Government Asserts: All Your Cash Belongs To Us

Do you own your money? To most people, the question might seem silly. If it’s your money, of course you own it. If you don’t, who does? 

But ask a lawyer for the federal government, and you may get a different answer. “Money,” the government recently asserted in a brief in one of IJ’s cases, “is not necessarily ‘property’ for constitutional purposes.”

The government’s brief offered three rationales for that argument: (1) The government creates money when it prints it; (2) the government can take your money by taxing it; and (3) the Constitution allows the government to spend money for the “general welfare.”

In other words, if you ask a government lawyer who owns your money, the lawyer might answer, “We do.” At IJ, we have litigated cases involving cash seized at airports, on highways, inside homes, from safe deposit boxes, and out of bank accounts. Wherever money is found, the government tries to seize it.

The government advanced this argument in a case that IJ filed challenging the federal government’s practice of imposing fines through “administrative” courts, where both prosecutors and judges are employed by the same agency. Readers of Liberty & Law may remember the case: A judge employed by the Department of Labor sided with agency prosecutors to hold IJ’s client, small-business owner Chuck Saine, liable for over $50,000. 

Now the government was arguing that Chuck had no right to an independent judge because, when the government took his money, it was not taking his “property” at all. 

These are the kinds of arguments that you normally hear from people who are suspicious of government. We may suspect the government of believing these things. But these are not arguments you expect the government to advance on its own behalf. 

Still, seeing it in print, it explains a lot about the government’s behavior. Take our forfeiture cases, where the government regularly seizes cash and tries to keep it for its own benefit. At IJ, we have litigated cases involving cash seized at airports, on highways, inside homes, from safe deposit boxes, and out of bank accounts. Wherever money is found, the government tries to seize it. 

IJ’s landmark civil forfeiture study, Policing for Profit, looked at 15 states for which data were available and found that, on average, cash made up nearly 70% of forfeited property. 

And when the government isn’t seizing cash with civil forfeiture, it’s finding other creative ways to take it. Excessive fines. Bogus fines. Fees to use your property. Fees for using your property the “wrong” way. Liability imposed by kangaroo courts and biased judges. 

At IJ, we’ve challenged all these things. And we win. In this same issue of Liberty & Law, we report on our success curbing equitable sharing—which Nevada officers used to take Stephen Lara’s life savings—alongside a victory against a fining scheme in Humboldt County, California.

The government may act like it owns all the country’s cash, but it doesn’t. And IJ is here to make sure the courts agree.

Rob Johnson is an IJ senior attorney.