In an amicus curiae brief filed in Luis v. United States, Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that a government freeze on the untainted assets of someone charged with (but not yet convicted of) a crime, when those assets are not connected to illegal activity, amounts to a forfeiture of property of a kind that the Founding Fathers rejected and should therefore be prohibited as unconstitutional. As one appellate lawyer noted, “It is unseemly and unjust for the government to impoverish those it prosecutes in order to disable their defense at trial.”

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of Don Karns and Nathan Magnusen, Rutherford Institute attorneys are challenging a Hampton, Va., law restricting voice amplifiers that was used to cite, convict and arrest the street preachers for sharing their message amidst crowds gathered for the City’s Hampton Bay Days.

The Rutherford Institute has filed a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) over its unregulated use of whole body scanners, which have been likened to virtual strip searches, in the nation’s airports.

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a First Amendment lawsuit against police officers who allegedly intimidated and threatened to arrest a man who was lawfully and peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights prior to a Giants v. Dodgers game by holding up a “John 3:16” religious sign in the public plaza in front of the San Francisco Giants ballpark.

In a 5-4 decision in Glossip v. Gross, a divided U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the use of a controversial drug as part of the government’s lethal injection protocols for death row executions. Citing the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, death row inmates had challenged the State of Oklahoma’s plan to use midazolam, an anti-anxiety drug that experts indicate would not create the deep coma needed to prevent inmates from awakening and avoid excruciating pain in death penalty executions. In justifying its ruling, the Court declared that the inmates did not show that an alternative method of execution entails a lesser risk of pain.