Category: reason

For the backstory on the Zizians, see Investigations Into 6 Killings Look to a Fringe Group Known as the Zizians (N.Y. Times, Remy Tumin & Kate Christobek), which notes, among other things, that “The group’s goals aren’t completely clear but online writings about their beliefs touch upon veganism, artificial intelligence and gender identity.

From U.S. v. LaSota, decided today by Judge James Bredar (D. Md.); LaSota is Ziz, the Zizians’ apparent leader:

Pending before the Court is Defendant Jack LaSota’s Motion to Dismiss Count One of the Indictment. {The Indictment names Defendant as “Jack LaSota” and the Government uses male pronouns to refer to LaSota in its briefing. However, LaSota states that her name is “Ziz LaSota” and that she is a transgender woman who uses female pronouns. The Court refers to Defendant as “Jack LaSota” here to match the Indictment but will use female pronouns to refer to her, in accordance with her preference.} …

According to the Indictment, LaSota was a fugitive from justice, and while knowing that she was a fugitive from justice, she possessed multiple firearms as well as ammunition. Specifically, she is alleged to have possessed a scoped .50 caliber rifle, a 9×19mm handgun, approximately 420 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition, and approximately 54 rounds of 9×19mm ammunition.

In their briefing, the parties provide several additional background facts. They explain that LaSota was previously charged in state criminal proceedings in California and Pennsylvania. In these cases, LaSota was charged with one felony and multiple misdemeanors. LaSota claims that all of the alleged criminal conduct was nonviolent. The Government explains that LaSota missed court hearings in both cases, so in both of them, bench warrants were issued for her arrest.

Then, in February 2025, LaSota was found with the above-described firearms and ammunition, and she was arrested by Maryland local police. A federal grand jury then charged LaSota with being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(2). LaSota’s Motion to Dismiss argues that § 922(g)(2) is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, both on its face and as applied to her case….

The parties … debate whether fugitives are among “the people” protected by the Second Amendment. As the Government notes, the Fourth Circuit has held that felons are not among “the people” because they are not “law-abiding.” But in several recent cases, the Fourth Circuit has declined to address whether certain other categories of people—felony indictees and domestic violence misdemeanants—are included in “the people.” The Court is attracted to the Government’s argument that fugitives are most akin to felons and are thus not included among “the people” because neither group is “law-abiding.” But given the disagreements on how to define “the people” both at the Fourth Circuit and between the Circuits,and considering that resolution of this specific question is not strictly necessary in order for the Court to rule on the instant Motion, the Court declines to rule on this issue today. Instead, the Court will decide the facial challenge at Bruen step two because it certainly fails at that step….

To determine whether § 922(g)(2) “is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,” the Court must “ascertain whether [§ 922(g)(2)] is ‘relevantly similar’ to laws that our tradition is understood to permit.” …

The Fourth Circuit has held multiple times “that our historical tradition of gun regulation allows ‘status-based restrictions to disqualify categories of persons from possessing firearms.'” That is because early state legislatures “could prohibit gun ownership by groups of persons that the legislature deemed ‘potentially violent or dangerous.'” Thus, Congress can now “legislate using proxies for dangerousness.” For instance, in Hunt, the Fourth Circuit upheld Congress’ ability to impose a lifetime ban on felons possessing firearms. And in Jackson, the Fourth Circuit concluded that “although ‘felony indictment’ is a less effective proxy for dangerousness than ‘felony conviction,’ § 922(n)’s temporary and partial disarmament burdens Second Amendment rights far less severely than does § 922(g)(1)’s lifetime ban.” …

Jackson‘s rationale applies to § 922(g)(2). Fugitives are more dangerous than felony indictees because they have ordinarily been charged with a crime and fled from prosecution. But like felony indictees, they are only temporarily disarmed. Thus, fugitive status is a valid proxy for dangerousness (the “why”) and § 922(g)(2) permissibly requires temporary disarmament (the “how”). Accordingly, LaSota’s facial challenge fails on this basis as well….

The Court now turns to the as-applied challenge. LaSota argues that she only fled from prosecutions for “non-violent offenses, comprised largely of misdemeanors.” Thus, in her view, § 922(g)(2) is unconstitutional as applied to her because she is not a fugitive from prosecution for “serious crimes.” But that is ultimately irrelevant because, as the Fourth Circuit held for § 922(g)(1) (which prohibits felons from possessing firearms), this Court holds that as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(2) are categorically barred.

When Congress passed the Gun Control Act in 1968, it made a categorical judgment that all “fugitives from justice” were dangerous enough to be disarmed. And critically, that included fugitives from prosecutions for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes…. Just as legislatures 250 years ago determined, for instance, that all non-oath-takers were too dangerous to possess firearms, Congress has now determined that all fugitives from justice—whether they are fleeing felonies, misdemeanors, violent crimes, or nonviolent crimes—are too dangerous to possess firearms.

To be sure, LaSota rejects the notion that someone fleeing prosecution for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes could be dangerous. But the power to make that determination is entrusted to Congress, not to LaSota and not to this Court. As the Hunt court explained, “the power to determine the content of the criminal law is serious business. But legislatures have always had that power, and it is subject to few constitutional restraints.”

Here, Congress exercised that power to classify all fugitives from justice as dangerous enough to be disarmed. That statute is “relevantly similar” to the numerous Founding-era laws that categorically disarmed “dangerous persons.” And that is precisely the “historical analogue” that Bruen and Rahimi require for a statute to withstand scrutiny under the Second Amendment. Therefore, the Court concludes that “there is no requirement for an individualized determination of dangerousness as to each person” accused of being a fugitive from justice in possession of a firearm under § 922(g)(2).

Jared Beim represents the federal government.

The post The Zizians and the Second Amendment appeared first on Reason.com.

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From CAIR-Foundation, Inc. v. DeSantis, decided yesterday by Judge Mark Walker (N.D. Fla.); the analysis seems correct to me:

The question before this Court is whether the Governor can, in a non-emergency situation, unilaterally designate one of the largest Muslim civil rights groups in America as a “terrorist organization” and withhold government benefits from anyone providing material support or resources to the group. This Court finds he cannot…. The Governor’s decree coerces third parties, under threat of losing government benefits, to disassociate from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”), thereby closing avenues of expression and suppressing CAIR’s protected speech….

On December 8, 2025, Governor Desantis signed Executive Order 25-244 titled “Protecting Floridians from Radical Islamic Terrorist Organizations” (the “EO”). The EO designates CAIR as a terrorist organization and prevents CAIR or “any person known to have provided material support or resources” to CAIR “from receiving any contract, employment, funds, or other benefit or privilege” from executive or cabinet agencies or from any county or municipality of the state….

Where a government uses the “threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion … to achieve the suppression” of disfavored speech, it functionally creates “a system of prior administrative restraints” that bears “a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963). A government official “cannot do indirectly what [he] is barred from doing directly: … coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on [his] behalf.” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Vullo (2024). The present case bears all the hallmarks of unconstitutional coercion that the Supreme Court identified in Bantam Books and Vullo….

Defendant’s EO threatens those who platform, collaborate with, or otherwise provide support to Plaintiff. The “vice of the system” here is the same one the Supreme Court proscribed in Bantam Books. There, threats and coercion subjected the distribution of publications “to a system of prior administrative restraints” untethered from any procedural safeguards. [A state commission had threatened bookstores with prosecution if they continued to distribute certain books that the commission had found “objectionable.” -EV] By imposing the specter of punishment on intermediary book distributors, the state “directly and designedly stopped the circulation of publications in many parts of” the state. This case is no different.

{As evidence of the coercive nature of Defendant’s EO, Plaintiff points to a Florida-based production company that withdrew from a proposed podcast agreement to launch Plaintiff’s civil rights podcast, citing its concerns about the EO, and notes that the company would reconsider its withdrawal from the agreement in the event the EO was found to be unlawful.} Much like the distributors in Bantam Books, the production company is an intermediary intending to platform Plaintiff’s speech. By threatening the production company—indeed, by broadly threatening anyone who wishes to do business in Florida—Defendant stifles Plaintiff’s speech. This violates the First Amendment…

Defendant resorts to proclamations that “Florida is entitled to attempt to stamp out terror,” and that he “made an informed judgment about terrorist organizations and how to best protect the citizens of Florida.” But without explaining why this matters to overcome the “heavy presumption against [the EO’s] constitutional validity,” such statements are mere ipse dixit.

This Court need not determine whether intermediate scrutiny or strict scrutiny applies in this case because, under either standard, Defendant fails to point to any evidence justifying his indirect censorship of Plaintiff’s speech. Instead, assuming some form of heightened scrutiny applies, Defendant merely pays lip service to heightened review in declaring, in conclusory fashion, that “[t]he EO’s denial of government benefits to entities that materially support designated terrorist organizations is the least restrictive means of achieving,” Defendant’s “compelling interest” in “protection of public health and safety.” But Defendant offers no evidence to show how cutting off benefits to third parties who engage with Plaintiff in any way furthers an interest in protecting public health and safety….

Defendant relies heavily on Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), to suggest this Court must defer to Defendant’s unilateral decision to name Plaintiff a “terrorist organization.” But Defendant is wrong to suggest that his independent decision to call Plaintiff a “terrorist organization” in an Executive Order is entitled to the same deference afforded to the United States Secretary of State’s designation in Holder. Defendant cites no precedent to support his contention that he has absolute authority to name any individual or entity a terrorist or terrorist organization and direct others to withhold any government benefit from them based on his unilateral decision to designate them as such.

Holder offers no help here either, as the authority to designate a foreign terrorist organization under federal law is subject to procedural safeguards that are absent from Defendant’s decision to name Plaintiff a terrorist organization. Here, Defendant essentially insists on a presumption of regularity as to his designation without the process that accompanies such a designation under federal law.

In short, Defendant has unilaterally declared via executive order that Plaintiff is a terrorist organization, with no substantive explanation of his authority to do so, no legislative involvement, and no mechanism for judicial review. Further, even if this Court looked beyond these glaring distinctions, the Court in Holder explicitly “[did] not suggest that Congress could extend the same prohibition on material support at issue here to domestic organizations,” such as Plaintiff….

Bantam Books and Vullo involved allegations of the government threatening prosecution or civil enforcement: Bantam Books involved a threat to bookstores that sold certain books, and Vullo involved alleged threats to financial intermediaries that continued to do business with the NRA. But the threat of withdrawal of government contracts and other benefits based on the viewpoint of the recipient—or of people whom the recipient supports—is likewise presumptively unconstitutional. See, e.g., Speiser v. Randall (1958); Board of County Comm’rs v. Umbehr (1996).

For a similar attempt from a left-wing government entity targeting the NRA and companies that do business with it—though there just requiring disclosure of support by would-be local contractors rather than categorically prohibiting such support—see this 2019 post and the decision by Judge Stephen Wilson (C.D. Cal.) in NRA v. City of Los Angeles.

The post Court Blocks Florida Gov. DeSantis's Executive Order Designating CAIR as Terrorist Organization appeared first on Reason.com.

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A bill that is advancing in the Florida Legislature would authorize government surveillance of people whose “views” or “opinions” are deemed “a threat” to state or national “interests.” What could possibly go wrong?

“This outrageous claim of authority would be a profound betrayal of Americans’ First Amendment rights,” Carolyn Iodice, legislative and policy director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, warns in a press release. “Imagine being arrested or having your home raided because the government has decided that your opinions are a ‘threat’ or simply don’t align with its interests. This puts everyone’s free speech rights at risk. Even if your views aren’t in the state’s crosshairs today, they could be tomorrow. Free societies do not investigate or arrest their own citizens for their opinions.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida also has “grave concerns” about the bill. It “could easily be used to silence dissenting voices under the guise of security,” ACLU of Florida strategist Abdelilah Skhir told Florida Politics last month. “The vague and overbroad language could easily be weaponized against everyday Floridians engaged in First Amendment protected activity.”

State Rep. Danny Alvarez (R–Riverview), who filed the bill on December 30, does not understand what all the fuss is about. He says he is simply trying to combat threats such as “drug cartels,” “terrorist organizations,” and foreign “intelligence entities.” Last week, the Florida Phoenix reported that “Alvarez said it’s only been in the past week that he’s become aware of First Amendment concerns.”

Alvarez’s bill, H.B. 945, would create a Statewide Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Unit within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, consisting of “at least seven” 10-member teams. The unit would be charged with “identify[ing] threats by analyzing patterns of life, gathering actionable intelligence, and formulating effective plans of action, and by executing arrests or by revealing its intent to compel a response using all counterintelligence and counterterrorism tradecraft necessary to protect the state from adversary intelligence entities.”

What is an “adversary intelligence entity”? The bill’s definition goes far beyond spies employed by foreign governments. It says the term “includes, but is not limited to, any national, foreign, multinational, friendly, competitor, opponent, adversary, or recognized enemy government or nongovernmental organization, company, business, corporation, consortium, group, agency, cell, terrorist, insurgent, guerrilla entity, or person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”

On its face, the bill would empower the Statewide Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Unit to investigate organizations and individuals based on the “views” or “opinions” they express. Alvarez insists that is not his intent. But by his own account, he did not recognize the obvious First Amendment implications of that broad mandate until a month and a half after he introduced the bill.

When some of his colleagues alerted him to those civil liberties concerns, Alvarez promised to address them. “We are very, very aware of the questions regarding [the] First Amendment,” he told Florida Politics last week. “We’re going to address that in an amendment that comes to the next committee.” He told reporters he was willing to excise the language referring to any “person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”

So far, however, the original version of the bill is the only one listed on the Florida Legislature’s website. And despite his avowed willingness to amend the bill, Alvarez does not seem to think it is actually necessary to do so.

“That four-cornered document called the Constitution” already provides adequate protection against abuse of the authority that H.B. 945 would grant, Alvarez told Florida Politics. “It’s the same guard rail that…law enforcement has to abide by every single day.”

The bill “is going after terrorists [and] nation-state bad actors, not political speech,” Alvarez said. “A criminal predicate is required prior to any law enforcement activity.” But the bill itself does not impose any such condition. Nor does it include any language saying that it should not be construed to authorize investigations based on constitutionally protected speech.

The “primary goal” of the new unit, H.B. 945 says, “is to conduct statewide counterintelligence and counterterrorism activities to detect, identify, neutralize, and
exploit adversary intelligence entities, international and domestic terrorists, insider threats, corporate threats, and other foreign adversaries to protect this state and the United States of America.” But it defines those threats to include people who express dangerous opinions.

That sweeping mandate evidently did not faze the House Government Operations Subcommittee, which unanimously approved the bill on January 29; the House Judiciary Committee, which gave its assent by a 16–1 vote on February 3; or the House Budget Committee, where 20 of 28 voting members agreed to advance the bill on February 24.

As those last two tallies indicate, there were a few dissenters. Rep. Alex Andrade (R–Pensacola), one of the eight Budget Committee members who voted against H.B. 945, said he had “grave concerns about the abuse of a bill like this,” given the “vagueness” of its language. Rep. Michele Rayner (D–St. Petersburg), another member of that committee who voted no, likewise had “concerns” in light of previous counterintelligence abuses, such as those revealed at the federal level by the Church committee in 1976.

“After the surveillance abuses in the ’60s with federal agents monitoring Americans based on their associations and viewpoints, public outrage forced guardrails into the law,” Bobby Bloch, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation of Florida, noted in response to Alvarez’s bill. “In our lifetime, we have seen how tradecraft has gone off the rails when it doesn’t have these guardrails.”

Notably, Alvarez cites the counterterrorism unit established by the New York Police Department after the 9/11 attacks as a model. That initiative raised objections from critics who complained that it resulted in unjustified surveillance of innocent Muslims. And “in more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques,” the Associated Press reported in 2012, “the New York Police Department’s secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation.”

Alvarez, who assures us that the Statewide Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Unit will respect the First Amendment because law enforcement agencies are required to do so, does not seem to have drawn any lessons from the history of such projects. The next stop for his bill is the House State Affairs Committee, where his promised amendment is supposed to materialize.

If the bill gets a nod from that committee, it will go to the House floor for a vote. An identical companion bill in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Martin (R–Fort Myers), passed that chamber’s Criminal Justice Committee by a 7–1 vote on February 11. It still needs the approval of two more Senate committees, which may or may not happen before the end of the current legislative session on March 13.

Maybe a lack of time will defeat the bill. Concerns about its impact on civil liberties manifestly have not been enough.

The post Florida Legislators Advance a Bill Authorizing Government Surveillance Based on 'Views' or 'Opinions' appeared first on Reason.com.

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President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to impose tariffs without congressional approval “is as lawless as” the previous tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court last month.

That’s the argument made by the attorneys general and governors of 24 states, who filed a lawsuit Thursday in the federal Court of International Trade (CIT). The state attorneys allege that Trump’s use of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose a 10 percent “global tariff” is an attempt to “sidestep” the Supreme Court’s ruling.

“The President has made clear that he is going to impose worldwide tariffs by any means necessary,” the lawsuit points out. Previously, Trump had been leaning on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a law that allows presidents to place sanctions and to regulate trade in some circumstances. Despite the new tariffs being invoked under a different legal justification, the states claim that “the policy is the same—an exercise of completely unrestrained executive power in an attempt to usurp the taxing power that the Constitution vests in Congress, not the President.”

While all the attorneys general and governors who signed onto the new lawsuit are Democrats, observers from across the political spectrum have acknowledged the legal problems facing Trump’s newest set of tariffs.

Last week, for example, conservative legal analyst Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review that Trump’s Section 122 tariffs are illegal because they do not meet the preconditions outlined in the law.

As McCarthy and others have noted, Section 122 allows presidents to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for up to 150 days to “deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The United States does not currently have a balance-of-payments deficit with the rest of the world, and the Trump administration’s attempt to invoke this law in response to trade deficits ignores the law’s plain language.

Indeed, Trump’s attorneys even admitted as much during the legal battles over the IEEPA tariffs. When that case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the administration’s lawyers pointedly noted that balance-of-payments deficits are “conceptually distinct” from the trade deficits and admitted that Section 122 would not apply.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday, the states’ attorneys note the federal government’s response in the previous lawsuit. When it comes to Section 122, they argue, Trump has not identified “any actual justification permitted” by the law.

“The President cannot meet the statutory requirements of Section 122, and his effort to impose tariffs under this statute is unlawful,” the states argue.

Although it only comes up in passing in the new lawsuit, all of this likely bumps up against the “major questions” issue that helped sink Trump’s IEEPA tariffs in front of the Supreme Court. When Congress delegates power to the executive branch, it must do so in narrow and specific ways. Section 122 is actually a good example of that. It outlines specific circumstances (the balance-of-payments deficit) under which a president can lawfully take limited action (tariffs of up to 15 percent).

Just like with the IEEPA tariffs, Trump’s use of Section 122 stretches the text of the law to go well beyond what Congress authorized. It is another shocking expansion of executive power, and the CIT should waste no time in striking it down.

The post Lawsuit: Trump's Newest Tariffs Are an 'Exercise of Completely Unrestrained Executive Power' appeared first on Reason.com.

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Today I interviewed Judge Lawrence VanDyke at the University of Florida Federalist Society Chapter. (I am also in town for the Originalism Conference). Judge VanDyke and I had a wide-ranging conversation about his background, his path to the bench, and why he does things differently on the Ninth Circuit. I think people who have only read VanDyke’s sharp-elbowed dissents will be surprised at how he comes across in person. The judge offers some useful advice on failure and how to learn from setbacks.

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