by Matt Miller
February 20, 2019
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court
ruling in a landmark civil forfeiture case will reverberate all the way to an
ongoing property rights case in Miami Beach, Florida.
In the Supreme Court
case, Timbs
v. Indiana, Tyson Timbs pleaded guilty to selling heroin to an
undercover police officer. On the basis of this plea, police seized his $42,000
Land Rover. Timbs then sued to recover the vehicle on the theory that the
seizure violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines. Both the trial
court and an Indiana appellate court agreed with Timbs. The Indiana Supreme
Court reversed these rulings not because it thought the seizure was
constitutional, but because of an open legal question about whether the Eighth Amendment’s
ban on excessive fines applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment.
In a unanimous
decision, the Supreme Court held that the excessive-fines clause of the Eighth
Amendment does apply to the states, which means that Timbs will get his Land
Rover back once Indiana courts sort out the case on remand. The decision is an
important victory for property rights in the fight against civil forfeiture
abuse. (The Goldwater Institute filed an amicus
brief in the case, urging the Court to rule in Timbs’s favor.)
Timbs also
raises an important question: If it is unconstitutional to take someone’s
$42,000 Land Rover because they sold heroin to an undercover police officer,
isn’t it also unconstitutional to fine someone $100,000 for doing nothing more
than listing their home on Airbnb or HomeAway? Because that is exactly what
Miami Beach, Florida, is currently doing. The city’s fines for conducting
short-term rentals start at $20,000 for the first offense and escalate
to $100,000 for the fifth and subsequent offenses. To be clear: Miami Beach
imposes these fines for the simple act of renting one’s home—or a room in one’s
home—on a short-term basis. These fines are not just imposed on nuisance or
party houses. They are imposed on anyone who is caught renting their
home on Airbnb, HomeAway, or other home-sharing service.
Miami Beach’s fines for
short-term rentals are not only the highest in the nation; they are also
unconstitutional, as the Timbs decision makes perfectly clear. That is
why the
Goldwater Institute is currently litigating the issue in Florida trial court.
Miami Beach argues that the fines are necessary in order to deter short-term
rentals. Putting aside the question of whether cities should have the right to
stop people from engaging in the age-old practice of home-sharing at all, Miami
Beach’s argument demonstrates why constitutional prohibitions on excessive
fines are so important to protecting individual liberties.
Because it possesses
the power to arrest and imprison you, the government can theoretically deter
almost any behavior it doesn’t approve of. Even common misdemeanors like
speeding could be eliminated overnight if the government could imprison you for
20 years for driving 56 in a 55 mph zone. But might does not make right, and
constitutional prohibitions against excessive penalties serve to protect
citizens from the asymmetrical nature of governmental power. Indeed, in Timbs,
the Court acknowledged that the right to be free from excessive fines is a
“fundamental” right, and that “all 50 States have a constitutional provision
prohibiting the imposition of excessive fines either directly or by requiring
proportionality.”
Miami Beach may be
correct that imposing absurd fines on peaceful homeowners will stop them from
conducting short-term rentals, but that does not make its scheme
constitutional. There are limits to how much the government can punish us for
breaking the law—limits embodied in the excessive-fines clauses of the U.S. and
all state constitutions, including the Florida Constitution.
“For good reason, the
protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout
Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,”
held the Timbs court. The prohibition is “both fundamental to our scheme
of ordered liberty and deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Timbs
was both a major victory against civil forfeiture abuse and a crucial first
step in the ongoing battle to protect private property rights in Indiana, in
Florida, and across the nation.
Matt Miller
is a Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute. He represents the plaintiff in
the Miami Beach home-sharing case Nichols
v. City of Miami Beach.
