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Bryna Godar
Bryna Godar is a staff attorney for the State Democracy Research Initiative at University of Wisconsin Law School.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down Legislative Vetoes
The case marks a major shift in how Wisconsin’s government functions.
American Indians and Indigenous Peoples in State Constitutions
In the shadow of federal law, some state constitutions address American Indian land, taxation, gaming permissions, voting rights, cultural protection, and governance.
Recent State Judicial Opinions Critique Lockstepping
Justices in Connecticut, Texas, and Pennsylvania have called on their courts to embrace independent state constitutional interpretations.
Sikora v. Iowa
Iowa Supreme Court held that a former incarcerated person’s state constitutional and tort damages claims against the state and correction officers for releasing him from prison five months late were barred by the legislature’s choice not to waive sovereign immunity for false imprisonment claims. Three dissenting justices would have held that the right to sue an official for false imprisonment was part of the common law at the state constitution’s adoption and was secured by its liberty guarantees, precluding legislators from eliminating that right in the state tort claims act.
Carrie Ann Donnell
Carrie Ann Donnell is a lawyer in Arizona and founder of American Juris Link, a nonprofit organization that helps pro bono litigators advance the rule of law.
A New Tool Makes Comparing State Constitutions Easier
Scholars, practitioners, and judges can quickly see how constitutional provisions differ or overlap with a resource from the nonprofit American Juris Link.
State v. City of San Antonio
Court of Appeals blocked a city from distributing payments under a $100,000 fund created to cover reproductive healthcare costs, which may include out-of-state travel for abortion care, while a full appeal is pending. Preliminarily held the fund violates the state constitution's gift clause because sending residents to undergo procedures out of state that Texas prohibits within the state does not count as a public purpose. Although the city had not yet disbursed any money and argued it still had the option to choose not to pay for out-of-state abortion travel, the panel found it sufficiently likely such payment would occur for the dispute to be ripe.
State v. Amble
Iowa Supreme Court revisited its 2021 decision in State v. Wright that the state's search and seizure clause requires police to obtain a warrant before searching garbage placed curbside for collection, finding that subsequent enactment of a state statute providing such garbage "shall be deemed abandoned property" means a warrant is no longer constitutionally required. The majority reasoned that Wright relied on "positive law" -- a local anti-scavening ordinance prohibiting anyone but licensed trash collectors from picking up trash -- to define private property rights, and the state statute changed that positive law by preempting the local ordinance. A dissent opined that the majority's position allows legislative "end-runs" of constitutional rights and disregards an overarching reasonable-expectation-of-privacy analysis.
