Your free speech rights
shouldn’t have to be violated in order for you to defend them.
That’s what Goldwater
Institute Senior Attorney Matt Miller writes in a new
In Defense of Liberty post. This week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
heard oral argument in Speech
First v. Fenves, a case involving a challenge to a set of
speech-chilling rules at the University of Texas at Austin. Campus free speech
nonprofit Speech First is “challenging the University’s creation of so-called
‘campus climate response teams,’ the purpose of which is to investigate
allegations of ‘incivility,’ ‘harassment,’ and ‘rudeness’ on campus,” Miller
says.
At this week’s oral
argument, Miller explains, Speech First contended that “one does not need to
wait for his or her free speech rights to be violated before they can bring
suit under the First Amendment.” At the same time, the University claimed that
the harm from a First Amendment violation must be “certainly impending” before
a speech policy can be challenged. But, Miller writes, “[i]f the government
enacts a policy that opens you up to ideological harassment and intimidation,
how much harm must you suffer before you can sue to defend your constitutional
rights?”
The Goldwater Institute,
joined by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Cato Institute, has filed
an amicus brief in support of Speech First. You
can read that brief here.
A Tax By Any Other Name
Call it what you want.
But Phoenix’s ride-sharing tax is unconstitutional, no matter what you name it.
This past week, the
Goldwater Institute filed a friend of the court brief in the lawsuit
challenging the constitutionality of Phoenix’s recently approved tax on
ride-share services to and from Sky Harbor Airport. In December, the Phoenix
City Council drastically increased the existing tax to be picked up and
instituted a new tax to be dropped off at Arizona’s busiest airport by
ride-sharing services. They approved the measure even though it directly
violates the state Constitution, which prohibits cities from creating or
increasing “any sales tax, transaction privilege tax, luxury tax, excise tax,
use tax, or any other transaction-based tax, fee, stamp requirement or
assessment on the privilege to engage in…any service.”
The Phoenix City
Council says this really isn’t a tax after all, but rather a charge imposed for
the use of airport property. But as Goldwater Institute Vice President for
Litigation Timothy Sandefur writes
at In Defense of Liberty, that argument simply doesn’t hold water: “Arizona
courts have repeatedly emphasized that they don’t indulge in hypertechnical or
semantic arguments in tax law, and especially not when interpreting voter
initiatives that are intended to protect people from tax increases….The city’s
argument is that this isn’t a transaction-based fee on the service of airport
transportation, but instead only a fee for access to the airport by people
engaged in the service of transportation is the sort of hair-splitting that
courts have repeatedly rejected.”
You
can read our full brief here.
Why Military Spouses Are Unemployed—and How to Fix It
Military spouses are
stressed out about work, and it’s no wonder why: The unemployment rate for
military spouses is about six times greater than that of the civilian
workforce.
Now, two new reports
show how state laws are keeping military spouses from working in the career of
their choice, leading to major financial and emotional stress for them and
their families. Goldwater Institute National Investigative Journalist Mark Flatten
discusses the reports on
In Defense of Liberty. According to an assessment
of state occupational licensing laws from the U.S. Department of Defense, “the
spouses of active-duty service members experience high rates of unemployment
and under-employment, or simply leave the careers they have trained for,”
Flatten writes. And in a separate survey
of military families released by the nonprofit group Blue Star Families, “military
spouses cited their ability to work in jobs that meet their qualifications as
their top issue of concern with military life.”
Flatten released a Goldwater
investigative report this past December on the employment and licensing
challenges that military spouses face, featuring interviews with more than a
dozen military spouses—all of whom are frustrated by the confusing rules and
unnecessary red tape they’ve had to navigate to continue working in their
chosen field upon moving to a new state. You can learn more
about what the Goldwater Institute is doing to break down barriers to work for
military families here.
