Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.
Sonia Ekemon recently became a widow, and she wants to support herself and her three children by braiding hair, a skill she first learned in a refugee camp in Benin. But that's illegal in Idaho, where she's lived since 2000, unless she spends upwards of $20,000 to attend beauty school where the curriculum is both irrelevant and antithetical to natural hair care. IJ Attorney Dan Alban has more on IJ's newest lawsuit in the Idaho Statesman.
At oral argument in the Supreme Court last week, the Solicitor General argued that the federal gov't takes the position that a Bivens remedy is available to victims of run-of-the-mill Fourth Amendment violations (like illegal searches and seizures and excessive force) by federal officers. Which was quite a surprise! Because the gov't has for years taken the opposite position in a pair of IJ cases now before the Court. Click here and here to read our supplemental briefs in support of certiorari.
