I’m 28 USC 591 et seq. for Halloween this year.

Today is the 250th anniversary of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. @IJ attorney @JosephRGay calls on the state to revive the protections that predated the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights: richmond.com/opinion/column…

OTDH in 1776 the Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted. It was a profoundly important historical achievement. But do those rights still protect Virginian today? Unfortunately, as I write in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (link follows), the answer often is “no.”

The upshot: When Virginians ask a Virginia court to tell Virginia officials to stop violating rights from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, courts often say they have no power to enforce our fundamental rights.

Courts created this mess, but the General Assembly bears blame for sitting on the sidelines. It could fix the situation with legislation reaffirming that Virginia courts have a duty to enforce our constitutional rights.
What better time than the Declaration's 250th anniversary.

We're headed to the Supreme Court in Dept of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards!

“Small businesses targeted for fines have the right to defend themselves in a real court, with a real judge and jury, rather than an agency court where the only judge is an agency bureaucrat,” said IJ nson (@FreeRangeLawyer).

“It’s fundamentally unfair to try a business in a court where everybody involved is employed by the same administrative agency.”

At a time when Arlington County is raising taxes and cutting services, maybe we shouldn't be spending limited funds on a board that is openly antagonistic to our rights (and that is being used as a thinly veiled effort to block affordable housing) 1/5

At the same time, Arlington is proposing to shutter some community centers, withhold tax revenue that usually goes to schools, and raise property tax rates (on top of rising assessments). E.g., arlnow.com/2026/03/17/cou… 4/5

Instead of cutting services that serve the public, we might start with trimming bureaucracies that are threatening our rights. /end

Great news! The Montana Supreme Court unanimously upholds statewide zoning reforms!

That some reforms apply only to larger cities, or potentially impact people w/ covenants less, does not violate equal protection. And frontloading public participation is not facially invalid.

The amicus brief is here: ij.org/wp-content/upl…

The docket where you can access the Montana Supreme Court decision is here: supremecourtdocket.mt.gov/case-info/acti…

. @AriBFla & I filed an @IJ amicus brief supporting the reforms. We explain how modern zoning law completely upended the historical right to use your property for housing, that it did so largely to exclude people, and that the result has been a disaster for ordinary Americans.

The Supreme Court will decide this term, in Chatrie v. U.S., whether executing a multi-step geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment. The en banc Fourth Circuit deadlocked 7-7 on what they took to be the relevant question: whether the gov't conducted a "search."

For confused about how to determine which government acts count as a "search" under the Amendment. More recently, the search tests that produce the confusion have been defended as historically rooted. They're not, and the historical evidence is overwhelming. A draft of my new article is up on SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… Comments welcome at jwrench@ij.org.