. @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.
I hope the vast majority of freedom-loving Americans are uncomfortable with the idea that masked police are now telling people engaged in First Amendment-protected activity that they are "domestic terrorists" who will be added to a secret government database.
Our Latest Podcast: Won't You Take Me To YIMBYTown?
Recorded before a live audience at @YIMBYTown 2025! With @ProfSchleich@andrewdfine & @AriBFla!
https://t.co/Hhi4EhMlvp
Short Circuit is coming to @YIMBYtown 2025! A live podcast recording w/ @ProfSchleich@andrewdfine & @AriBFla & @IJSanders, in New Haven, CT on Sept 15. We'll highlight recent housing cases & where the courts are on allowing people to build housing. Link to sign up to YT below!
My guest on @yeomanpodcast #21 is @AriBFla of @IJ. We discuss the legal history of zoning, the cultural and political backdrop for the controversial 1926 Euclid decision, recent litigation successes, and zoning's constitutional vulnerabilities. @VincentGGraham joined as co-host.
@aaron_lubeck@alexisxrivas In some locales, lengthy inaction can trigger a right of action by the property owner to secure immediate approval. I quite like that approach. Strikes me as more workable than litigating it as a taking, which is always hard to win on.
Some towns rip citizens off by imposing petty fines.
Dunedin, FL collected $3.6 million in fines in 6 years.
They charged one man $35,000…for not mowing his grass.
@IJ lawyer @AriBFla says: “Code enforcement is a major cash cow.”
An update to my story from 6 years ago:
If it’s legal to sell a product, it’s also legal to talk about that product. But not in the Fifth Circuit. That’s why @IJ’s just-filed cert petition in Cocroft v. Graham asks #SCOTUS to clarify the commercial speech doctrine, which can silence entrepreneurs like Clarence.
Often, the things government destroys are things that never existed: buildings never built, businesses never opened, ideas never pursued. But here’s a visible cost: a treehouse literally destroyed by regulation.
After letter from @IJ Senior Attorney @AriBFla, Broward County finally realizes that Leann Barber should be allowed to keep operating her charitable vegetable garden for low-income kids after all. https://t.co/Ko8nPnsaYk
“Restrictive zoning is hard to escape. It follows people from cradle to grave — starting with day care and ending with burial. The ultimate losers are consumers, who get stuck with less choice” - well said by my @IJ colleague @KatrinMarquez https://t.co/r6Oy8BakDq
3 years ago today, @IJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of a mechanic in Pasadena, Texas, challenging the city's parking minimum law.
His story shows how local zoning laws and bureaucrats can turn someone's American Dream into a nightmare.🧵
@WorksInProgMag The stories and the data show that *most extremely poor people avoid homelessness by sharing housing with others*, most often their own parents. But in high-cost cities, people with some means are less likely to be able to offer free housing to their loved ones:
It might look like regular asphalt to you. But activists trying to stop a California food bank call it a "historic parking lot." @ocregister@AriBFla@IJ https://t.co/O6X8HDQYDr