation on property dictate that it must be applied evenly and capped at 1 percent (like traditional property taxes), unless voters approve it by supermajority at the ballot box. Washington passed a 7 percent tax on long-term capital gains above $250,000 in 2021, an action that was made possible by the strained legal argument that sales of securities constitute an excise on the exchange of capital assets. It’s worth noting that the capital gains tax was really a bill of attainder aimed at one person: Jeff Bezos, and the Amazon founder escaped the taxes by changing his residency to Florida before the tax went into effect. The new proposed income tax, Senate Bill 6346, will treat capital gains as income, subjecting them to both the capital gains tax and the income tax.

To get around the unconstitutionality of the tax, which was established in a state Supreme Court case in 1933 (Culliton v. Chase), the state Supreme Court will have to overturn that case or re-characterize the millionaires’ tax as an excise-based property tax. The latter was actually made more difficult with the passage of the capital gains tax, which was specifically based on transactions. The bill includes an “anti-referendum clause“ that states that the tax is “necessary for the support of the state government and its existing public institutions,” making the chance for repeal at the ballot box an uphill climb. It should also be pointed out that three state Supreme Court justices recently retired, allowing Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson to significantly shape the court that will decide on the tax’s constitutionality.

In fairness to the bill’s architects, the tax is actually not a progressive tax, in the sense that there are brackets with successively higher tax rates. It is a flat tax that kicks in at $1 million of income. This tax is being framed as one that will only affect the rich, but without question, successive governments will introduce taxes at lower levels of income. The tax will facilitate a truly massive expansion of state government, as most new income taxes do, and will eventually touch virtually all Washington taxpayers, as all income taxes do. A 9.9 percent rate would be one of the highest in the country, below California and New York City, but comparable to New Jersey, Minnesota, and Hawaii. It will go from being a low-tax state to a punitively high-tax state overnight.

Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are all working toward reducing state income taxes with the goal of eliminating them entirely. Not coincidentally, these are Republican-dominated states. Rhode Island is in the process of raising income taxes, as are Virginia and, now, Washington. Not coincidentally, these are Democrat-dominated states. Red states are cutting taxes, and blue states are raising them. There is a saying in the financial world: Capital flows to where it is treated best. What we have seen since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 is a massive migration of people and capital to low-tax jurisdictions, after limitations were imposed on the deductibility of state and local income taxes. There is a reason why skyscrapers are going up in Nashville, Miami, and Austin. There is a reason why Florida, Texas, and much of the South have been on the receiving end of in-migration.

Another saying: There are no controlled experiments in finance. But there actually are: East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Chile and Argentina, and recently, Poland and the rest of Europe—low taxes, the rule of law, and property rights allow for economic growth and human flourishing. We have a controlled experiment playing out in real-time in the U.S. with the red and blue states. On a static basis, the blue states still have higher gross domestic product per capita, but the red states have higher growth rates and are catching up, while the blue states slowly lose their economic advantage. If New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gets his way and raises marginal tax rates to 16.8 percent in the city, the capital flight will accelerate, and it’s possible that in 20 years, Miami will be the new financial center of the world.

As for Washington, the purpose of the millionaire tax is two-fold: as retributive justice, and a revenue grab. If it passes, it will succeed on both counts. Taxpayers with the means to relocate will, the tax will raise far less revenue than expected, and Washington will no longer be a sought-after destination for hungry entrepreneurs. It’s not easy watching states commit economic suicide, but that’s the benefit of America’s system of governance: The states are free to compete for people, money, and resources.

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When can a public university punish a student for speech that includes violent references, and that frightens some people, but is not a clear threat? Jane and I unpack two recent court cases, one that upholds such punishment and another that says it violates the First Amendment: Damsky v. University of Florida and Christensen v. Ohio State University.

You can also see our past episodes:

• Can Journalists Be Charged for Involvement in Protests? The Don Lemon Dilemma
• 2025: The Year In Free Speech
• Does the First Amendment Protect Supposedly “Addictive” Algorithms?
• Defamation Law in the Age of AI with Lyrissa Lidsky
• Free Speech and the Future of Legal Education
• From Brandenburg to Britain: Rethinking Free Speech in the Digital Era with Eric Heinze
• Kimmel, the FCC, and the Government’s Power Over Broadcast Speech
• A Conversation with FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff
• A Burning First Amendment Issue: President Trump’s Executive Order on Flag Desecration
• Free Speech and Doxing
• The Supreme Court Rules on Protecting Kids from Sexually Themed Speech Online
• Free Speech, Public School Students, and “There Are Only Two Genders”
• Can AI Companies Be Sued for What AI Says?
• Harvard v. Trump: Free Speech and Government Grants
• Trump’s War on Big Law
• Can Non-Citizens Be Deported For Their Speech?
• Freedom of the Press, with Floyd Abrams
• Free Speech, Private Power, and Private Employees
• Court Upholds TikTok Divestiture Law
• Free Speech in European (and Other) Democracies, with Prof. Jacob Mchangama
• Protests, Public Pressure Campaigns, Tort Law, and the First Amendment
• Misinformation: Past, Present, and Future
• I Know It When I See It: Free Speech and Obscenity Laws
• Speech and Violence
• Emergency Podcast: The Supreme Court’s Social Media Cases
• Internet Policy and Free Speech: A Conversation with Rep. Ro Khanna
• Free Speech, TikTok (and Bills of Attainder!), with Prof. Alan Rozenshtein
• The 1st Amendment on Campus with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
• Free Speech On Campus
• AI and Free Speech
• Free Speech, Government Persuasion, and Government Coercion
• Deplatformed: The Supreme Court Hears Social Media Oral Arguments
• Book Bans – or Are They?

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Back in January 2023, Aimen Halim bought an order of “boneless wings” at a Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) outlet in Mount Prospect, Illinois. At the time, he claims, he assumed the product was composed of deboned chicken wing meat. But to his horror, he discovered that it was in fact made from chicken breast meat. That revelation resulted in a federal lawsuit that Halim filed against the chicken chain two months later, alleging breach of express warranty, common law fraud, and unjust enrichment.

When he dismissed that lawsuit on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. did not question Halim’s claim of confusion about the nature of boneless wings. But even if Halim honestly thought he was getting a deboned version of BWW’s “traditional” wings, Tharp says in his 10-page opinion, “his complaint has no meat on its bones,” because “Halim does not plausibly allege that reasonable consumers are deceived by boneless wings.”

That conclusion jibes with BWW’s cheeky response to Halim’s claims. “It’s true,” the company tweeted a few days after the lawsuit was filed. “Our boneless wings are all white meat chicken. Our hamburgers contain no ham. Our buffalo wings are 0% buffalo.”

BWW describes its boneless wings as “juicy all-white chicken.” But as The New York Times notes, it is not clear “whether chicken wings are light or dark meat.” While “wings are technically white meat,” their “fat levels” are similar to those of “legs and thighs.”

Even without that clue, Halim’s avowed expectation of what he would get when he ordered boneless wings is hard to credit. Halim “says he expected to receive ‘wings that were deboned (i.e., comprised entirely of chicken wing meat),'” Tharp notes. “It’s unclear what, exactly, Halim expected such wing fillets to look like, or how he thought they would be made, and the complaint does not allege that the ‘boneless wings’ actually resembled traditional chicken wings (whether the drumettes, the flats, or both). It’s also unclear when or how Halim learned that BWW’s boneless wings aren’t really made from wing meat.”

BWW said “a reasonable consumer would not be misled by the term ‘boneless wings’ because context clues make clear that the nuggets cannot be made of wing meat,” Tharp writes. But Halim argued that “the term ‘boneless wings’ is ‘literally false’ because the products are not wings.”

Tharp thinks that’s “debatable.” In context, BWW said, “wing” refers to a style of cooking rather than a particular body part. Tharp notes that “words can have multiple meanings.” The term “buffalo wing,” for example, “refers to the type of sauce on the wing, rather than indicating it is made of buffalo meat.” Similarly, “chicken fingers” do not consist of amputated digits. But even if “the term ‘boneless wings’ is ‘literally false,'” Tharp says, that does not necessarily mean it is deceptive.

Since “boneless wings are presented as an alternative to traditional wings,” Halim argued, “reasonable consumers would think boneless wings are made from wing meat.” But as BWW pointed out, that argument also would apply to the chain’s cauliflower “wings,” which it likewise offers as an alternative to traditional wings. “If Halim is right, reasonable consumers should think that cauliflower wings are made (at least in part) from wing meat,” Tharp writes. “They don’t, though.”

Halim conceded that point, saying “‘cauliflower wing’ is clearly a fanciful name because cauliflowers do not have wings.” But “‘boneless wing’ is also clearly a fanciful name, because chickens do have wings, and those wings have bones,” Tharp says. “A reasonable consumer would not think that BWW’s boneless wings were truly deboned chicken wings, reconstituted into some sort of Franken-wing.”

Tharp also notes that BWW’s “boneless wings” cost less than its “traditional” wings. “Common sense tells consumers that a product made out of the same ingredients, but requiring more time and work to create, would cost more,” he writes. “Moreover, boneless wings are not new; even putting aside the news articles that report that ‘boneless wings’ have been around since before the turn of the century, Halim’s complaint alleges BWW has sold them since 2003. Boneless wings are not a niche product for which a consumer would need to do extensive research to figure out the truth. Instead, ‘boneless wings’ is a common term that has existed for over two decades.”

Halim, in short, “did not ‘drum’ up enough factual allegations to state a claim,” Tharp says. “He does not plausibly allege that reasonable consumers are fooled by BWW’s use of the term ‘boneless wings.'”

Halim is represented by Treehouse Law, a Los Angeles outfit that bills itself as the country’s “premier consumer class action firm.” In addition to its beef against boneless wings, the firm has claimed, among other things, that consumers mistakenly think Truffettes de France Truffles are made in France; that Starbucks customers do not realize that its “sprouted grain” bagels are “made primarily with traditional, non-sprouted grains”; and that “100% Biodegradable” WaterWipes “will not completely decompose within a reasonable time period after customary disposal” because they “are customarily thrown in the trash, which means the Wipes ultimately end up in landfills or incinerators.”

The consumer injuries described by Treehouse Law may seem trifling. In Halim’s case, for instance, his lawyers said he “would have paid less” for BWW’s boneless wings if he had known they were “not actually chicken wings” or perhaps “would not have purchased them at all.” At the time, the BWW outlet in Mount Prospect was charging $13.49 for an order of 10 boneless wings. But when you multiply that cost, or some fraction of it, by all the similar purchases at the country’s 500 or so BWW outlets, you are talking about real money.

If Tharp had approved the nationwide class action that Halim’s lawyers proposed, they would have stood to earn a tidy sum for their efforts. But those profits hinged on persuading Tharp that Halim’s avowed confusion was not just sincere but also reasonable.

Tharp gave Halim a month to file an amended complaint. But he says “it is difficult to imagine that Halim can provide additional facts about his experience that would demonstrate that BWW is committing a deceptive act by calling its nuggets ‘boneless wings.'”

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The United States is entering a self-inflicted crisis in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has ordered a “beautiful armada” into the region while demanding Iran make a “deal” to avoid war. The crisis began when Trump promised to help Iranian protesters during a two-day uprising that was violently crushed, but since then, his administration has issued demands on completely different issues.

Vice President J.D. Vance has focused on the remnants of the Iranian nuclear program, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio is demanding concessions on Iran’s conventional military power, regional policies, and domestic political system. On Tuesday, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Iranians in Switzerland to discuss some kind of deal.

“It was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through,” Vance told Fox News afterwards, without explaining what those red lines actually are. U.S. negotiations have reportedly given Iran two weeks to come up with a satisfactory offer.

Rubio, meanwhile, is publicly expecting his own negotiators to fail. “We’re dealing with radical Shiite clerics and people who make geopolitical decisions on the basis of pure theology,” he said at the Munich Security Conference on Monday. “No one’s ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran.”

It’s almost like the administration wants to use force in the Middle East—and is just searching for a reason. An adviser to the president told Axios that there is a “90% chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks.” Of course, a war could come much sooner. Trump said in June 2025 that he would decide in “two weeks” whether to attack Iran, a couple of days before attacking Iran.

Twenty-three years ago, the U.S. launched a war against Iraq based on lies about the Iraqi nuclear program and other “weapons of mass destruction.” The imminent war with Iran rhymes with that project, with two important differences. Rather than a grand narrative about mushroom clouds, hawks have told a long series of small lies, constantly shifting the goalposts while hiding their own aims. And rather than actually trying to gin up a public mandate, the administration is barreling forward towards war without asking Congress.

A decade ago, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) was mortally offended at the suggestion that he was pushing war with Iran, because he only wanted to negotiate a “better agreement.” Now, he is one of the loudest voices against negotiations, period, and for war. After the June 2025 bombings, the White House declared that “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated—and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.” Now the administration is waving around the threat of an Iranian nuke.

“We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” Vance told NBC News during the June 2025 war, adding that the goal was not “regime change” or “to prolong or expand this conflict any further.”

Less than a year later, the administration is planning for “a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign that’s much broader in scope—and more existential for the regime—than the Israeli-led 12-day war last June,” reports Axios. The Israeli government, Iran’s archnemesis, is “pushing for a maximalist scenario targeting regime change as well as Iran’s nuclear and missile programs,” the report states.

Arab states, which host U.S. forces and therefore could become an Iranian target, have been publicly pushing back on plans for war. But they may be talking out of both sides of their mouths. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman privately told the Trump administration that failing to attack “will only embolden the regime,” according to Axios.

While Middle Eastern and U.S. leaders debate their plans for war, the little people of America have not been consulted. A poll from January 2026 shows that 70 percent of Americans do not want a war with Iran and want the president to ask Congress before starting one.

But Congress itself does not seem keen to debate the issue. A war powers resolution introduced by Sens. Tim Kaine (D–Va.) and Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has been sitting in committee, and Kaine says it is unlikely to be voted on while negotiations are ongoing. The text of the Kaine-Paul resolution itself has an explicit carveout allowing the president to defend “Israel and other nations” against “retaliatory attacks by Iran,” which would enable Israel to start a war and demand U.S. intervention, just like it did in June 2025.

In 2013, after the Obama administration asked Congress for permission to bomb Syria, sex predator Jeffrey Epstein wrote to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, “hopefully somone [sic] suggests getting authorization now for Iran. the congress woudl [sic] do it.” How quaint that he thought Congress was a relevant actor.

Many people in Washington seem to be betting that war will unfold so quickly—and appear so costless—that any domestic opposition fades away. That bet paid off in June 2025, and in the January 2026 operation in Venezuela. Iranian leaders, however, have been signaling that they will not play along with a limited war this time.

And what American hawks want now is much bigger than the June 2025 and January 2026 campaigns. Two officials told Reuters that they are planning for weeks of large-scale warfare. Trump told reporters last week that regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen.” Kushner believes that the Middle East “is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited,” as he wrote in September 2024.

That rhetoric is exactly how the Bush administration and its supporters sounded on the eve of the Iraq War. Not to worry, though. The Trump administration knows that it’s better than the last people who got struck down for their hubris.

“I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” Vance told NBC News in his June 2025 interview. “I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.”

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Oklahoma City’s police department is the latest law enforcement agency exposed for mishandling forfeited money. Former city attorney Orval Jones blew the whistle, accusing the city of participating in a “nefarious scheme” to divert forfeiture proceeds into police coffers instead of returning property to owners or using it to reimburse victims and the courts.

As reported by The Oklahoman, Jones compiled a list of seizures spanning over 20 years that totaled over $400,000 in misappropriated funds. He says many “unclaimed property” cases labeled owners as unknown even though their information appeared in police reports. In one 2017 case, $7,000 was kept in a police forfeiture fund because an address was missing from paperwork. When the owner sued, he was reimbursed with taxpayer funds while police kept the cash. After bringing these findings forward, Jones was reassigned at the police chief’s request and later resigned “under duress.”

“It is critical for the reputation of Oklahoma City that we are not considered the center of highway robbery in the heart of the country,” Jones wrote in an email to a city official.

Highway robbery may be the most accurate description of civil forfeiture, which typically begins with a traffic stop or an airport encounter where officers manufacture a reason to search and seize cash or goods. Cash is not contraband, but officers frequently assume that carrying large amounts must be tied to illegal activity.

Unless actual contraband is discovered, owners are rarely charged with a crime. They are simply sent on their way without their property, with little chance of getting it back. They must hire an attorney—often at a cost greater than the property’s value—or try to navigate a byzantine legal process that frequently ends in default judgment.  

People lose their property without ever being charged because civil forfeiture relies on the legal fiction that property itself can be “guilty,” forcing owners to effectively prove their own innocence to recover it. Against such odds, they rarely succeed.

Meanwhile, law enforcement often keeps the proceeds, depositing them into extra-budgetary funds that can be spent with minimal oversight. These accounts have financed everything from margarita machines and a Zamboni ice-clearing machine to armored MRAPs, a muscle car for a sheriff’s personal use, and trips to Aspen and Paris. 

Other times, officials simply keep the money. Last June, Hialeah, Florida’s former police chief was charged with grand theft and organized fraud after over $3.6 million in forfeiture funds went missing. In 2024, a sheriff’s office budget analyst in Albany, New York, was sentenced for stealing over $122,000. In 2023, a Pennsylvania drug task force detective pleaded guilty to stealing $171,000 in forfeiture funds, while a Detroit-area prosecutor admitted to embezzling over $600,000.

These cases are not coincidences. Corruption is endemic to forfeiture: The system’s lopsided procedures shield law enforcement agencies from accountability while granting access to millions in loosely supervised funds. That’s a practically foolproof formula for fraud and misconduct.

To fix this, reforms are needed at the federal, state, and local levels. 

To start with, Congress should pass the FAIR Act to end the profit incentive that drives many federal forfeiture abuses by directing proceeds to a general fund instead of law enforcement accounts. It would also end the so-called “equitable sharing” program, which allows agencies to bypass state protections. 

States must follow suit. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s recent executive order mandating public reporting of civil forfeiture use is a start, but it won’t improve the state’s D- grade for its civil forfeiture laws in the Institute for Justice’s Policing for Profit report. Real reform would mirror New Mexico and Maine, which have replaced civil forfeiture laws with criminal forfeiture requiring a conviction. 

Local police departments and prosecutors should go further by abandoning civil forfeiture altogether or at least setting minimum thresholds to avoid targeting people who rely on cash for everyday expenses. Doing so would help insulate local officials from the scandalous events of Oklahoma City and the expensive litigation likely to follow.

These recurring scandals are symptoms of a deeper problem: Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to self-fund with little accountability. Until those incentives are removed, it will remain a fertile breeding ground for waste, fraud, and abuse. 

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