KGIII Matchup
Douglas O’Donnell (IRS)
vs.
Xavier Becerra (HHS)
He likes going fishing … for the IRS! NCLA client James Harper, purchased his first bitcoin in 2013 and consistently paid taxes and reported his bitcoin-related trades. His transactions were made through three digital currency exchanges, all of which promised to protect his privacy. But, in August 2019, Harper received a letter from the IRS stating that the agency had obtained his financial records without any suspicion of wrongdoing. The IRS accessed these records without probable cause by misusing the John Doe warrant process, violating Harper’s Fourth Amendment rights by searching and seizing his financial records. NCLA’s lawsuit argues that the IRS also violated Harper’s Fifth Amendment rights by seizing his private information without notifying him or giving him a chance to challenge the seizure, thus breaching due-process protections.
The price isn’t right. Secretary Becerra oversaw implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a law that allows the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to force a company to give up its constitutional property rights. The law violates the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine, which prevents the government from coercing companies into relinquishing constitutional rights. The law aims to reduce Medicare drug costs by forcing pharmaceutical companies to sell their products below market value. Since this would violate the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, the law threatens companies with severe excise taxes and penalties unless they comply.
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