Tag: in-the-news

It all started with a fight. Dominique Jenkins-Millage, 29, saw the person who killed his cousin while they were both serving time at Oregon State Penitentiary. He started punching the killer, which escalated into a brawl between multiple inmates.  

That fight landed Jenkins-Millage in solitary confinement, where he spends at least 23 hours a day locked in a cell about the size of a parking space. His interactions are limited to prison guards and medical staff. He describes the conditions as torturous, worse than being homeless or being shot. He expects to be released from solitary sometime this month, but could be held longer. 

“I would not wish this on anyone,” said Jenkins-Millage. 

Jenkins-Millage is one of a handful of prisoners in Oregon who filed a proposed class action lawsuit in mid-June challenging the Oregon Department of Corrections’ (ODOC) solitary confinement practices. It alleges that the ODOC is violating the state constitution’s “Unnecessary Rigor Clause,” which goes above and beyond the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. States like Indiana, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming also have similar protections in their constitutions. 

The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the ODOC’s practices are unconstitutional and an injunction prohibiting the department from continuing the practices in the future. They also want to establish a monitoring regime so that the ODOC does not fall back into its old habits. 

“It’s ironic that in a state that is pushing back against the Trump administration and is a progressive leader in so many ways is at the same time subjecting people to these degrading, cruel and inhumane issues,” said George Mills, a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public interest law firm representing some of the plaintiffs. 

A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Corrections told Reason that the agency can’t comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but remains committed to maintaining “safe, secure, and humane operations for adults in custody, staff, and the communities we serve.” That includes, but is not limited to, increasing out-of-cell time for people in solitary confinement, building peer mentorship programs, and enhancing violence prevention tools. 

“DOC remains committed to this long‑term cultural transformation and to ensuring our practices continue to evolve in alignment with research, safety needs, and constitutional standards,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Solitary confinement—also known as restrictive housing or administrative segregation—has a long and sordid history in the U.S. The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is widely considered the birthplace of solitary confinement. As early as 1829, some prisoners were kept in tiny cells only containing a worktable, a toilet, a skylight, and a Bible. Historian William Kashatus argued in a 1999 article for Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine that the cells were designed in such a way to “remind the inmate that penitence would only be achieved through the light from heaven, the word of God, and honest work.” 

In 1890, the Supreme Court recognized that the assumption underpinning solitary confinement is inhumane and counterproductive in a case known as In re Medley. The case concerned a convicted murderer named James J. Medley who was held in solitary confinement for 45 days in Colorado before his execution. Chief Justice Samuel Miller, after going through a lengthy historical analysis of the practice, found that prisoners subjected to solitary confinement often “did not recover sufficient mental activity to be any subsequent service to the community.” 

Keeping prisoners in solitary confinement is also inherently dangerous. Studies have shown that extended time in solitary can permanently damage an individual’s brain by shrinking the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and sociability. That is one reason why many prisoners who are sent to solitary return with symptoms of “depression, paranoia, lack of concentration or memory, anger, and hallucinations,” according to a 2018 study. Solitary confinement can also cause muscular degeneration, cardiovascular issues, and dermatological conditions because of the lack of regular exercise and restricted hygiene habits. 

Jenkins-Millage claimed in the lawsuit that he has experienced similar symptoms since he was sent to solitary confinement. For instance, he said he developed symptoms of depression or bipolar disorder, including suicidal ideation, while he was in solitary. He attributed these symptoms to a lack of meaningful human contact, recreation, and mental stimulation.

Even so, reforming solitary confinement practices has been slow and arduous work. According to 2023 estimates, more than 122,000 people are held in solitary confinement across the U.S., representing just under 7 percent of the nation’s total prison population. While many assume that the worst of the worst criminals live in solitary confinement, multiple studies have found that prisons routinely use solitary confinement as punishment for nonviolent offenses like tobacco use and talking back to a prison guard. Solitary confinement is also often considered the “de facto mental health unit” in many prisons, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. 

“When we made the decision to do whatever put us in prison,” Jenkins-Millage told Oregon Public Broadcasting in June. “We didn’t stop being humans.”

The lawsuit claims directors at the ODOC are aware that their practices may run afoul of best practices. In the 91-page complaint, lawyers point to memos sent by senior ODOC leaders outlining the need to “reduce the use of segregation” and acknowledging that the practice is “detrimental to an individual’s health.” Another superintendent at Oregon’s Coffee Creek Correctional Facility claimed that “segregation isn’t an effective tool to change behavior.” 

Still, the ODOC has been slow to address its issues. For instance, a 2015 study by Disability Rights Oregon found that prisoners in solitary confinement had no access to mental health treatment. A 2016 study conducted by the Vera Institute found that segregated prisoners in the ODOC lived in conditions marked by “isolation, idleness, and sensory deprivation” that created or exacerbated serious mental health issues. 

“They know that this is wrong, and they know that they need to make progress on this,” Mills said. 

The lawsuit was filed at a time when solitary confinement is under strict scrutiny across the globe. In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly revised what are known as its Nelson Mandela Rules, which seek to create an international standard for the treatment of prisoners, to state that solitary confinement should be used only as a “last resort” and should not last longer than 15 days. That led to prison reforms in European countries such as Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, as well as in South Africa. 

Several U.S. states are creating more humane approaches to solitary confinement. Nevada reduced the amount of time prisoners can spend in solitary confinement to 15 days in 2023. A bill passed in Virginia adding new restrictions on when a prisoner can be sent to solitary confinement. Other states like Louisiana passed a law to increase access to educational materials for people in solitary confinement, and Tennessee now prohibits pregnant women from being sent to solitary.  

To Mills, these initiatives come back to one of America’s original principles: “You can’t torture people, and that’s a foundational principle of our country.”

The post 'I Would Not Wish This on Anyone': Prisoners Fight Back Against Solitary Confinement in Oregon appeared first on Reason.com.

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Robert Reich, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former U.S. labor secretary, makes popular economics videos arguing that the U.S. economy is rigged against workers.

One of his recent pieces caught my eye because it makes heavy use of numbers and charts. The video is a great example of how to misuse economic data to support a preconceived narrative—in this case, a fairy-tale account of evil CEOs stealing wealth from their employees.

At the outset of the video, Reich presents a chart showing that in 2024 the “typical worker” earned $36.49 per hour, while CEOs made—”ready for this?” Reich asks viewers—$431.80!

There are lots of problems with this chart, starting with the fact that it’s labeled “CEO Salaries,” but that’s not what the $431.80 figure represents. Though he rarely sources his work, Reich’s chart matches data from a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which measures what the leaders of the largest 350 public corporations in America earn, not all CEOs.

There are about 4,000 publicly traded corporations headquartered in the U.S., and even more privately held companies. They all have CEOs. Reich has cherry-picked the wealthiest and most successful faces in the crowd. This is like measuring what the highest-paid actors earn, setting aside all the struggling performers waiting tables, and claiming that acting is the world’s most lucrative profession.

If you broaden the lens to include CEOs at ordinary-sized companies, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data show their pay looks a lot like that of other professionals: Median CEOs make about $200,000 a year, and their pay is growing at about the same pace as everyone else’s.

Another problem is that the $431.80 is compensation realized in 2024. Most of it came from stock options granted for performance in previous years. In the prior five years, stock prices had roughly doubled, allowing CEOs to cash in compensation from past years. It’s a lot of money, but perhaps not out of proportion to five years of service steering the world’s largest and most successful businesses through the pandemic and doubling shareholder wealth. And only the CEOs who survived the turmoil and delivered the doublings were around to collect it. In a down year for the stock market, you might see compensation drop by 80 percent.

The CEOs of the largest American companies have seen their compensation grow at an extraordinary pace, but that’s because the businesses they run have grown so large. A highly regarded paper by economists Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier, “Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?” showed that CEO compensation should scale with firm size, and that this effect explains the entire rise in CEO pay.

Today, Nvidia’s market cap alone is more than two and a half times the entire S&P 500’s market cap when it was created in 1957, adjusted for inflation. Comparing CEO pay at the largest firms in 1968 vs. what they make today is like equating the director of a late-night commercial for a personal injury law firm to the director of a Hollywood blockbuster. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang impacts more economic value in an afternoon in 2026 than James Roche did as the CEO of General Motors in all of 1968.

The same compensation explosion has occurred across every winner-take-all field, affecting top athletes, movie stars, and best-selling authors. The highest NBA salary in 1968 was Wilt Chamberlain’s $250,000-a-year deal with the Lakers, and the team also agreed to cover his taxes. Chamberlain’s salary alone works out to roughly $2.2 million in today’s dollars. Compare that to Steph Curry’s record-setting $62.6 million pay package in the upcoming NBA season.

Yet Reich claims that “the system is rigged.” Is the NBA also rigged in favor of Curry? Against whom?

Reich has more evidence that the economy is rigged against workers. He presents another chart showing, in his words, that “big corporations chronically underpay workers compared to the workers’ productivity on the job. Productivity, that is, the value of their output, has soared and resulted in record corporate profits.”

The source of Reich’s chart, which shows the productivity-pay gap, was once again the EPI, which compares workers’ earnings over time to the productivity of the U.S. economy.

The measure they used for worker pay doesn’t include all employees. It’s just “nonsupervisory workers,” so it excludes management. The EPI says that it uses this dataset because it represents “the typical worker,” or “roughly 80% of the U.S. workforce.” The purpose of the chart, they explain, is to answer “a crucial question: Do typical workers in the United States share in the benefits of economic growth?”

The problem is that the EPI is drawing on an untrustworthy dataset. In 2005, the BLS published a note in the Federal Register repudiating its measure of nonsupervisory workers’ earnings, stating that it had “limited value.”

The agency also noted that the distinction between a “supervisory” and “nonsupervisory worker” was “not meaningful to survey respondents” and “that it is not possible to tabulate their payroll records” to reflect this distinction.

In 2003, Patricia Getz, who was in charge of employment statistics at the BLS, noted that “records are not kept for these groupings of workers,” so employers weren’t filling out this portion of the survey.

And this series only counts regular paychecks. Bonuses, profit sharing, and stock grants, which represent how a growing share of American workers are paid over the exact period this chart covers, are excluded entirely. 

The BLS sought to discontinue this data series altogether in favor of the all-employee series. In the end, it continued to collect and publish data on nonsupervisory workers, but the poor data quality renders this chart essentially worthless.

The wage measure favored by the BLS tracks compensation for all employees at all levels, not only because this is a more trustworthy dataset, but on the logical assumption that a company’s gains in productivity reflect the combined efforts of all employees, including its officers and supervisors.

Reich also cites gross productivity before depreciation. Consider an Uber driver whose passengers pay $85,000 over a year, of which $30,000 goes toward expenses such as gas, insurance, and fees. The driver’s gross productivity is $55,000. But her car might have depreciated $15,000, so the net productivity is $40,000. That $15,000 wasn’t stolen from her paycheck by a greedy CEO; it’s a true loss in economic value.

This matters because over the period Reich discusses, corporate assets shifted from slow-depreciation assets such as steel mills to faster-depreciating assets such as computers and software. Depreciation has risen from 12 percent of national income to 17 percent. Reich is counting that 5 percent difference as stolen from workers, but in fact, it disappeared.

Regardless, if we use the data favored by the BLS and compare all worker compensation to productivity, the divergence between pay and productivity disappears.

Reich’s theory that workers are getting shafted has a third component: He claims that CEOs are “siphoning” profits into stock buybacks to boost their own compensation.

“Stock buybacks,” he claims, “reduce the number of shares available for investors to purchase, which drives up the value of the remaining shares. Just simple supply and demand.”

This is an elementary accounting error. Take a $10 billion market-cap company with 100 million shares trading at $100 each. It decides to do a 10 percent buyback, spending $1 billion to buy 10 million shares for $100 each. The $1 billion cash it spends makes it a $9 billion company. It now has 90 million shares outstanding. The stock price is the same $100 per share outstanding.

Of course, in real life, things are not so neat. Investors tend to take a buyback announcement as good news; the insiders think the stock is undervalued, and bid the price up a few percent. There are other cases where investors take the opposite view: The buyback is a sign the company has no better use of its cash and is fading. But the point is it’s not “simple supply and demand”; it’s a signal that might or might not help the stock price.

Moreover, Reich misunderstands the purpose of a stock buyback. Companies have two ways of transferring profits to their shareholders: They can pay a dividend or they can do a buyback. The economic effect is the same.

Reich sees buybacks as a way of diverting profits to themselves rather than sharing them with their workers. “Corporations and their CEOs are instead siphoning them off into stock buybacks,” he says.

They’re not “siphoning” money. They’re paying out profits to their owners. All investors, even greedy ones, are entitled to a share of the earnings of the companies they own. That’s the deal. And without it, nobody would invest in the first place.

“Stock buybacks used to be considered illegal stock manipulation until Ronald Reagan came along,” Reich says. “CEOs can now effectively give themselves a raise while workers get the shaft.”

Stock buybacks were never “considered illegal stock manipulation.” In 1982, the SEC clarified a gray area, simplifying the legal treatment of stock buybacks and making it easier for companies to use them as an alternative to paying dividends.

Reich claims that stock buybacks are worse than paying dividends because they’re a way for CEOs to enrich themselves. “These rising share prices bump up CEO pay because increasingly part of their compensation is in shares of stock,” he says.

The problem with this theory is that boards of directors, not CEOs, decide whether to pursue stock buybacks. These are the same directors who negotiate CEO compensation. Buybacks are an item on the negotiation checklist, like benefits and contract length, not something CEOs sneak in afterward to inflate their earnings.

What’s the evidence on how buybacks affect CEO compensation? A study in the Journal of Accounting and Economics found the relationship between buybacks and CEO compensation was spurious. Research by a compensation consulting firm that examined S&P 500 buybacks from 2018 to 2021 found the same picture from inside the boardroom: Pay packages rest on multiple performance metrics, and the companies making the largest buybacks adjust their incentive targets to cancel out the share-count effect.

So what does Reich conclude from all of this misinformation and misconceived data? That we need a slew of policies to rein in American capitalism. He says we should “raise the federal minimum wage,” “strengthen labor unions,” “use antitrust laws to break up big corporate monopolies,” “raise taxes on corporations,” and “ban stock buybacks.”

Apart from his misinformed discussion of stock buybacks, Reich doesn’t address those issues in his video. Instead, all he’s done is cherry-pick the compensation of the top CEOs in America and use a faulty data series to claim the economy is rigged against workers.

The charts and numbers we use to argue about important questions in public life are too often presented in deceptive ways. It doesn’t get much more deceptive than this video.

To keep up with our video series Wrong Number featuring Aaron Brown, and to receive bonus content and more, click here to enter your email address. By joining our list, you’ll also have a chance to win a copy of Brown’s new book, Wrong Number: How to Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation.

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I was recently reminded of one of the Epigrams of the Roman poet Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis, colloquially pronounced in English as “Marshall”). It is about the lawyers of his day, but it reflects—in an exaggerated way, of course—something that some lawyers, and many law students, tend to do today in their briefs, especially briefs that deal with glamorous subjects such as constitutional law. Here is a translation I much liked, by Roger Dickinson-Brown, reprinted with permission:

There is no poison here, no rape or force—
a simple case: my neighbor stole my goats.
But my expensive lawyer will discourse
on the whole history of law. He quotes
book, precedent and chapter ’til he’s hoarse.
Fine, noble words! But what about my goats?

Meredith (For Keats’ Sake!) also has a translation I like, and here’s one more from two centuries ago, by John Quincy Adams, himself a lawyer of some distinction. It comes from his “Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory: Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University” (more about that later), delivered when Adams was a senator. Note that Adams keeps Martial’s historical references in his translation—which would have been vivid to Martial’s audience, but come across differently to us today—while Dickinson-Brown chooses to omit them:

No dagger keen, no poison’d bowl
Forms, of my suit, the constitution
‘Tis of three kids my neighbour stole
I come to court for restitution.
With thundering voice, and outstretch’d arm
my lawyer fights o’er all our battles;
Now thrills with Cannae’s dire alarms
And now of Mithridates prattles.
Oh! let thy tongue, Verboso, cease,
Which trust in Punic faith forbids;
Let Sylla, Marius, sleep in peace;
And say—one word about my kids.

Or, if you prefer, from Claudius:

Not violence, murder, poison—none of these,
My suit concerns three humble goats, and please:
I claim my neighbor stole them from my pen.
The judge wants proof, not rhetoric again—
Yet you rant on of Cannae’s bloody plain,
The war with Mithridates, and the stain
Of Punic oaths broken in ancient strife,
Of Sulla, Marius, Mucius and their life,
With booming voice and arms flung wide and wild—
Come, Postumus: the three goats, my good child!

And here’s Martial’s original Latin:

Non de vi neque caede nec veneno,
Sed lis est mihi de tribus capellis:
Vicini queror has abesse furto.
Hoc iudex sibi postulat probari:
Tu Cannas Mithridaticumque bellum
Et periuria Punici furoris
Et Sullas Mariosque Muciosque
Magna voce sonas manuque tota.
Iam dic, Postume, de tribus capellis.

If this post leads some small voice inside you to occasionally say, as you’re writing or editing, “But what about my goats?,” then Martial’s life will not have been in vain.

My brother Sasha points out that this is “One good contribution of Martial law.”

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From Spengler v. Coop. Educ. Serv. Agency 7, decided yesterday by Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Scudder, joined by Chief Judge Michael Brennan and Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi:

In 2018, Becky Spengler started working as a special education administrator in Wisconsin. A couple years into the role, her supervisors pushed her and the rest of her team to adopt an “equity mindset,” which required everyone to interrogate their implicit racial biases and privileges. Spengler understood the demand differently. She thought she had to believe that all white people—and only white people—are naturally racist. Spengler refused to adopt the equity mindset, and as a result, her employer demoted her to a different job….

Spengler … alleges that her employer violated the First Amendment by retaliating against her for what she believes and what she declines to believe. The district court never considered this claim, determining that Spengler insufficiently pleaded it…. [W]e disagree and remand for further proceedings….

In 2018, [Wisconsin state] Cooperative Educational Service Agency 7 hired Spengler as an Integration Director…. CESA 7 hired Spengler to effectuate a contract with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction [DPI] …. Spengler trained and supported the special-education directors for the 38 school districts within CESA 7. She also worked as a coach who provided professional learning to help teachers and staff implement training and particular workplace practices….

Spengler claims that after a couple years, DPI began focusing on race by requiring coaches to adopt an “equity mindset.” According to DPI’s Coaching Competency Practice Profile, a coach with an equity mindset “cultivates … the willingness and ability to see and speak to how their power and privilege are at work to systematically advantage some while simultaneously disadvantag[ing] others,” helps others understand “how their thoughts and actions may negatively impact marginalized … communities,” and “surfaces the impact of white supremacy and the history of whiteness on systems” while working “to disrupt and dismantle its effects.”

Spengler thought the push for coaches to have an equity mindset was itself racist and discriminatory against white people. As she saw it, DPI’s worldview anchored itself in a belief that “the natural state of White people—unlike people of color—is to be racists.” When she voiced her disagreement with this perspective, tension emerged among Spengler and her co-workers.

Over time, DPI officials requested that CESA 7 replace Spengler as Integration Director for the 2022-2023 contract year…. DPI’s pressure appears to have worked. In May 2022, Dickert met with DPI representatives and realized that CESA 7 would lose funding if Spengler continued as Integration Director. Colleen Timm, CESA 7’s Learning Services Director, informed Spengler that DPI viewed “points in the [new] [c]ontract” as non-negotiable and that she could keep her position as the Integration Director only if she “could commit to the role without pushback or questioning.” Spengler claims that one of those points required CESA 7 staff to have “a demonstrated commitment to examining their personal biases in the areas of race and ability, and to dismantling racist and ableist educational systems.”

Spengler declined to make that commitment. She promised in correspondence with Dickert and Timm “to effectively carry out DPI’s direction with regard to … [her] work within the Districts.” But she was unwilling to “agree to keep silent regarding DPI’s racist philosophy, policies, and plan of action.” Indeed, she maintained that she had the “right to express” her “personal views and opinions regarding matters of race” and to “express those views in the same respectful manner as any other employee of DPI and/or CESA 7 might express their views.” She also “retain[ed] [her] right to continue to oppose racial discrimination in the workplace.”

In June 2022, CESA 7 declined to re-up Spengler as the Integration Director and instead employed her in a different position that paid much less….

[Spengler] does not appeal the district court’s entry of summary judgment for CESA 7 on her claim that it retaliated against her because of what she said and what she declined to say. But she does appeal the district court’s failure to address her claim that CESA 7 retaliated against her because of what she believes and what she declines to believe….

The district court should have considered Spengler’s claim that CESA 7 retaliated against her because of her beliefs. As a matter of law, we have no doubt that her claim is cognizable. The First Amendment “protects a public employee from discharge … based on what he believes.” That protection guards against more than just retaliation for “political affiliation.” It also extends to any attempt to force public employees to “conform their beliefs … to some state-selected orthodoxy.” “[U]nless the government can demonstrate an overriding interest of vital importance requiring that a person’s private beliefs conform to those of the hiring authority, his beliefs cannot be the sole basis for depriving him of continued public employment.”

We are also confident that Spengler’s operative complaint provided CESA 7 with “fair notice” that she was bringing this claim. Most directly, she alleges that “[d]espite her positive job performance and track record,” CESA 7 “repeatedly informed [her] that she could not properly perform the Director of Integrated Services job unless she believed and otherwise agreed with and embraced DPI’s racist philosophy, programs, and actions,” even saying this demand “violated [her] constitutional rights.”

And more broadly, as the district court recognized, the overarching thrust of Spengler’s complaint is that she lost her job as CESA 7’s Integration Director “because she did not share DPI’s views” on race. She emphasizes that CESA 7 never “complain[ed] about the work she performed” or “otherwise legitimately assert[ed] that [she] had failed to provide all agreed-upon ‘deliverables.'” Yet she alleges that CESA 7 warned her that “if she remained in the Director of Integrated Services role, she would need to fully embrace DPI’s racist philosophy, actions and agenda, and that she could no longer question or voice disagreement with DPI’s racist assumptions, philosophy, actions and agenda.”

Put even more directly, the complaint states that “[b]ecause [Spengler] declined to accept DPI’s beliefs and to ‘demonstrate’ that she embraced and agreed with DPI’s racist philosophy, beliefs, actions, and agenda, [CESA 7] removed her from her role as Director of Integrated Services,” in violation of her “constitutional rights.” CESA 7 had fair notice of Spengler’s claim that it retaliated against her because of her beliefs. Rule 8(a) [the federal pleading requirement] required no more.

The court concluded, though, that plaintiff had not adequately pled her separate claims that she was illegally fired based on her race.

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From Wysocki v. Nassau County, decided Tuesday by Judge Sanket Bulsara (E.D.N.Y.):

Dennis and Lisa Wysocki were issued New York State pistol licenses by the Nassau County Police Department’s (“NCPD”) Pistol License Section (“PLS”) in September 2017 and February 2021 respectively. In 2022, both applied for and were issued unrestricted concealed-carry pistol licenses.

The Wysockis live with their minor daughter, who was in middle school in February 2023. On February 8, 2023, their daughter told a school counselor she had been feeling depressed and described past thoughts of harming herself using a rope. The counselor asked her if there were firearms in the home, and she confirmed their presence.

On February 10, 2023, the Wysockis took their daughter to the Cohen Children’s Medical Center. She was evaluated by psychiatrist Dr. Joshua Stein who concluded she “does not represent an imminent danger to self or others” and could return home. On February 11, 2023, Child Protective Services (“CPS”) caseworkers and NCPD officers visited the Wysockis’ home in response to the school report. The NCPD officers examined their gun safes, confirming that the firearms were stored in locked safes with trigger locks.

On February 13, 2023, Dennis Wysocki called the PLS and spoke with Officer Vito Scaglione (“Scaglione”) to report his daughter’s comments and the visit from the police. He relayed that the officers had examined the safes, confirmed that their firearms were properly stored, and that his daughter had been evaluated and discharged by Dr. Stein as not an imminent danger to herself or others.

During the phone call, Scaglione informed Dennis that their pistol licenses were going to be suspended given their daughter’s expressed thoughts of self-harm and that they would have to surrender their guns. That same day, the Wysockis took their firearms to a federal firearms licensee for safekeeping and went to the PLS office to provide Scaglione with a receipt confirming this transfer.

Scaglione instructed the Wysockis to prepare written statements. He also gave them each a “Notification of Pistol License Suspension” stating that their pistol licenses had been suspended in accordance with New York Penal Law § 400.00 and the PLS Handbook Chapter 1, §§ I(1) and I(2). The Notices advised them that the PLS would investigate the suspensions and during that period they were required to surrender their guns.

Chapter 1, Section I of the PLS Handbook states:

Pursuant to NYSPL § 400.00(11), a pistol license issued by the Nassau County Police Department may be revoked and cancelled by the Commissioner of Police at any time. Furthermore, a person whose pistol license is suspended or revoked for any reason is required to surrender their license and firearms, including their rifles and shotguns, to the NCPD Pistol License Section.

Subsection 1 details circumstances for automatic revocation including when a licensee is convicted of a felony or deemed mentally unfit. Subsection 2 provides for discretionary revocation: a pistol license “may be suspended and/or revoked based upon evidence of any disqualification pursuant to this Handbook or applicable law.” It is NCPD policy to “immediately suspend the pistol license of any licensee who violates any of the terms and conditions of the license or [the] Handbook and commence an investigation to determine whether or not the license should be revoked.”

The PLS Handbook requires a report to the PLS when “the licensee or a member of the licensee’s household receives professional treatment for mental health issues (including depression)” or is admitted to a hospital for mental-health treatment. Lieutenant Marc Timpano testified that PLS officers have discretion when deciding whether to suspend a pistol license, and that PLS uses the Handbook as a “guide” when making suspension determinations, including whether to act after reports of a mental health incident.

The Wysockis submitted the statements explaining the incident with their daughter, along with Dr. Stein’s letter on February 14, 2023. They then submitted on April 18, 2023 a letter from CPS that the investigation was closed as “unfounded.” Scaglione instructed them to provide a letter from their daughter’s treating doctor stating that it was safe for her to live in a home where guns are kept, and that he would continue the investigation and would see them “in about 8–12 months.”

In June 2023, Dennis informed the PLS that they were unable to obtain a letter from a doctor stating that it was safe for their daughter to live in a home with firearms. The Wysockis maintain that Scaglione informed them that even with such a letter, their licenses would not be reinstated until they purchased two biometric safes, which they have no intention of purchasing, and that if their daughter “ever did anything like this again” they would never have their licenses returned. The Wysockis’ pistol licenses remain in suspended status and the PLS investigation remains open.

This, the court concluded, violated the Wysockis’ Second Amendment rights:

Defendants present zero evidence that the PLS’s actions are consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. They provide no citation to law, tradition, or any other evidence, nor do they provide a particular historical analogy to match the practices employed against the Wysockis. Instead, they rely on Rahimi, which is inapposite.

Rahimi addressed the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which disarms individuals subject to certain domestic violence protective orders. The Supreme Court upheld the provision based on a historical tradition of disarming individuals that pose a clear threat of physical violence to another person.

Defendants contend that the founding-era surety and going-armed laws in Rahimi establish a more general principle: the government may act in a “targeted and time-limited way, based on reliable evidence of dangerousness, to prevent serious harm while the risk is appropriately managed.” But Rahimi does not establish such a such a broad exception to the Second Amendment. It only condoned the Government’s ability “to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others.”

The disarmament here is not based on the Wysockis posing a credible threat to the safety of others nor to prevent their misuse of firearms. Defendants’ initial firearms seizure and license revocation was not based upon their risk to others (or their risk of misuse). Instead, it was based on the Wysockis’ daughter’s mental-health emergency and her danger to herself, based on firearms owned by others. And Defendants’ ongoing refusal to return the firearms or licenses appears to be entirely arbitrary or unlawful—it is based not on any existence of mental health treatment or even current threat that the daughter poses to herself or others.

The evidence in the record is that that threat long ago dissipated (if it ever existed at all). Yet, Defendants refuse to let the Wysockis have their firearms or licenses and have imposed a set of requirements—additional letters from mental health practitioners and the purchases of particular kinds of safes—not based on any policy or laws, but on requirements of Defendants’ own-making. While “[a]nalogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue,” not a “historical twin or ‘dead ringer,'” the Defendants have failed to provide any relevant analogy, historical evidence, or relevant argument at all. Defendants’ conduct is a plain violation of the Second Amendment.

{Defendants dedicate much of their brief to what amounts to counsel’s musings about the reasonableness of the PLS’s actions as to the Wysockis. At issue is not whether Officer Scaglione acted unreasonably, but whether Scaglione’s exercise of discretion in suspending the Wysockis’ licenses and imposing obligations based on their daughter’s mental health incident, is supported by history and tradition.}

The court also noted that there seemed to be no state-law authority for the revocation, or even any municipal policy supporting it:

Chapter 1, Section I of the Handbook provides that Nassau County can revoke a license under New York Penal Law § 400.00(11). And Penal Law § 400.00(11)(b) provides that:

[w]henever the director of community services … makes a report pursuant to section 9.46 of the mental hygiene law, the division of criminal justice services shall convey such information, whenever it determines that the person named in the report possesses a license issued pursuant to this section, to the appropriate licensing official, who shall issue an order suspending or revoking such license.

Here, there was no report from the division of criminal justice or other similar entity to Nassau County. Scaglione simply informed the Wysockis—based upon Dennis’s self-reporting—that their pistol licenses were going to be suspended given their daughter’s expressed thoughts of self-harm. In other words, it appears that Nassau County revoked the Wysockis’ licenses, not based upon the authority granted by § 400.00(11), but some other (unidentified or nonexistent) authority altogether. (As for the seizure and surrender of the firearms, that appears to flow from the license revocation, under Penal Law § 400.00(11)(c).) …

[I]t appears Defendants—in seizing the Wysockis’ firearms (or requiring their surrender) and creating new barriers to their return (and for the reinstatement of their licenses)—have acted entirely outside of the PLS Handbook….

The court, however, rejected plaintiffs’ facial challenge to Penal Law § 400.00(11):

A facial constitutional challenge “is ‘the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, because it requires [the challenger] to establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the [law] would be valid.'” Their briefing contains no explication of the PLS Handbook or § 400.00(11) to circumstances other than their own, and they make no argument that there is no set of circumstances where the law could be applied consistent with the Second Amendment. The Wysockis rely only on their own experience and general assertions that the Nassau policies are unconstitutional. The Court cannot, therefore, rule out that at least “in some of its applications,” Penal Law § 400.00(11), as implemented by the PLS Handbook, is consistent with the Second Amendment.

Amy L. Bellantoni (The Bellantoni Law Firm, PLLC) represents plaintiffs.

The post Banning Parents from Possessing Guns Because Their Child Has Described Thoughts of "Harming Herself Using a Rope" Violated Second Amendment appeared first on Reason.com.

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What are the limits of executive power, and how should such limits be enforced by the courts?

If there was a single dominant theme in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently concluded 2025–2026 term, then those two questions capture it in a nutshell. This was a SCOTUS term uniquely focused on the debate over the proper scope of presidential authority.

That makes sense, given the current occupant of the White House. In his second term, President Donald Trump has pursued an agenda of maximalist executive power on every front. Trump was not the first president to bypass Congress and seek to govern via executive fiat alone, of course. But the brazenness of Trump’s executive overreach still stands out.

Trump did ultimately lose some of these cases when they finally reached the Court. But he was not without certain dependable allies on the bench. Indeed, one justice in particular made it clear that if it were up to him, Trump would have prevailed in every single case that tested the scope of his executive power.

Consider the tariffs case. Six members of the Supreme Court, including two justices appointed by Trump himself, argued that the president violated the separation of powers by wielding a tariff-making authority that he did not lawfully possess. Writing in dissent, however, Justice Clarence Thomas not only maintained that Trump deserved to win, but also argued that the tariff-making power—which the Constitution places in the hands of Congress only—could be surrendered entirely by Congress to the president without raising a single constitutional eyebrow.

Congress “has many powers that are not subject to the nondelegation doctrine,” Thomas asserted in Learning Resources v. Trump. Among them, he claimed, are “the powers to raise and support armies” and “the power to regulate external affairs.” In other words, according to Thomas, the president may act unilaterally in such vastly important areas and Congress, the branch of government actually vested with such powers under the Constitution, would suffer no constitutional injury at all.

Consider also the legal wrangling over immigration. In Mullin v. Doe, a 6–3 majority led by Justice Samuel Alito affirmed the Trump administration’s decision to strip Haitian and Syrian nationals of a legal protection known as temporary protected status (TPS). Thomas joined Alito’s majority opinion in full. But Thomas also wrote separately to argue that Trump should have won the case on even broader grounds.

The Haitian nationals involved in the case had pointed to numerous discriminatory statements made by the president to argue that the decision to strip them of TPS was motivated by racial animus, thus violating the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. Alito’s majority opinion rejected that claim, holding that Trump should win because there was a plausible “race-neutral” explanation that could also account for what happened.

In his solo concurrence, Thomas argued that the Court had no business even weighing the Haitians’ equal protection claim in the first place because “‘courts cannot examine’ ‘the President’s actions on subjects within his “conclusive and preclusive” constitutional authority,’ regardless of whether he violates the Constitution in exercising that authority.” For Thomas, this is yet another area in which the president may act unilaterally without facing any constitutional check from any other branch of government, including judicial review by the Supreme Court. Notably, not even Alito, another reliable vote for Trump, was willing to go that far.

The president of the United States—both Trump and every president who comes after him—is now more powerful than before, thanks in part to the Supreme Court. Had Clarence Thomas gotten his way this term, the executive would be even stronger still.

The post Clarence Thomas Doubled Down on Presidential Power appeared first on Reason.com.

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7/9/1868: The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified.

The post Today in Supreme Court History: July 9, 1868 appeared first on Reason.com.

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In February, President Donald Trump might not have had red-hot economic numbers to point to, but at least he could say gas prices were down 7.3 percent since he took office and annual inflation was at just 2.4 percent. Then Trump started a war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and chaos engulfed a big chunk of the world economy. In the two months after the war began, gas prices rose 29 percent. Airfares are up 5.6 percent as well. Some items are resistant to war-induced price hikes, such as sugar and sweets (down 1.7 percent since February). But the war against Iran has clearly caused a price hike at the pump, and pretty much everywhere else in the economy too. All these numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest data from April 2026.

 

Category	Change since Trump took office	Change since Iran war began
Overall Inflation	4.2%	1.5%
Tobacco and smoking products	9.2%	0.5%
Cable, satellite, and livestreaming services	1.4%	0.8%
Medicinal drugs	-1.6%	-1.3%
Meats	10.7%	1.2%
Televisions	-5.4%	0.2%
Cigarettes	10.3%	0.2%
Prescription drugs	-2.2%	-1.5%
Sugar & Sweets	6.8%	-1.7%
Airline fares	9.4%	5.6%
Gasoline, unleaded regular	19.6%	29.0%
Alcoholic beverages	2.7%	0.5%

 

The post The Sindex: Gas Prices Rose 29% in 2 Months After Trump Went to War With Iran appeared first on Reason.com.

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In 2022, sheriff’s deputies in Adams County, Ohio, showed up at the home of the Grammy-nominated rapper Joseph Foreman, a.k.a. Afroman, with a warrant and a tip about a basement dungeon. They busted down the front door, rifled through his belongings, and seized thousands in cash. The search turned up nothing—the house didn’t even have a basement.

Rather than let it go, Afroman made music about it and used surveillance footage of the raid in music videos and on merchandise. Seven of the deputies sued him in 2023, claiming he’d used their likenesses for commercial gain and caused them embarrassment and reputational harm. In March, Afroman showed up to trial in an American flag–print suit, arguing he had a First Amendment right to mock the deputies who kicked down his door. A jury agreed.

In a conversation with Reason‘s Andrew Heaton, Afroman says the verdict was a win for ordinary Americans who want the right to criticize public officials without being dragged into court. They also discuss small government, Afroman’s potential presidential platform, and why the man behind the anthem “Because I Got High” may be the unifying figure America needs.

Q: If I think you’ve kidnapped somebody and I break into your house, but I apologize and I fix the door, would we be OK? What could the cops have done to make the situation OK?

A: It’s OK to make mistakes in this lifetime. It’s not OK to not apologize for making those mistakes. They put erasers on the end of pencils because they expect you to make mistakes. I expect a human being to make a mistake, but when a human being knows they made a mistake and they’re not apologetic and they’re arrogant about it, then that takes you down a whole other road.

Q: Why do you think the deputies thought this would work? I assume the threshold for this is so high that it was very unlikely they’d pull it off.

A: Yes. I believe they live in a small world. Being government officials, they control that small world. The police department is inside the courthouse. They all meet up at the snack machine and laugh, and they’ve got ongoing relationships with each other. They are accustomed to bullying the civilians of Adams County. They are accustomed to influencing the jury with intimidation, or just the whole “the police are always right every single time, under every single circumstance.” They are accustomed to those types of situations. They figured that they could violate me and then sue me and then win.

Q: Is this a First Amendment case from your perspective and from the case that your attorney pushed?

A: Yes. We the people. The government is for the people, by the people. The people supervise the government. I am the government supervisor. I have the right to criticize and critique my government, my employees.

Q: Do you think this is going to embolden people in terms of free speech in general?

A: Yes, sir. But it’s nothing that I gave the people. It was something that the Founding Fathers of America gave the people hundreds of years ago. I just microwaved it and reinstated it. Just reminded people about it.

Q: Is there anything about your trial that people don’t understand?

A: I don’t think so. I think everybody gets it. The police raided my house, didn’t find nothing, were sarcastic, ornery, and unapologetic about the damages they did. I did the most peaceful, positive thing I could do: made songs about them to raise money for the damages they caused. They had the arrogance and the audacity to try to sue me. I told them that I had freedom of speech. They lost. Beautiful story. Beautiful American story!

Q: If you run for president again, would your campaign be weed legalization? Would you also want to get into police reform? What kind of stuff would you want to have in your platform?

A: I’m going to do a whole lot more with freedom of speech, corruption in the government. I want a smaller government. I want to get crooked judges and police officers out of the government. I want better-character people. I want people with integrity.

Q: If you end up running on legalizing weed, getting rid of corruption, and pro–free speech, you’d probably have my vote. I think there are a lot of people who would very much resonate with that message.

A: I’m not a scholar on paperwork, but I think this world is missing common sense, and I’ll bring it back. Everything will be all right. People might think about me being president; they might roll their eyes and think that’s the most absurd thing. I believe I can unite America. I’ve been in every circle, every circle—circles that you might feel I shouldn’t be in. I realized that we’re not as different as we think we are. Just with that knowledge, I believe that I know how to move in a way that will unite us. We were united when I was celebrating freedom of speech. I had Republicans jumping with me. I had Democrats jumping with me. I had Libertarians jumping with me. I had white people. I had country hillbillies with long beards and overalls jumping with me. I had some thugs jumping with me. I believe I can unite America. I love everybody, and a lot of people love me. Of course, everybody ain’t gonna love everybody. But I believe I can unify the country, get the patriotism going again, get the spirit going again, and bring us all together.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.

The post Afroman on Free Speech, Government Abuse, and Election 2028 appeared first on Reason.com.

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In December, the Denver City Council voted against letting charter airline Key Lime Air lease space at the airport because it transports immigration detainees for the federal government. That decision risked losing $90 million in federal funding since airlines are supposed to be treated equally. In a January 2026 meeting, City Attorney Miko Brown reportedly told airport officials to investigate the airline’s safety record—not for real safety reasons, but to create a legal justification for the council’s vote after the fact. Brown and the mayor’s office called these claims false and said there was no push for a fake investigation. But in a memo written at the time that was obtained by CBS Colorado, airport lawyer Everett Martinez described what Brown said in the meeting, including her comment that “a bad argument is better than no argument.” City officials said they were unaware of the memo and that no one who attended the meeting would comment, citing confidential communications.

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