Category: reason

From In re Guardianship of J.H., decided today by the New Hampshire Supreme Court (in an opinion by Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi):

J.H. is a six-year-old child. His father has been incarcerated since December 2017 and has a history of criminal charges involving domestic violence and drug possession. J.H.’s mother died in 2019 when J.H. was less than three years old. His grandmother was appointed guardian of J.H.’s person and estate shortly thereafter, and J.H. has remained in her care since.

The guardian and the father have been at odds throughout this case. When the guardianship petition was filed, the father was subject to a no-contact order barring communications with J.H. Subsequently, the father sought contact and visitation with J.H. Over the guardian’s objections, the court ordered that the father could communicate with J.H. by mail and eventually progress to video visits. Both parties have accused the other of violating the court’s orders. Adding to the conflict, the guardian has petitioned to terminate the father’s parental rights. In an April 2022 order, the court expressed its frustration that “[d]espite [J.H.’s] tragic young life that has seen him lose both of his parents before his third birthday, both sides of [J.H.’s] extended family are not able to put their differences aside and cooperate for [J.H.’s] benefit.”

The court placed restrictions on both parties, including limiting the content of father’s communications with J.H. The court also imposed restrictions on the guardian. In an October 2022 order, the court ordered that the guardian and her husband “are enjoined from testifying against father’s release at any parole or similar hearing without first seeking leave of this court.” The guardian moved for reconsideration, arguing that this restriction violated her right to freedom of speech. The court denied her motion, reasoning that “[J.H.’s] best interests outweigh the guardian[‘s] free speech rights to keep father incarcerated if he becomes eligible for a parole hearing.”

The order wasn’t authorized by New Hampshire statutes, the court held, and thus avoided the need to decide whether the order also violated the First Amendment (as I think it did):

RSA [Revised Statutes Annotated] chapter 463 confers exclusive jurisdiction over the guardianship of minors to the circuit court. RSA 463:8 permits the court to “appoint a guardian of the person or of the estate or of both,” and grants the court authority over the guardianship proceedings. Once the court has appointed a guardian, RSA 463:12 sets forth the guardian’s powers and duties….

Subsection I of the statute conveys the “powers and responsibilities of a parent regarding the minor’s support, care, and education.” Subsections II and III then articulate specific powers and responsibilities related to the minor’s overall wellbeing, encompassing the minor’s health, property, and legal and financial affairs. The statute empowers and obliges the guardian to exercise control over many aspects of the minor’s life to ensure the general wellbeing of the minor. Subsection IV then authorizes the court to “limit or restrict the powers of the guardian or impose additional duties.”

Read in the context of the whole statute, the “powers” and “duties” contemplated here relate to the guardian’s role as custodian of the minor’s affairs and welfare. Restrictions on the guardian’s and her spouse’s participation in a parole hearing, however, bear no connection to the guardian’s management of the minor’s affairs. They are unrelated to the guardian-minor relationship. If we were to read subsection IV [the “additional duties” provision] as broadly as the father suggests, the court could impose restrictions that extend far beyond the guardianship and into the personal life of the guardian. We decline to read the statute so broadly, and thus conclude that the restriction here is not permitted under RSA 463:12, IV….

Anthony J. Naro (Bernazzani Law, PLLC) represents the grandmother.

The post Family Court Ordered Grandmother, Who Had Custody of Child, Not to Testify Against Father at His Parole Hearing appeared first on Reason.com.

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Tennessee, which imposes notoriously demanding requirements on residents with felony records seeking restoration of their voting rights, recently added a new wrinkle: Before supplicants who have not managed to obtain a pardon are allowed to vote again, they have to successfully seek restoration of their gun rights, a task that is complicated by the interaction between state and federal law. Given the difficulty of obtaining relief from the federal gun ban for people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year of incarceration, this requirement would be prohibitive in practice.

If it is upheld by Tennessee courts, the new policy would essentially mean “there’s no way to vote” for people who were disenfranchised based on their criminal records, says Adam Ginsburg, a spokesman for the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which has challenged Tennessee’s voting requirements in federal court. Even without the problem created by federal gun laws, CLC attorney Blair Bowie says, people convicted of drug felonies or violent crimes “will not be able to restore their gun rights” under Tennessee law. “It’s beyond the pale,” she says. But she adds that “it’s still an open question, because the Elections Division, which governs who can register to vote in Tennessee, clearly hasn’t really thought that through.”

The new requirement would further complicate a process that is already hard to navigate. “Tennessee has the most convoluted, harsh and poorly managed rights restoration process of any state in the country,” the CLC reported in 2022. Among other things, “Tennessee is one of only a handful of states that conditions the right to vote on payment of legal debt and the only state that requires a person to be current on child support to restore their voting rights.”

Tennessee’s obstacles to re-enfranchisement have had the sort of impact you might expect. “Over 450,000 citizens—accounting for more than 9% of the voting age population—are denied the right to vote because of past felony convictions,” the CLC noted. “Since 2016, less than 1% of post-sentence Tennesseans have gotten their voting rights back due to modern-day poll taxes and issues with obtaining a Certificate of Restoration,” which requires a court order.

Why is Tennessee making an arduous process even more difficult? According to a statement that Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins gave The Tennessean, the state’s Supreme Court “made it clear” in the 2023 case Falls v. Goins that “a felon must receive a pardon from the governor or other appropriate authority or have his or her full citizenship rights restored as part of the path to regain the right to vote.” Under the Tennessee Constitution, Goins said, “the right to bear arms is a right of citizenship.” Article I, Section 26 of the state constitution says “the citizens of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defense,” adding that the legislature nevertheless “shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime.'”

Since the right to arms is “a right of citizenship,” Goins said, it follows that anyone who is still legally barred from owning guns is not allowed to vote unless he obtains a pardon. That is a reversal of the position that state election officials were taking as recently as last December. When Goins was deposed in the CLC case on December 13, The Tennessean reports, “the Secretary of State’s office did not consider gun rights as part of the ‘full rights of citizenship’ necessary for voting.” A “training document” that Goins read during his deposition, which was still being used as of May 2022, included this clarification: “Gun rights are also a citizenship right, but they involve overlapping federal laws so it’s okay if those are not restored as long as the other citizenship rights are restored.”

Not anymore, according to Goins. And those “overlapping federal laws” pose a real problem for people convicted of the “infamous crimes” that trigger disenfranchisement in Tennessee. “Any felony” falls into that category, so it includes drug law violations and other nonviolent offenses as well as violent crimes.

Under 18 USC 922(g)(1), it is a felony for someone to receive or possess a firearm if he has been convicted “in any court” of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” And under Tennessee law, possessing a firearm is a misdemeanor for anyone who qualifies as a “prohibited person” under federal law. So according to the new interpretation of Tennessee’s requirements, a resident seeking restoration of his voting rights first has to recover his gun rights under federal law, which is currently impossible for someone convicted of a state felony.

Under 18 USC 925(c), a prohibited person notionally can apply to the attorney general for relief of the disability imposed by Section 922(g)(1). The attorney general “may grant such relief if it is established to his satisfaction that the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant’s record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.” If relief is denied, the applicant can challenge that decision in federal court. But this process is only theoretically available to people with felony records, because Congress decided they should not be able to use it.

“Although federal law provides a means for the relief of firearms disabilities,” the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) warns, “ATF’s annual appropriation since October 1992 has prohibited the expending of any funds to investigate or act upon applications for relief from federal firearms disabilities submitted by individuals. As long as this provision is included in current ATF appropriations, ATF cannot act upon applications for relief from federal firearms disabilities submitted by individuals.” Consequently, the new hoop that Tennessee election officials have set up is blocked by a brick wall.

Falls v. Goins, the 2023 decision that Goins says requires that new hoop, did not actually address the issue of whether gun rights are a prerequisite for voting rights. The question was whether someone convicted of a disqualifying crime in another state and subsequently pardoned by the governor of that state was subject to a Tennessee law requiring payment of “outstanding court costs, restitution, and child support obligations” prior to re-enfranchisement. The lead plaintiff, Ernest Falls, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Virginia in 1986 and moved to Tennessee in 2018. Two years later, Falls was “granted clemency in Virginia by then-Governor Ralph Northam,” which reinstated “Falls’ rights of citizenship in Virginia, including his right to vote.”

Northam’s clemency, Falls argued, automatically made him eligible to vote in Tennessee. He cited a Tennessee law that says a person convicted in another state of an offense that “would constitute an infamous crime” in Tennessee may not vote “unless” he “has been pardoned or restored to the rights of citizenship by the governor or other appropriate authority of such other state.” The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Falls’ argument, saying he still had to meet the additional requirements that Tennessee imposes on people convicted in that state.

That decision quoted statutory language referring to “full rights of citizenship.” But it did not define those rights, and the only references to firearms appeared in a footnote quoting Northam’s grant of clemency. Notably, that document said Northam was restoring Falls’ “right to vote, hold public office, serve on a jury, and to be a notary public,” but not “the ability to ship, transport, possess or receive firearms.” The Tennessee Supreme Court nevertheless described Northam’s clemency as restoring “Mr. Falls’ rights of citizenship.”

Bowie, who thinks Goins’ interpretation of Tennessee law is “totally bogus,” finds his reliance on Falls v. Goins puzzling. “The Supreme Court explicitly says [the decision is] limited to the facts before it,” she says. “Specifically, it’s referring to the situation where somebody gets a conviction in another state, moves to Tennessee, and then restores their voting rights in the state where they used to live.” The court ruled that someone in that situation “still [has] to go through Tennessee’s rights restoration process,” Bowie notes, and the justices “wouldn’t even opine” on the question of what would happen “if he had gotten his rights restored in Virginia before he moved to Tennessee. So it’s extremely narrow.”

Whatever the merits of Goins’ legal interpretation, it highlights the injustice of permanently taking away someone’s Second Amendment rights based on a felony conviction, no matter the nature of the crime or how long ago it was committed. A growing number of federal judges, including Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett when she served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, have deemed that blanket ban unconstitutional. History “demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” Barrett wrote in a 2019 dissent. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous.”

That case involved a man convicted of mail fraud, which Barrett thought did not justify disarming him for the rest of his life. In the 2022 Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Barrett joined the majority in ruling that gun control laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Since then, lower courts have rejected applications of Section 922(g)(1) that they concluded did not meet that test.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit restored the Second Amendment rights of a Pennsylvania man who had been convicted of food stamp fraud. Although that was a misdemeanor and did not result in any jail time, it triggered Section 922(g)(1) because it was theoretically punishable by up to five years in prison. Applying that precedent last November, a federal judge likewise said it was unconstitutional to take away a man’s gun rights based on a misdemeanor DUI conviction.

Theoretically, such litigation is one option for Tennessee residents who want to be able to vote despite an “infamous crime” conviction, although federal courts may be less receptive in cases involving drug felonies, let alone violent offenses. Another option is seeking a pardon from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, which would allow re-enfranchisement even without a “full restoration of citizenship rights” as Goins now understands that phrase. But that is also a long shot: Since taking office in 2019, Lee has granted just 48 pardons: 13 in 2021, 13 in 2022, and 22 last year. Tennessee residents convicted in other states might face better odds, although out-of-state pardons do not necessarily satisfy Tennessee’s requirements, as Falls’ case shows.

The best hope for people in this situation is that Tennessee courts will reject Goins’ interpretation of state law, at least insofar as it requires restoration of federal gun rights. “If somebody goes to court in Tennessee to get their citizenship rights restored,” Bowie says, “the judge can issue an opinion that could say something like, ‘We restore your gun rights under Tennessee law, any federal statutes notwithstanding.’ And then it’s totally possible that the Elections Division could say, ‘OK, that’s good enough.’ It’s just an open question what they’ll do.”

The post Tennessee Says Residents Can't Vote If They Have Lost Their Gun Rights appeared first on Reason.com.

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A recent Florida bill would have required taxpayers to partially fund former President Donald Trump’s mounting legal fees, reinvigorating a niche debate within the state’s Republican party over how and if the government should funnel public funds toward politicians.

Senate Bill 1740, introduced by State Sen. Ileana Garcia (R–District 36), proposed to create the “Defending Freedom Fighters Trust Fund,” extending up to $5 million in “grants for victims of political discrimination.” How would the government decide who qualified? Florida’s Department of Financial Services, according to the legislation, would have “the sole authority to determine if a person has been subject” to such prejudice, concentrating that power in the hands of Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer. 

“We need this Freedom Fighters Fund because as the Free State of Florida, we’re facing an onslaught of attacks from the federal government against the Sunshine State,” Patronis said in a press release. “If we can help and support a Florida candidate for the White House, that’s just good from a dollars and cents perspective.”

When considering that Patronis’ job is to be a responsible steward of public funds, the “dollars and cents perspective” should indeed be his lodestar. But that’s also why he should have reached the opposite conclusion, as it is not the job of Florida taxpayers to support Patronis’ preferred candidates. It is also not their job to pay a portion of a former president’s legal fees, particularly when that person has a reported net worth of $2.6 billion.

S.B. 1740 proposed extracting money from the state’s controversial campaign matching funds program, which offers taxpayer dollars to candidates running for statewide office. It was created to give more opportunities to insufficiently funded hopefuls and reduce the sway of wealthy donors. Perhaps ironically, lawmakers recently voted to advance a constitutional amendment that would dissolve that very program. “I believe we should put the question back to the voters to see if they would like us to spend general revenue on things other than advertising for statewide office,” said State Sen. Travis Hutson, a Republican representing St. Augustine.

Whether or not that program is fulfilling its original mission is a matter of debate. Gov. Ron DeSantis was the top recipient when he ran for governor in 2018, pocketing $3.2 million in public funds. He received even more in 2022, taking $3.35 million, while Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried, who vied for the Democratic nomination in that election, received $964,646 and $634,092, respectively.  One wonders if taxpayers really need to be giving millions of dollars to an incumbent governor, who is not exactly an underdog in Florida.

But DeSantis did not support extending those dollars toward Trump, who is neither a candidate for statewide office, nor is he insufficiently funded. Should the bill reach DeSantis’ desk, he said, he would veto it.

Garcia responded by withdrawing the bill. “My concern was the political weaponization against conservative candidates,” she wrote. She is certainly entitled to that opinion. But she is not entitled to make her constituents pay for it.

The post DeSantis Rightly Rejects GOP Bill To Help Fund Trump's Legal Defense appeared first on Reason.com.

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Now that the competitive portion of the major-party presidential primary season is over, with losers Nikki Haley (GOP) and Rep. Dean Phillips (D–Minn.) hanging around essentially as life insurance policies, Americans have 287 long days to let the reality they despise sink in: The two least popular presidents of the modern era, depressingly known quantities both, will stagger into election day at a combined 160 years of age to face an electorate howlingly dissatisfied about the direction of the country.

The sheer length of known-nominee season, unprecedented in American history, will likely play against the candidate who at the moment seems to have the head-to-head advantage: Donald Trump. That’s partly because the people most inclined to vote against Trump—Democrats and independents—have been in denial about him winning a third consecutive GOP presidential nomination.

A The Economist/YouGov poll taken January 7-9 showed just 45 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independents believed that Trump would become the Republican nominee. The Biden campaign claimed pre-Iowa caucus that a majority of undecided voters did not grok that Trump would win. “Once you get to that head-to-head,” a senior Biden campaign official told CNN, “the dynamics change. The world is different.”

Biden needs that hopeful spin to become reality, since up until this point in the 2024 campaign he has persistently lagged Trump among the bloc that decides most presidential races: independents. Trump squeaked out a 43-42 percent victory over Hillary Clinton among independents and third-party voters in November 2016, after which his approval rate from the group stayed mired in the 30s for most of his presidency, culminating in a 52-43 percent loss to Biden in 2020. But within his first six months in the White House, Biden’s support among independents crashed from 61 percent to 34 percent, where it has been languishing ever since.

In our two-party system, independents tend to serve as an electoral brake on the excesses of the party or executive in power; incumbents get the focus more than potential general-election challengers. Now that Trump has progressed to near-inevitability, the Biden theory goes, independents will start paying far more attention to the Republican, particularly his potentially opinion-swaying criminal trials.

Some of Tuesday’s exit poll numbers coming out of New Hampshire buttress that theory. “We’ve never seen a gap between the independent vote and the Republican vote in an NH GOP primary like we saw last night,” MSNBC numbers whiz Steve Kornacki tweeted Wednesday morning. Trump beat Nikki Haley, 74-25 percent among Republicans, but Haley took independents 60 percent to 38 percent. And among the independent voters that participated in the GOP primary, noted the Wall Street Journal, a whopping 68 percent said they would not for Trump in the general election.

Luckily for Trump, the GOP nomination is decided by electorates that are a good deal more Republican than New Hampshire’s. Unluckily for the presumptive nominee, his one-man polarization act is registering numerically even within the party he dominates. Exit polls showed 21 percent of Republican voters in the New Hampshire primary, and 15 percent of GOP Iowa caucus participants, saying they would not vote for Trump in November. Maybe those numbers reflect heat-of-the-moment sentiment, but it’s hard to imagine them improving if the candidate is convicted of a January 6th, 2021-related crime.

Meanwhile, registered independents, having grown by 46 percent nationwide since 2008, are now nearly as numerous as Republicans, with 35.3 million compared to 35.7 million as of last October. This swing vote, which has been the most revolted by the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch, will be serially wooed and cajoled over the next 41 weeks.

The candidate best positioned to exploit the growth in both independents and political disillusionment is neither Biden nor Trump, but rather Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a three-way matchup, according to RealClearPolitics‘ polling average, RFK stands at a Ross Perot-like 19.3 percent, compared to 37.5 for Trump and 33.8 for Biden.

Most Americans will see at least four names on their presidential ballot, the impact of which is hard to calculate. RFK, who this week got on his second state ballot, is gunning for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia; the Libertarian Party, which has had full ballot access the past few presidential elections, is on at least 36 ballots so far, and will likely get somewhere close to 50. The Green Party has 19 states so far and is making confident-sounding noises about exceeding 2020’s 30; No Labels has 15 going on 28, and so on.

RFK, who channels similar anti-establishment and conspiratorial vibes as Trump, would have been a natural beneficiary of Trumpy support should Nikki Haley somehow have won. But if polls are right about potential convictions turning off some Trump voters, they could yet find their way to the independent’s camp, joining the hardcore anti-COVID-lockdowners and those who simply prefer the famous name to the two dreary old guys.

The Libertarian Party, which has a three-election presidential streak of third-place finishes and a huge lead in small-party voter registration, is so far in 2024 lagging far behind RFK in name recognition. With the nominating national convention four months off, the leading competitors to date are former House/Senate candidate Chase Oliver, The Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger, author and retired academic Michael Rectenwald, economist and ex-cop Mike ter Maat, tech entrepreneur Lars Mapstead, and Ron Paul enthusiast/Libertarian National Committee activist Joshua Smith.

If the past few elections are any guide, voters beginning today (or perhaps when Haley’s campaign-coffin is nailed shut in South Carolina on February 24) will be giving themselves crash courses on nontraditional political parties and presidential candidates. The weird, negative political energy in the United States, having failed to significantly alter the major-party race, will now have to look elsewhere for expression.

The post Independents <i>Hate</i> the Trump-Biden Rematch appeared first on Reason.com.

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While some of us went a little nuts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, others—including many of our country’s leaders and people in the media—went absolutely batshit crazy, often with disastrous results. 

Exactly why that happened is the subject of author Jon Ronson‘s latest season of Things Fell Apart, a podcast that explores the deep origins of today’s culture wars in controversies, panics, and delusions from decades ago.

I talked with Ronson about why he believes the creation of a fake medical condition called “excited delirium” in 1988 ultimately led to the death of George Floyd in 2020, how law enforcement fixations on white supremacy warped the investigation into a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and how the director of the massively influential Plandemic documentaries was actually rewriting the script of Star Wars.

Ronson is best known as the author of The Men Who Stare at Goats, an account of a U.S. Army unit that tried to perfect paranormal powers like walking through walls, and So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which helped define cancel culture just as it was becoming widespread via social media.

We also talk about Things Fell Apart, how he survived COVID, and how critical thinking and media literacy are more important than ever in a world in which we can all produce and consume our versions of the truth.

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The post Jon Ronson: Why We Went So Crazy During COVID Lockdowns appeared first on Reason.com.

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Since 2017, Wisconsinites have been legally allowed to sell a number of home-baked goods to the general public, free to make as much money as their products can garner. But a new bill being considered by the Wisconsin Legislature could change that, essentially making it impossible for so-called cottage food producers to make a living.

Assembly Bill 897 would increase “the sales threshold from $5,000 to $20,000” for homemade food products, according to a state analysis of the bill. That might seem like an improvement, but “the current sales cap applies only to canned goods,” notes Jobea Murray, board president of the Wisconsin Cottage Food Association. “All other cottage food products are currently unlimited in their sales.” (A bill being considered by the Senate would impose a slightly higher annual cap of $25,000.)

If enacted, A.B. 897 would create one of the strictest cottage food regimes in the country. The states that have a sales cap usually have a limit that’s “high enough for home-based producers to earn a living wage,” says Suranjan Sen, an attorney at the Institute for Justice (I.J.), a libertarian public interest law firm. “Florida’s cap, for example, is $250,000 annually.”

A $20,000 annual sales cap “would make Wisconsin’s the most restrictive cap in the nation,” he continues.

I.J. has twice sued Wisconsin to challenge restrictions on cottage food sellers. Following an I.J. lawsuit in 2017, a state court overturned a ban on selling home-baked goods. Home bakers previously risked fines of up to $1,000 or six months of jail time for selling products without a license. I.J. filed another suit against Wisconsin in February 2021, because despite the 2017 ruling, the state continued to ban Wisconsinites from selling homemade shelf-stable foods that aren’t baked. That suit is pending.

“I believe that this cap would be unconstitutional and would violate the Wisconsin court orders that are right now in force,” argues Sen. “The order from 2017 says that the government may not…require a license for sales of homemade shelf-stable baked goods.” A sales cap bans sales past a certain threshold, violating that order. Sen also notes that the proposed sales cap would be applied unevenly since nonprofits would be exempt.

Proponents of the bill have argued that Wisconsin’s current cottage food regime gives home-based sellers an unfair advantage over brick-and-mortar sellers. But 29 states “do not impose sales caps on cottage food,” according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a nonprofit conservative law firm. There’s little reason to believe that a sales cap—especially such a low one—would be necessary to protect traditional food businesses.

It would, however, discourage Wisconsinites from starting their own home-baked goods businesses, since they would be legally barred from earning enough to make a living.

“The $20,000 cap in today’s food economy means about $5,000 to $10,000 profit a year,” says Murray. “That is absolutely not enough to encourage someone to try a home-based baking business, so that means fewer market vendors, fewer customers, and less small business activity in a downtown or neighborhood.”

Though hopeful food entrepreneurs have the option to get licensed and rent space in a commercial kitchen, this is an expensive and prohibitive path for many. Cottage food sales grant much more flexibility—and are often the best option—for people who need to work from home, would prefer not to work a traditional 9-to-5 schedule, or are unable to obtain a license. Shutting down that pathway both stifles entrepreneurship and protects incumbents in the market.

“With the COVID pandemic and everything, it’s high time we recognize that people need options to be able to support themselves from home,” says Sen. “Most of us have access to a home kitchen, and we should be welcoming this. This makes our communities a more vibrant, more welcoming, more special place.”

Murray points out that there are several other problems with the bill beyond the sales cap. “It was written without the knowledge of how the cottage food industry works, and lacks clarity on certain points,” she says. “For instance, many home-bakers use an online platform to take orders and send invoices, offer shipping within the state, sell at pop-ups around the community, and/or sell via farmstand. None of these options are included in the bill as written.”

“This bill has too many issues to even be salvageable,” continues Murray. “We are hopeful the committee looking over this bill understands these many issues we have brought to their attention and acts accordingly.”

The post Wisconsin Could Make It Impossible for Cottage Food Producers To Make a Living appeared first on Reason.com.

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Governments love to give out taxpayer money to private companies in an attempt to spur economic development. But what about the state and local agencies who miss out on that revenue? A new report suggests that schools bear the brunt of the loss.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is a private independent organization that “establishes accounting and financial reporting standards for U.S. state and local governments.” One such recommendation, issued as GASB Statement No. 77, “requires state and local governments to disclose key information about their tax abatement agreements,” in which state and local governments agree to reduce an individual person’s or company’s taxes, typically in exchange for some sort of economic development project.

Good Jobs First, a nonprofit organization that supports transparency in economic development deals, used these tax-abatement disclosures to examine their effect on school funding, specifically in St. Louis.

“Local governments in Missouri have complied with Statement 77 (unlike some other states), making it straightforward to track revenue lost to economic development tax breaks and compare among jurisdictions,” wrote Good Jobs First research analyst Anya Gizis in a new report. This allowed Gizis and two co-authors to compile financial disclosures from St. Louis Public Schools, plus 23 school districts from suburban St. Louis County, and compare the lost tax revenues in each.

“All told, St. Louis area schools lost at least $260.7 million to tax abatements in the six fiscal years 2017 through 2022,” the report found. Even this number is likely an undercount, as not every district submitted numbers for each of the six years.

St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS), the city’s school district, saw by far the biggest losses: $167.9 million over six years, nearly 65 percent of the countywide total. The report calculates a per-pupil loss of $1,634—a staggering amount for a district that spends an estimated $17,000 per student. According to the report, SLPS’s student body is also nearly 88 percent black, and 100 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals due to low household income.

Meanwhile, the suburban Rockwood R-VI School District—whose students are 75 percent white and only 8.5 percent of whom qualify for reduced-price meals—only lost $2.2 million, a comparatively paltry funding loss of $18 per student.

The report posits that poor and minority students are most negatively affected by such abatement schemes. “On average, white students lose $179 per year, while Black students lose more than three times that—$610 per year,” its authors write. “After [SLPS], the second hardest-hit group of students are those with disabilities. The Special District of St. Louis County, which serves children with special needs residing in suburban districts, loses $1,148 per student per year.”

The report further breaks down the numbers by the types of economic subsidy programs that they supported. Of the $260.7 million in total lost revenue, $69.37 million went to tax-increment financing (TIF), including $64.18 million from SLPS alone.

New development projects tend to drive up property values, leading to an increase in property taxes. But under TIF, the city or county government subsidizes the development by borrowing against that future higher revenue; local services that are funded through property taxes, like public schools, road maintenance, and police and fire departments, get none of the extra cash.

The East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the local metropolitan planning organization, released a report in 2011 on the use of TIF in the St. Louis area. It found that the use of incentives like TIF “has been ineffective both as a way to increase regional sales tax revenue or to produce a significant increase in quality jobs.” It further found that “the use of TIF and other tax incentives, while positive for the incentive-using municipality, has negative impacts on neighboring municipalities.” In other words, cities and counties that use TIF steal jobs away from neighboring communities by incentivizing employers to move; jobs aren’t created, they’re just shifted around.

The Good Jobs First report includes several policy recommendations—for example, that “St. Louis Public Schools be given veto power or voting power on the St. Louis TIF Commission proportional to their share of TIF revenue,” allowing it to decide where that money gets spent. It also suggests that “every school district’s share of the property tax should simply be 100% shielded from abatements.”

A better idea would be to allow everyone to opt out: Taxpayers choose where to spend their money, private companies are responsible for funding their own development projects, and state and local governments stop meddling in the affairs of either.

The post St. Louis Schools Lost $260 Million to Economic Development Subsidies appeared first on Reason.com.

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Since Baldwin has been re-indicted for fatally shooting a cinematographer while filming a Western, Rust, I thought I’d reprise some observations about New Mexico law that I posed a year ago, when the issue was last in the news.

Under New Mexico law, see State v. Skippings (N.M. 2011),

[I]nvoluntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing that consists of an “unlawful killing of a human being without malice … committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony, or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.” We have interpreted this statutory scheme to encompass unintentional killings that result due to “1) the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to a felony [that causes death]; 2) the commission of a lawful act that might produce death, in an unlawful manner; or 3) the commission of a lawful act that might produce death without due caution and circumspection.”

What’s more, under New Mexico law, all three varieties of involuntary manslaughter require a showing of criminal negligence. And this isn’t just the normal negligence, of the sort that we’re familiar with from civil cases, which focuses on what an objectively reasonable person would have done. Nor is it gross negligence, which suffices for involuntary manslaughter in many states. Rather, it’s “willful disregard of the rights or safety of others,” based on “subjective knowledge ‘of the danger or risk to others posed by his or her actions'”:

In New Mexico, “the State must show at least criminal negligence to convict a criminal defendant of involuntary manslaughter.” Because involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing, we only attach felony liability where the actor has behaved with the requisite mens rea. This Court has made clear that the criminal negligence standard applies to all three categories of involuntary manslaughter. Criminal negligence exists where the defendant “act[s] with willful disregard of the rights or safety of others and in a manner which endanger[s] any person or property.” We also require that the defendant must possess subjective knowledge “of the danger or risk to others posed by his or her actions.”

Say, then, that the prosecution can show that Baldwin pointed the gun at the cinematographer (Halyna Hutchins) and pulled the trigger, but carelessly believed (without checking this for himself) that it was unloaded, because he trusted that the production’s armorer made sure the gun was unloaded.

It wouldn’t be enough to show that Baldwin was careless, negligent, lacked due caution in the ordinary sense of the word—or even that he was acting extremely foolishly in not recognizing the risk of pointing a gun at someone without personally checking that it was unloaded. It wouldn’t be enough to show that any reasonable gun owner would have performed such a personal check, rather than relying on the assumption that the armorer would have done it.

The prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was subjectively aware of the danger: that he actually thought about the possibility that the gun might be loaded, and proceeded to point it and pull the trigger despite that. That’s much harder than just to show carelessness, or even gross carelessness, though of course much depends on what evidence the prosecution has gathered. (Here, by the way, is what appears to be a transcript of the June 11, 2022 police interview of Baldwin, though of course the evidence at trial might be different, and the jury may believe or disbelieve various statements.)

Again, in other states, the law might define “criminal negligence” as mere “gross negligence,” and focus solely on the objective reasonableness of the defendant’s actions. But in New Mexico, Skippings tells us that proof of subjective consciousness of risk is required.

The post The New Mexico Involuntary Manslaughter Prosecution of Alec Baldwin appeared first on Reason.com.

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Harvey Murphy was arrested in October 2022 for the armed burglary of a Huston-area Sunglass Hut store after a facial recognition device identified him as the burglar. The only problem? Murphy was in Sacramento, California at the time of the crime—thousands of miles away.

Making matters worse, Murphy, now 61, says he was brutally sexually assaulted in jail just hours before he was set to be released after the charges against him were dropped. In a lawsuit filed last week, Murphy claims that his arrest was the result of gross negligence from the facial recognition company—and he demands $10 million in damages to compensate for his wrongful imprisonment.  

On January 22, 2022, two men entered a Sunglass Hut store in Huston, Texas, with one threatening the store employees with a gun and forcing them into a storeroom at the back of the business. The two intruders eventually left with the money in the store’s cash register as well as several pairs of sunglasses. 

According to the complaint, local police began investigating the crime as soon as they arrived on the scene. Soon after, Anthony Pfleger, the head of loss prevention at EssilorLuxottica, Sunglass Hut’s parent company, called the police and told them that the armed burglar had been identified. Apparently, facial recognition software had concluded that Harvey Murphy was the criminal—and that he had even been responsible for additional robberies of a different Huston-area Sunglass Hut and a Macy’s store.

Police then presented a photo lineup to one of the store employees, who identified Murphy as the robber. However, the complaint alleges that the clerk had been “prepped” by EssilorLuxottica, leading her to incorrectly identify Murphy. Unbeknownst to Murphy, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

In October 2022, Murphy, who had been living in California, returned to Texas for work. After attempting to renew his driver’s license at a local DMV, he was arrested and booked into the Harris County jail. According to the complaint, once Murphy learned he was being charged for the January 22, 2022 robbery, he informed his lawyer that he was in a different state at the time of the crime. Soon after, the District Attorney agreed to drop the charges against Murphy.

However, just hours before Murphy was set to be released, he says he was beaten and gang raped in a jail bathroom by three prisoners. According to Murphy’s lawsuit, after being brutally attacked, his assailants threatened to kill him if he reported the crime. 

“Murphy was released a few hours later, but in some ways, he never left jail,” the complaint writes. “His time in jail will stay with him forever. Not an hour goes by without Murphy relieving the brutal attack and rape. Worse than that, the attack left him with permanent injuries that he has to live with every day of his life. All of this happened to Murphy because the Defendants relied on facial recognition technology that is known to be error prone and faulty.”

This is far from the first time that facial recognition technology has led to wrongful arrests. In February 2022, a Detroit woman who was eight months pregnant was falsely arrested for robbery and carjacking. That same year, an Atlanta man was falsely arrested for a series of thefts in Lousiana, a state the man had never been to. In November 2023, Miami police used facial recognition technology to arrest a homeless man who had refused to give his name to an officer.

“What companies like EssilorLuxottica and Macy’s tell the public is that facial-recognition systems can have near-perfect accuracy,” Murphy’s suit states. “What they do not tell the public is that ‘near-perfect accuracy’ only occurs in absolutely ideal conditions … in the real world, accuracy rates are much lower.”

The post Man Sues Sunglass Hut After Faulty AI Facial Recognition Tech Led to Wrongful Arrest appeared first on Reason.com.

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Less than three months after launching an attack on energy drinks, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) has a new target: Zyn nicotine pouches.

In a press release Sunday, Schumer labeled Zyn a “quiet and dangerous” alternative to vaping, claiming that with the decline in smoking, tobacco companies are adapting by focusing on new products like oral nicotine. Zyns are small pouches of nicotine meant to be placed between the lips and gums. Two strengths of the product are available at three and six milligrams of nicotine, and they come in several flavors.

Schumer’s ire appears to have been raised by the rapid growth in sales of nicotine pouches and so-called “Zynfluecers” on TikTok promoting the product. Schumer fears nicotine pouches could become a teen trend, as vaping did in 2019 before rapidly declining as the tobacco age was raised to 21 and schools became more aware of the problem. To head off a potential increase in youth nicotine addiction, Schumer wants the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the marketing of Zyn and potentially restrict their flavors.

But Schumer’s framing has the story backward. Zyn is not a dangerous alternative to vaping but a dramatically safer alternative to smoking. One of the reasons smoking has declined substantially over the last decade is because safer nicotine alternatives like vapes and Zyn are switching smokers away from cigarettes. The closest equivalent for which we have decades of data is an oral smokeless tobacco called snus. Snus is most prevalent in Sweden, and not coincidentally, Sweden has the lowest smoking and lung cancer rates in Europe because those interested in using nicotine do so in a much safer form.

Schumer is right that nicotine pouches are enjoying enormous sales, but he would be wrong to assume nicotine-naive youth are driving these sales. According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey, only 1.5 percent of middle and high schoolers use nicotine pouches, and just 2.3 percent have ever tried a nicotine pouch. Even among the minority of young people who use products like Zyn, most are not nicotine newbies. A study of adolescents and adults aged 15-24 who used nicotine pouches found the vast majority were smokers or had smoked cigarettes in the past at 73 percent and 81 percent, respectively. Just like with e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches disproportionately appeal to people who are already using nicotine most often in its most dangerous form, which is cigarettes.

Schumer’s concern that Zyn comes in several flavors like cinnamon and citrus is also misguided. For one, Zyn has already applied to the FDA to be authorized for sale, and the agency will determine whether it presents a net benefit to public health. But suppose flavors in nicotine products are inherently youth-appealing, as Schumer suggests. In that case, he should be just as outraged that nicotine gums, which have been around for decades, are sold in flavors like “cinnamon surge,” “fruit chill,” and “spearmint burst.” Nicotine flavor bans have a poor track record in improving public health, with bans on flavored vapes associated with an increase in cigarette sales.

Schumer’s intervention drew mockery on X (formerly known as Twitter), including from Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators defending Zyn. The reaction is perhaps unsurprising, given that Tucker Carlson is the most famous Zyn consumer.

The most worrying aspect of Schumer’s demonization of Zyn is that it contributes to the false impression that just because something contains nicotine, it’s a threat to public health. What makes cigarettes so lethal is not nicotine but setting tobacco on fire and inhaling the smoke.

Divorced from smoke, nicotine is a relatively benign stimulant with a similar risk profile to caffeine. Most adults incorrectly believe vaping is just as bad or worse than smoking. If these misperceptions were replicated for products like Zyn, the most likely effect would not be saving kids from the grips of nicotine addiction, as Schumer hopes, but to keep smokers smoking. Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer of the Cato Institute lamented the constant fearmongering around nicotine, writing, “I can only think of one explanation: an unfounded and irrational fear of nicotine. I call it nicotinophobia.“

The post Chuck Schumer Attacks Lifesaving Zyn Nicotine Pouches appeared first on Reason.com.

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