Week in Review: Goldwater Beats the Bureaucrat Bullies

November 20, 2021

Victory! The Goldwater Institute helped Virginia moms Debra Tisler and Callie Oettinger score a major victory in court after the Fairfax County School Board tried to shut down their freedom of speech, suing them for publishing legally obtained documents exposing how much the school district was paying in legal bills.

“They really took it to an extreme level to sue us, to try to take our freedom of speech away, and from sharing it with the public, what they were spending the funds on,” Tisler said Friday on Newsmax.

The ruling is a massive win for the First Amendment and for the rights of parents fighting back against extremist bureaucrats. The decision “is a prime example of why the Goldwater Institute’s efforts to protect transparency in government are so crucial,” writes Goldwater Institute Vice President for Litigation Timothy Sandefur, who defended the moms in court, especially as “school bureaucrats have taken to bullying and intimidating parents who stand up against what they see as the wasteful and dangerous actions of their local school boards.”

Time to Say Goodbye…to Louisiana’s Red Tape Nightmare for Small Businesses

Goldwater is suing Louisiana over its unconstitutional tax scheme on behalf of Brad and Hilary Scott, who own a small business in Prescott, Arizona. Not only have the Scotts spent a whopping 7,700 hours and $297,000 just to make sure they are complying with onerous sales tax regulations for jurisdictions that, in many cases, are thousands of miles away, but they even avoid selling to Louisianans because the state’s tax structure forces businesses to collect taxes for every parish in the state.

“If Louisiana expects out-of-state businesses to collect its local sales taxes, it has to make it simple, with one set of rules and one tax collector for the entire state,” says Jacob Huebert, the Goldwater Institute’s lead attorney on the suit, which we’ve filed in conjunction with the National Taxpayers Union Foundation and the Pelican Institute. “Louisiana’s neighbors and almost all other states have done that, and the Constitution demands that Louisiana do so as well.”

Learn more about the case at In Defense of Liberty.

Reclaiming American Federalism

Want to ensure that a group of elites in one swampy city don’t impose one-size-fits-all policies on a nation of 300 million? The solution is federalism, writes Goldwater Institute Director Education Policy Matt Beienburg for RealClearPublicAffairs.

Federalism “is the idea that we – individuals, families, and communities – know more about what’s important in our lives and what works in our neighborhoods than a politician 3,000 miles away,” he explains. Unfortunately, Beienburg adds, many public schools have decided to swap out federalism with the teachings of Critical Race Theory. “But all is not lost. Initiatives such as the Goldwater Institute’s Academic Transparency model state legislation, for instance, help empower parents to distinguish between schools that push concepts like Critical Race Theory and those affirming the Constitution,” he says.

Read the rest in RealClearPublicAffairs, and learn more about Goldwater’s efforts to promote academic transparency here.

Ditch the CRT Indoctrination, and Teach Kids Liberty Instead! (Webinar)

Across the country, public schools are filling children’s minds with the lies of Critical Race Theory and other destructive dogmas. Our children deserve better—they deserve to be taught about liberty!

That’s what Connor Boyack set out to do with the Tuttle Twins children’s book series, in which 11-year-old Ethan and Emily go on epic adventures with their Cuban grandmother and her time-traveling wheelchair. Join us December 7 at 1:00 p.m. MST, as Goldwater Executive Vice President Christina Sandefur hosts a special virtual chat with Boyack, where they’ll discuss the ideas behind these books and how the series became an international sensation.

Registration is free. Plus, just in time for the holidays, you’ll get a 40% off coupon for the entire 12-book Tuttle Twins series!

You can find out more about the webinar and sign up to attend by clicking here.