Speaker 1: So it's probably worth mentioning as we launched into the
Speaker 1: next interview, which I'm looking forward to a great deal
Speaker 1: that James Madison, generally considered the father of Constitution, said,
Speaker 1: and this was one of our freedom loving quotes of
Speaker 1: the day this week, that the government exists to protect
Speaker 1: our individual rights and property rights. That's the reason the
Speaker 1: government exists is to protect property rights. Well, this will
Speaker 1: be a bit of a contrast. Joshua House joins us.
Speaker 1: Joshua is an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian,
Speaker 1: nonprofit public interest law firm that litigates constitutional cases protecting
Speaker 1: economic liberty, property rights, school choice, and other civil liberties.
Speaker 1: Hello Joshua, how are you hey? Doing great? Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. Do I understand that you grew up
Speaker 1: listening to the Armstrong and Getty Show riding in your
Speaker 1: mom's car. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, you know, commutes
Speaker 1: to school, basically starting it around. I want to say
Speaker 1: the age of thirteen, when my mom started a job
Speaker 1: out in Livermore. We got we started getting you guys
Speaker 1: on the on the in the car. Righttastic, So we've
Speaker 1: actually done some good in the world. Would you be
Speaker 1: so kind as to call my parents later to so
Speaker 1: I would be interested if anything our point of view
Speaker 1: had any uh impact on the direction you went with
Speaker 1: your schooling and your thoughts. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's the area. I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: strong libertarian streak in northern California. So I think that
Speaker 1: was kind of a product of the entire environment. And
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure I'm digging you know. This is
Speaker 1: a different topic, but how regularly we run into people.
Speaker 1: I've been listening to you since as a tiny kid
Speaker 1: with five kids. The hell so listen. Uh, you guys
Speaker 1: have had a couple of great victories lately. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about something I believe you're in the middle of,
Speaker 1: and that's fighting on behalf of a Norco homeowner who
Speaker 1: allegedly had violated some of the city's housing code. Tell
Speaker 1: us about that case. Yeah, sure, So Norco is about
Speaker 1: ten minutes south of Riverside. Um. It is not, you know,
Speaker 1: the typical suburban neighborhood. It is the kind of ranch
Speaker 1: homes they call themselves Horsetown, USA. In fact, everybody's got
Speaker 1: of a horse trail running through their backyard. This is
Speaker 1: in south central California. For folks listening around the globe,
Speaker 1: go on, Josh, that's right, the Great Inland Empire. So
Speaker 1: uh so you know, Ron, it was a hobby machinist,
Speaker 1: fixes up some things. He's got a lot of machinery
Speaker 1: in his yard. I remember being taken aback by the
Speaker 1: fact that he's got a giant kind of trailer thing
Speaker 1: in the back. But then I went around and everyone
Speaker 1: has some sort of horse trailer or something in his backyard. Well,
Speaker 1: he was cited for violating the city's code for all
Speaker 1: that kind of things. But instead of just sighting him
Speaker 1: and asking for a fine asking him to clean it up,
Speaker 1: they actually freatened to take his house because of the
Speaker 1: mess in the backyard. And that's that's when Ron started
Speaker 1: fighting back. He actually got an attorney, he got the
Speaker 1: case thrown out. They were trying to take it and
Speaker 1: put it into a receivership, which is where they give
Speaker 1: a government appointed official your property to fix it up
Speaker 1: for you. Uh, they were going to do that. He
Speaker 1: fought it. No receiver ever got the property. But then
Speaker 1: after he thought he had won, the attorneys for the
Speaker 1: city sent him a bill for over sixty dollars and
Speaker 1: that was supposedly because well, they had to pay that
Speaker 1: the costs of the whole receivership, but they didn't win
Speaker 1: the receivership. The court ruled in Ron's favor. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the court actually vacated kind of got rid of the
Speaker 1: original receivership ruling it had originally awarded the receivership when
Speaker 1: he was in the hospital. He couldn't show up the court.
Speaker 1: He had a heart surgery. Um. And this is what's
Speaker 1: crazy is that, you know, a normal government official going
Speaker 1: going into court when the court looks at you and says,
Speaker 1: are you sure you want to proceed because the defendant
Speaker 1: is in the hospital. A normal official who has you know,
Speaker 1: he's susceptible to the public will, is probably going to
Speaker 1: think twice, that's right. This. This is not a normal
Speaker 1: government official that's asking for the sixty dollars that brought
Speaker 1: this case against him. This is a private law firm.
Speaker 1: And the law firm actually makes its money by going
Speaker 1: after these people. It offers what's called cost recovery services
Speaker 1: to these tiny cities, and it basically says, hey, why
Speaker 1: pay your own attorneys when we'll get our fees back
Speaker 1: from the people we prosecute. And that goes for both
Speaker 1: criminal violations as well as civil enforcement cases like nuisance
Speaker 1: abatements or these receivership proceedings. So it's a prosecutor essentially
Speaker 1: asking you to pay for the privilege of having been
Speaker 1: prosecuted unsuccessfully in this case. And as you pointed out
Speaker 1: in some of the written material that we read before
Speaker 1: he came on, this was not like the first time
Speaker 1: they made this maneuver. These companies do this over and
Speaker 1: over again. Somebody's got backyard chickens they're not supposed to have.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden they say, all right, I'll get
Speaker 1: rid of the chickens, and they get hit with a
Speaker 1: giant legal bill for the right of being prosecuted. That's right.
Speaker 1: And actually this is kind of a follow up, so
Speaker 1: you're referring to another case. We had an India, which
Speaker 1: is also in the same same area of California, and
Speaker 1: you know, in that case, it was it was you know,
Speaker 1: it caused such a stir that the California legislature nearly
Speaker 1: unanimously passed a bill to stop this practice. The problem
Speaker 1: is they added, during the whole legislative rigmarole, a tiny
Speaker 1: exception that basically said, for civil cases. Well, the problem
Speaker 1: is a lot of enforcement cases in California don't go
Speaker 1: to criminal court. They go to a civil essentially a
Speaker 1: civil court, but it's still an enforcement proceeding, and the
Speaker 1: California has Supreme Court has still that look. A prosecutor,
Speaker 1: whether in a civil enforcement or criminal enforcement, cannot have
Speaker 1: a conflict of interest, cannot make money from prosecuting people.
Speaker 1: Joshua House is an attorney for the Institute for Justice.
Speaker 1: They try to protect your rights. So, josh just in general,
Speaker 1: before we let you go, I'm sorry, may we call
Speaker 1: you Joshua? Do you really prefer Joshua? Josh a shorter
Speaker 1: Why don't you go with that? Alright? Um, is even
Speaker 1: shorter than so, josh What is do you think the
Speaker 1: most common, the most egregious, the most annoying infringement on
Speaker 1: property rights going on in the US today? Well, I'd
Speaker 1: say I'm biased because kind of my niche here at
Speaker 1: the Institute for Justice is these code enforcement sorts of cases.
Speaker 1: And I think people don't realize, you know, we get
Speaker 1: all upset about the federal government and it's it seems
Speaker 1: so large and kind of Leviathan like, but really some
Speaker 1: of the gravest abuses of liberty can happen at these
Speaker 1: tiny municipal levels where there's a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: personal influence over the government, where you know, someone a
Speaker 1: city council decides they don't like the one guy in
Speaker 1: town who's kind of this, you know, maybe a bit
Speaker 1: of a character, and they can go after him. And
Speaker 1: there are very few do process protections for what goes
Speaker 1: on at kind of the local level. We haven't. We
Speaker 1: had another case actually in um in Pagdale, Missouri. It's
Speaker 1: right outside St. Louis, where one of our clients had
Speaker 1: been ticketed for having mismatched drapes. In other words, the
Speaker 1: drapes on some windows didn't match the drapes on other
Speaker 1: Windows's somewhere that was a thing. But really the point
Speaker 1: of that wasn't her color of her drapes. It was
Speaker 1: that the city made sometimes over its income from ticketing
Speaker 1: people this way. Well, right, you know, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: was just going to bring up the case of points
Speaker 1: just flitted out of my head. Um uh, where they
Speaker 1: had all the riots and everything um Ferguson, Missouri. That
Speaker 1: was the media was so obsessed with the race baiting
Speaker 1: aspects of the case that they barely reported on the
Speaker 1: fact that the people of Ferguson were thoroughly piste off,
Speaker 1: that they were constantly being targeted with tiki tak offenses
Speaker 1: and fine didn't stopped for rolling stop signs all the time,
Speaker 1: and that was a major part of the local budget.
Speaker 1: And they realized that they were being exploited because they
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to hire lawyers and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: there was a generalized resentment against the government. So I
Speaker 1: love that you guys are targeting this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: H Joshua House is an attorney for the Institute for Justice. Hey, Joshua,
Speaker 1: thanks a bunch. Let's stay in touch. Love the work
Speaker 1: you guys are doing great. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: All right, keep it up. That is so true. My
Speaker 1: the town I live in, it turns out, has been
Speaker 1: completely corrupt. There was just a big audit of it,
Speaker 1: and and they were playing fast and loose with so
Speaker 1: many different things and so many backscratching deals in illegal
Speaker 1: use of funds and funky accounting and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: They got caught as a small town. Newspapers go away
Speaker 1: and all our focuses on national media and the president,
Speaker 1: the president of the president, and we didn't. We don't
Speaker 1: even have the patience to talk about Congress anymore. It's
Speaker 1: the president, always the president.