A self -proclaimed “urban cowboy” struggles in a County of Georgia over the horses he captured years ago.
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The last clause of Fifth modification It is simple: “Not even private property will be obtained for public use, without only compensation.” You do not have property rights if the government can take your things without a reason or without paying. But how do you make the government pay? A Court of Appeal just issued a critical decision This says that people can go to the federal court when the government does not pay them.
Brandon Fulton is known around Atlanta as “urban cowboy”. In 2017, Fulton was accused by the Fulton County of Animal neglect. Seven of his horses were seized. Nearly a year later, the criminal charges fell, but the horses never returned to him. Nearly two years later, Fulton sued the county for compensation in the federal court, claiming that horses are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
While you may believe that Fulton should simply prove that the county took its animals without the appropriate legal process and what its animals deserve, the Fulton County Commissioners Council said it could not bring them lawsuit in a federal court. The Regional Court agreed and said there is no way to sue a government directly for breach of 5th The amendment to the reception clause.
Government sets the rules on how to sue the government
In general, you cannot sue the government unless it agrees that it can be to be. For example, the federal government passed the KU KLUX KLAN law in 1871 to allow people to sue government and local government officials who violated their constitutional rights. Today, this law is Section 1983 of the US Code.
There is no federal law that explicitly says that people can go to the Federal Court to sue the state or local government on the violations of the pickup clause. In fact, last year, the US Supreme Court declined to rule on the matter in a case brought by Texas farmers, whose property had been effectively obtained from a Texas transfer project that flooded their land.
Texas had moved this case to the federal court and then successfully argued that the farmers had no right to sue them in the federal court. After the Supreme Court assumed the case, Texas changed its melody and admitted that breeders could eventually sue (at least in accordance with Texas law). With the march of farmers for compensation open, the Court refused to rule on the big question of whether the granting clause for its own grants the right to be heard in the federal court.
Now, a year later, 11th The US Circuit Court of Appeals answered “yes” to this question and ruled for Brandon Fulton. Could be a milestone decision.
The story behind the rights to receive the rights clause
The decision is full of interesting story. The majority notes that, in a strange parallel, one of the incentives behind the capture clause in the bill was the seizure of the horses. When the army of George Washington needed desperate horses, the animals were pulled by nearby farms. In the middle of the American Revolution, the farmers had no legal way of requesting payment.
John Jay, the first leader of the Supreme Court of Justice, proposed a legal rehabilitation for the download in a letter to 1778.th Amendment. But in the early years of democracy, the federal courts were a small part of the small federal government. It was not always clear what kind of cases they could hear.
In the first half of 19th Century, the primary way to get only compensation was to go to Congress. However, as the country grew up, it became inapplicable for the Legislative Corps in Washington to handle all claims. From the civil war, President Abraham Lincoln called on Congress to hand over these tasks to the judiciary. In 1887, the federal government passed the Tucker law to establish the legal framework for claims.
Court of Appeal: The Constitution means what it says
The majority of the appeal court is clear that the government can create procedures for how people can justify their rights, but the demand for a reception clause is a floor that cannot be ignored. They write: “At the end of the day, we read the words of the download clause to mean what they say. When a government gets private ownership, they are on the hook for” just compensation “.
The disagreement in this case comes from the main judge of 11th Circuit, Judge William Pryor. Pryor says there may be other legal paths for the Fulton case, including a lawsuit in accordance with Article 1983. The majority meters that such a lawsuit will probably be rejected by special immunity, leaving Fulton again without his simple compensation.
With Pryor in dispatch, there is a decent probability that the whole 11th The circuit could repeat the case or that the Supreme Court could accept it.
The Fulton Counton took the horses of Brandon Fulton and did not condemn him for a crime. He did not even try to get horses through civil abuse (which has constitutional problems of his own.) Judges should not do legal backflips to keep Americans justify their property rights secured by the Constitution. Fulton deserves his day in court.
