On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit issued its decision in Austin v. City of Pasadena, which correctly reversed a grant of qualified immunity to police officers who responded to a detainee’s epileptic seizure by repeatedly tasing him, thereby allowing a case where a man died in custody to proceed to trial. Although the court’s decision was encouraging and commendable, the facts of the case paint a stark picture of the police culture that has grown out of qualified immunity’s long shadow.

In 2019, Jamal Ali Shaw was arrested by Pasadena police on suspicion of public intoxication and taken to a local jail, where he was placed in detention Cell H. Four hours later, Shaw suffered an epileptic seizure and collapsed to the floor.

Other detainees in Cell H alerted the staff about Shaw’s condition, prompting Officer Joanna Marroquin to call for emergency medical services at 6:16 a.m.. Marroquin and Officer Ryan Whitehead then entered the cell and removed all detainees except Shaw. Video footage revealed Shaw convulsing and foaming at the mouth.

For approximately three minutes, Whitehead and Marroquin attempted to restrain Shaw’s movements, seemingly trying to pin him down. Marroquin then stepped back and used her Taser repeatedly in “drive-stun” mode on Shaw’s left side and leg. Shaw rolled away from the officers towards the toilet area and managed to get up. Another officer entered the cell, and Shaw approached Whitehead. Whitehead tasered Shaw in the chest, causing him to fall face-first onto the concrete floor. Then a fourth officer arrived and joined the others in attempting to “restrain” Shaw.

The EMTs arrived at 6:26 a.m. but were denied entry to the cell. Their request to transport Shaw on a gurney was dismissed, and the four officers continued trying to subdue Shaw. Shaw fell over, and the EMTs again offered to place him on a stretcher. They were again rebuffed.

At 6:28 a.m., the officers locked Shaw into a restraint chair and transported him to the booking area. Shaw screamed for help. Officials attempted to question Shaw despite his apparent unresponsiveness. Shaw called out for his mother, who had brought his epilepsy medication to the jail in the past. The officers kept Shaw in the chair for approximately 17 minutes.

Finally, the officers assented to handing Shaw over to the EMTs. He was moved to a gurney, handcuffed again, and placed in an ambulance. As the ambulance departed at 6:57 a.m., Shaw experienced cardiac arrest. He died the following day.

In deciding if a lawsuit holding police liable for Shaw’s death could proceed, the Fifth Circuit began with the same inquiry used in most summary judgment proceedings: a review of whether a reasonable jury could find that officers deployed excessive force or delayed emergency medical care. It recognized correctly that there were several junctures in this tragic incident where a reasonable person, conscious of their potential liability if not their own moral principles, would have avoided the sort of actions officers took here.

To begin with, physical restraint is an unconventional initial response to someone experiencing what has already been identified as an epileptic seizure. Tasering a detained individual in the midst of an epileptic seizure is not only unnecessary for safety but also highly unlikely to improve that individual’s well-being—especially if the Taser is deployed while the person is standing and there are no measures in place to prevent their head from hitting the concrete. Denying the assistance of EMTs, in order to place a person undergoing an epileptic seizure in a restraint chair, strays so far from any reasonable notion of aid or safety that it is difficult to comprehend the officers’ rationale.

This is how officer accountability should operate: if a reasonable jury could not possibly conclude that an officer’s behavior was unreasonable, the case should be thrown out to save the court’s resources and the officers’ time. But in cases like this one, where reasonable individuals could conclude that the officers acted unreasonably—even from the officers’ heat-of-the-moment perspective—the case should proceed to trial.

But it is highly unlikely that the unreasonable acts of these four Pasadena officers were simply irrational. Their reckless disregard for Jamal Ali Shaw’s well-being was likely due in part to a belief that, as police officers, they would not be held liable for their actions.

This belief is not unfounded. The doctrine of qualified immunity has repeatedly shielded police officers from liability for flatly unconstitutional behavior. It does this by burdening the court’s typical summary judgment assessment about whether a jury could find an officer’s conduct unconstitutional with an additional, unrelated, and arbitrary inquiry.

That second inquiry is the far less sensible “clearly established law” standard of qualified immunity, which paradoxically lacks clarity. Usually, it means that plaintiffs seeking relief must find a factually similar case in the same jurisdiction where another plaintiff was harmed by public officials in almost identical circumstances.

Few people would agree that a police officer shouldn’t even be brought to trial because they were the first officer in their jurisdiction to violate someone’s constitutional rights in a very particular way. And officers never learn this body of case law about what has and hasn’t been held to be unconstitutional misconduct. So it’s likely that the officers in this case had no idea that its haunting similarities to the police encounter that resulted in the death of Tony Timpa would make them vulnerable to a lawsuit. But qualified immunity demands proof of just such a horrible déjà vu in order for any lawsuit against a police officer to go forward. It’s a strange silver lining for the Shaw family that a similar tragedy had already occurred, clearing the way for them to seek compensation for Shaw’s death.

The Fifth Circuit laudably decided that Shaw’s family should be allowed to take their case against these officers to trial. It’s just unfortunate that that decision couldn’t start and end with their thoughtful discussion about the many points where a reasonable juror could find that, even without the benefit of hindsight, the officers were clearly acting unreasonably. Instead, the outcome was contingent on the pure happenstance of there being enough factually-analogous case law to satisfy qualified immunity’s “clearly established law” standard.

Congress should eliminate the “clearly established law” standard, which encourages reckless police behavior by creating a culture of unaccountability that disincentivizes officers from thinking rationally about the consequences of their actions. While the thoughtless conduct of these Pasadena officers would not find sympathy among the majority of our nation’s police force, they all bear the burden of the damage caused to their reputation by recurring instances of police misconduct. During a time when police recruitment is challenging, it is more important than ever to take steps to rebuild confidence in the institution of policing and make it a profession that officers can once again take pride in holding.

A widely noted new draft paper by two political scientists, Justin Grimmer of Stanford and Eitan Hersh of Tufts, surveys existing research and reaches a conclusion consistent with what I’ve argued for some time: for all the talk of democracy hanging in the balance from “voter suppression” and the like, “nearly all contemporary election laws have small effects on partisan election outcomes.” That goes for (to name a few) the availability of mail and lockbox voting as an alternative to in-person Election Day voting, voter registration through motor vehicles offices, and the dropping of inactive voters from registration rolls. An excerpt from the paper’s abstract:

Contemporary election reforms that are purported to increase or decrease turnout tend to have negligible effects on election outcomes. We offer an analytical framework to explain why. Contrary to heated political rhetoric, election policies have small effects on outcomes because they tend to target small shares of the electorate, have a small effect on turnout, and/​or affect voters who are relatively balanced in their partisanship.…

The caustic rhetoric that suggests the partisan stakes for election administration reform are very high is detached from empirical reality. Even very close elections are decided by margins larger than the magnitude of election reforms we examine in this paper. Further, the party that benefits from changes is often unclear. In all but the absolute closest elections, modest electoral reforms cannot affect partisan outcomes.

Here’s what I wrote for Cato a year and a half ago, after noting that for all the fuss about voter ID laws, there is no evidence they in fact affect registration, turnout, or election outcomes:

As it happens, a lot of claims commonly made about voter suppression on the one hand and ballot integrity on the other are surprisingly hard to validate. Some of the states with the most restrictive rules, for example, are also known for having some of the highest voter turnouts. Early, absentee, and by‐​mail voting affect when and how Americans vote, but there’s much less evidence that they make a big difference in who decides to vote or which side wins.

In the 2020 election, following years of claims of mounting voter suppression, voter turnout soared to a level not previously seen in modern times.

The election reforms that most often stir controversy, Grimmer and Hersh write, tend not to change partisan balance much because they “target narrow shares of the population, have a small effect on turnout, and/​or are imprecisely targeted at members of political parties.” They take up various hotly contested current voting reforms and find that they do not detectably influence partisan outcomes. For example, Arizona’s controversial practice of not counting ballots cast out of precinct drew a Voting Rights Act challenge that went to the Supreme Court in Brnovich v. DNC, but in fact the group of voters affected varied little by race from that of the state electorate overall.

Contrary to widespread assumptions, they find that re-enfranchisement of felons who have served their terms would not provide a big boost for Democrats, in part because relatively few felons take advantage of the restored franchise and in part because many who do vote Republican. (In fact, they project that Republicans would actually stand to gain more votes than Democrats in 19 states, Arizona among them, if felons got re-enfranchised coast to coast.)

That ties in with another point that bears emphasis: many old ideas about who votes for which party are no longer useful. “Voter suppression” narratives often rest on the notion that poorer and less educated voters will be differentially discouraged by some requirement. Nowadays, however—if not 40 years ago—those groups overall may lean Republican.

Grimmer and Hersh go on to offer evidence against the sometimes-made argument that the lack of effects on outcomes is the result of counter-mobilization fueled by opponents’ outrage. They do identify one policy choice that seems to have real and substantial effects on partisan outcomes, namely the decision whether to hold municipal elections on or off the federal cycle, which can result (among other effects) in helping nationalize the politics of local races. Ironically, that particular reform has been the subject of hardly any national partisan controversy.

In short, Grimmer and Hersh’s paper undercuts much of the received opinion about “voter suppression.” They summarize their findings: “compared to dire warnings and predictions in the public square, scholars have found only modest relationships between these laws and election participation and no consistent relationship between ‘suppression’ laws and partisan outcomes.”

And they go on to draw two excellent conclusions, which I heartily second. First, a clear implication should be “to lower the temperature [yes!] on election administration policies.…the media should not portray every change in an election law as a red-alert scenario that will determine future elections.” I’ve argued that the most serious challenge to democratic norms is likely instead to come from a different direction, namely from some groups’ refusal to accept as legitimate the outcomes of elections held in ordinary and regular form.

Their second point is also on target: a turn away from the relentless search for partisan advantage should not mean setting aside these issues of election procedure as unimportant. It should instead mean seeking to resolve them on their merits. Getting election procedure right can have major benefits for administrative efficiency, voter convenience, detection of bad practices, speed of tabulation, and the restoring of public confidence in outcomes, to name only a few of its legitimate goals. Let’s get on with it.

In the United States today, the word “liberal” is often linked to Democrats and others on the political left who favor using government to implement social change. But the word actually comes from the Latin root liber, which means free. And that is at the heart of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE), which was founded in 1999. ICLE’s mission is to renew Catholic schools “by drawing on the Church’s tradition of education, which frees teachers and students for the joyful pursuit of faith, wisdom, and virtue.”

According to the Institute, most modern schools are based on a pragmatic, utilitarian, secular philosophy that is fragmented and focused on skills, job training, and standardized tests. A Catholic classical liberal arts education, on the other hand, emphasizes wisdom, independent thought, and discovery while focusing on the whole child created in the image of God.

ICLE provides a number of resources for schools that want to adopt the Catholic classical educational philosophy. For schools that are considering this path, ICLE offers presentations for parents, clergy, and boards as well as training for teachers and school leaders. There are also conferences, workshops on various topics, publications, and site visits.

New this year after a pilot program in Denver, ICLE is launching a Catholic Educator Formation and Credential (CEFC) program. This 18-month program, delivered online and in-person, is designed to be an alternative to state licensure that can be used by Catholic dioceses across the nation.

Emily Zgonc is the principal at St. Michael School, a Catholic school in western Pennsylvania that was founded in 1899. This year, the school is embarking on a new ICLE partnership that Emily is very excited about. “ICLE has been working with Catholic schools across the United States to support a refreshing renewal of Catholic education,” she explains.

“We’re going back to our roots of what made Catholic education so effective and vibrant: the importance of story and wonder. Our students will be reading great stories that they can delve deeply into, befriending and learning life lessons from the characters. Instead of bland ‘social studies,’ our students will learn the history of western civilization and where they fit in that story. Going beyond a typical science class, we’re going to incorporate nature studies so our students can ‘get their hands dirty’ and dig into what they are learning about, awakening a sense of wonder and leading to deep questions. Our newly revamped curriculum will help our students grow to become intelligent, curious, and engaging adults.”

St. Michael School is not alone. Interest in classical education, including ICLE, has exploded in recent years. Earlier this week, ICLE hosted its national conference at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. While the Institute expanded conference capacity by 25 percent compared to last year, the event still sold out quicker than in the past.

I attended the ICLE conference to participate on a panel about school choice and Catholic schools. One of the topics I discussed was how the government largely monopolized education in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which crowded out many other models. School choice policies, like tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts, and vouchers, are helping to correct that problem. As interest grows in education options beyond local district schools—including interest in classical Catholic schools like ICLE partners—the expansion of school choice programs will help families access these options.

We often discuss how “Buy America” laws increase federal project costs by requiring pricier American-made materials, but from tiny Brookport, Illinois comes a humorous/​sad reminder that the protectionist law costs time and taxpayer money even when it’s waived:

Brookport City Council approved an increase in the bid for the sewer project of $51,274.50 to Mid West Petroleum during its monthly meeting on Tuesday, July 11.

While the engineers were waiting for a waiver of the Build America, Buy America Act in Washington D.C., parts for the international pumps had increased in cost. The pumps chosen as the best equipment for the city’s needs are not manufactured in the U.S., so a waiver was needed. The total awarded amount is now $1,760,424.50.

The approved construction loan for the sewer project passed last month was amended to add $714,000 because of construction overruns.

For more on Buy America laws (and why they should be repealed), check out my recent column on the subject.

Extensive media coverage of the idea of “greedflation” seems to be affecting public opinion. A new YouGov polling survey undertaken in June 2023 finds that more Americans blame inflation on “large corporations seeking maximum profits” than any other option they are given. 

A massive 61 percent of U.S. adults think profit-hunting corporations deserve “a lot” of blame for inflation, up from 52 percent in 2022 (see chart below). For context: this exceeds the number who blame spending by the federal government, the price of foreign oil, the war in Ukraine, or the level of consumer demand. Independents saw the biggest swing towards this profits-led inflation explanation, which surely reflects the disproportionate broadcast and print media coverage of a “heterodox” theory that academic economists regard as kooky.

When the last version of this YouGov survey was undertaken in October 2022, I was harshly critical of it. The questions seem almost designed to confuse the public about what inflation is. Ask most mainstream economists and they will say that, to a first approximation, inflation is a macroeconomic phenomenon driven by too much money chasing too few goods. These days they might talk in terms of aggregate demand and aggregate supply instead, to be more general. And yet, when offering up a menu of boogeymen to blame, YouGov doesn’t even list “the Federal Reserve” for censure. This, despite the Fed’s inflation mandate and the fact that macroeconomists see the Fed as the key institution affecting aggregate demand.

Effectively omitting low interest rates, quantitative easing, or an increased money supply as explanations for inflation, all that’s really left is government spending, supply-shocks from overseas, and various quack theories or partisan flexes. Little surprise then that when asked what government policies they believe would reduce inflation, the public’s modal choices include “increasing domestic oil production,” “investing in strengthening the supply chain [sic],” “having the government enforce limits on price increases,” and “fining companies for price gouging.” 

The increase in the perceived effectiveness of price controls is the most striking and worrying. Fifty-one percent of respondents now think that “having the government enforce limits on price increases would “probably or definitely decrease inflation” compared to 44 percent from those surveyed last October. This, despite the long, inglorious history of price controls as a failed means of controlling inflation. 

The greedflation story, as popularized by Senator Elizabeth Warren, clearly makes little sense. Companies didn’t suddenly get more greedy in 2021 and 2022, and then less so of late. There’s no reason to think there were massive changes in market power that led firms to suddenly be able to increase the level of prices either. And the idea that inflation allowed firms across different industries to suddenly tacitly collude to all raise prices simultaneously far beyond their cost uplifts ignores an inconvenient fact: consumers still need to be willing and able to pay the higher prices. This is only possible in a world where there’s more money for them to demand the products, begging the question: was too much aggregate demand the ultimate driving factor? 

Overall, this polling is profoundly depressing. Inflation isn’t seen by the public as a macroeconomic phenomenon that requires different macroeconomic policies to avoid or mitigate. Looking at the answers in the round, it’s clear that the public instead interprets “inflation” as synonymous with “the cost of living.” Hence any policy that those surveyed think will reduce their living costs—whether holding down certain prices, cutting interest rates, making more oil available, or cutting taxes—is seen by more people as likely to reduce inflation rather than increase it.

Citizens should be able to assert their rights over governmental opposition. One way they do so is by amending their state constitutions by initiative, where permitted. But courts sometimes stretch sensible legal requirements in ways that insulate the government from this sort of interference. One of the rules that can be stretched in this way is the single-subject rule, at issue here.

This case arises from the Attorney General’s seeking an advisory opinion on whether a recreational marijuana initiative, which has met the petitioning requirement for the ballot, may lawfully be put on the ballot. One of the briefs in opposition to the initiative, that of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, challenges it under the single-subject rule, maintaining that it violates the rule because it both decriminalizes marijuana and “commercializes” it. By the latter, the Chamber means it allows for its commercial sale in existing medical marijuana dispensaries, among other things.

Initiatives are particularly important for addressing mismatches between rights the people seek and what their representatives deign to allow, as this case illustrates. Those mismatches can have many sources; an important one arises when a statewide majority is represented by a legislative minority, either because of districting or for other reasons. Minority rule resulting from apportionment rules was a driving force behind the 1968 revision of the Florida Constitution, the revision that permitted constitutional amendment by initiative. When there is such a mismatch, and an initiative is used to overcome it, the people cannot rely on the government to adopt implementing rules. So the amendment itself must contain rules making it effective, rather than waiting for statutes, regulations, funding sources, licensure rules, and so on, to emerge from the political branches. But that runs the risk of those provisions being labeled a second subject.

Our brief responds to the Chamber’s in, principally, two ways. First, the proper judicial approach to the rule is one of moderation and pragmatism, and the Supreme Court of Florida should adopt such an approach. The court is, after all, standing between the people and a document they themselves established and reserved to themselves the right to amend, and that in turn establishes the state government. This reading is consistent with the history of the citizen initiative.

While Florida’s Supreme Court has enforced the single-subject rule more strictly against initiatives than against the state’s legislature (subject to its own rule), the proper approach would be the inverse. In the legislature, the rule addresses logrolling and riders, two ways representatives might fail in their duty to represent their constituents. These are less concerning for initiatives, where the voters do not answer to a constituency, riders are less troublesome, and logrolling is more difficult.

Second, even under Florida’s existing jurisprudence, the “commercialization” here does not change the subject. It is an effort to head off governmental opposition. Opposition is reasonable to expect as many recreational marijuana bills have died in the legislature. So the initiative includes what the Chamber calls “commercialization” provisions, which ensure that a means of distribution is available and that some dispensaries (those currently dispensing medical marijuana) are immediately licensed. If that makes for a single-subject violation, then the government, contrary to design, will always have a veto over such amendments, sapping them of their power to overcome governmental hostility.

Initiatives to amend the state constitution, which reflect greater trust in the people than in politicians, are a tool for checking the government. Courts should use great care in keeping them off the ballot. Because they often overcome governmental hostility, indeed, that is a core purpose, they often need to contain detailed rules for their implementation, because otherwise government will frustrate their purposes. So implementing rules, in particular, is not a second subject for the purposes of this rule. When citizens speak, the government should listen.

The next president will face a huge federal budget mess. Spending is driving up debt to unprecedented levels and is pushing federal intrusion ever deeper into state, local, and private affairs.

The most important question we should ask of 2024 presidential candidates is will they cut spending? Will they use their bully pulpit and budgeting powers to push Congress to cut?

The next president must be a dedicated spending cutter. Numerous candidates for the White House have track records on spending as governors. The table below includes governors who are in the race and some governors who are possible candidates.

The table shows general fund spending, which is the part of state budgets that governors have the most control over. The table shows spending for the first and last fiscal years each governor was in office. For governors still in office, the last year is their proposed spending for 2024. The table shows the annual average percent change in spending, and the change on a per-capita basis because state population growth rates differ.

By these metrics, the most frugal governors have been Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Kim Reynolds, Chris Sununu, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum, while the least frugal has been Gavin Newsom, Ron DeSantis, Gretchen Whitmer, and Nikki Haley.

Some caveats are discussed below. Also, broader fiscal assessments of these governors are available in Cato’s fiscal report cards.

Notes and Caveats

• The spending data is from NASBO fiscal reports. The most recent report includes 2022, 2023, and 2024. For prior years, I used the final “actual” figures from previous editions.
• General fund spending growth is just one measure of a governor’s fiscal performance.
• Governors share fiscal powers with state legislatures, which may or may not be controlled by the same party.
• The recent high inflation may have increased averages for current governors, although some current governors, such as Kim Reynolds, have nonetheless held spending down.
• California’s per-capita spending increased more than total spending because the state’s population is shrinking.
• I used Census actual state populations up until 2022, and then estimated 2023 and 2024 based on the growth in 2022.
• Broader discussions of these governors and their fiscal policies are in Cato report cards.