Week in Review: Victory! Free Speech Vanquishes Forced Speech

You shouldn’t have to pay for speech you don’t support just to do your job. The Goldwater Institute went to federal court to defend this commonsense principle, and we won.

This week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Louisiana must stop forcing New Orleans attorney Randy Boudreaux to pay mandatory bar association dues as a condition of practicing law.

Louisiana is one of dozens of states that force lawyers to join their state’s privately run bar associations, which use their members’ dues to engage in a host of controversial activities that have nothing to do with ensuring lawyers are qualified and behave ethically. That’s a violation of Randy’s First Amendment liberties. So the Fifth Circuit ruled that the government cannot compel Randy to pay dues to a state bar association that engages in any activities that are not “inherently connected” to regulating the legal profession or improving the quality of legal services.

Goldwater will continue to defend the First Amendment and challenge these unconstitutional requirements in states around the nation—from Louisiana to Oregon to Oklahoma. After all, no one should have to pay for other people’s politics just to pursue their profession.

Read more here. 

We’re Suing the ‘Egg Bureaucrats’ 

Arizona small business owner Grant Krueger was already running his restaurants on razor-thin margins before unelected “egg bureaucrats” hatched an illegal scheme to poach rights and scramble livelihoods.

We’re not going to let that happen. This week, Goldwater teamed up with Pacific Legal Foundation to sue the Arizona Department of Agriculture (AZDA) on Grant’s behalf for unconstitutionally mandating that only cage-free eggs be sold in the state.

As restaurants and restaurant-goers alike are already struggling with inflated food prices, the cage-free egg rule could impose up to $66 million in increased costs on Arizonans. “Unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to arbitrarily impose these kinds of harmful mandates on small business owners like me,” Grant says.

The Arizona Constitution gives lawmaking power to the legislature, but rather than follow the law, the Department of Agriculture created a brand-new policy that affects the entire state—all while acting with zero checks and balances. The AZDA is part of the Administrative State, a vast web of regulatory agencies staffed by appointed bureaucrats. These agencies don’t just create rules with the force of law out of thin air—they effectively act as prosecutor, judge, and jury when prosecuting alleged violations. But the Goldwater Institute is reining in the Administrative State nationwide, helping numerous Americans like Grant stand up to the bureaucratic bullies.

As Grant says: “If the government can do this with eggs, what else can they do it with?”

Read more here.

Fighting Government Giveaways in AZ Supreme Court

The Arizona Constitution is clear: no more taxpayer-funded government giveaways.

That’s what Goldwater Institute attorneys told the Arizona Supreme Court this week as we delivered oral arguments before the high court in an important case about taxpayers’ rights. Goldwater’s lawsuit, the Institute’s twelfth case before the state Supreme Court, involves the city of Scottsdale’s decision to lease out swimming lanes in government-owned pools at below-market rates to a private business favored by city politicians. But the Arizona Constitution’s Gift Clause forbids taxpayer-funded subsidies to private entities.

Governments enthusiastically hand out millions of taxpayer dollars to private businesses for projects big and small. That money usually goes down the drain as the projects’ promised benefits to the public fail to materialize. But the Goldwater Institute is giving America a blueprint for how to defeat illegal government subsidies and safeguard taxpayers’ rights: in 2021, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in our favor and reinforced the state constitution’s ban on taxpayer-funded freebies, and just last year, we defeated Pima County’s $15 million subsidy for a space balloon tourism company.

As Goldwater told the Arizona Supreme Court, government exists to protect the rights of citizens—not to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

Read more here.