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On June 24th, Thor testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration’s Subcommittee on Elections.  The hearing was titled, “Voting in America: A National Perspective on the Right to Vote, Methods of Election, Jurisdictional Boundaries, and Redistricting.”  A recording of Thor’s testimony is available at:  https://cha.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/voting-america-national-perspective-right-vote-methods-election

“Elections must be conducted according to clearly written laws that are faithfully followed and administered by election officials with transparency and without partisan bias,” Thor stated in his prepared testimony.  “Every eligible citizen, irrespective of their race, color or heritage, must have equal opportunity to cast a ballot, and every American must be confident that every lawfully cast ballot is accurately counted,” Thor continued.  “It is always easy to convince the winning candidate that he or she won.  But the test of a fair and honest election is when the losing candidate and his or her supporters accept the outcome as the will of the voters.  The legitimacy of the rule of law depends upon the electorate’s confidence in the conduct of our elections.”

 Thor served as a principal advisor to the Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III.

 Thor’s prepared testimony is available here.

On June 23rd, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark property rights decision in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid.  True North Law filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims regarding the Supreme Court’s decision in Cedar Point Nursery, explaining how the Supreme Court’s decision affects Trails Act taking cases.  True North’s brief is available here, and the Supreme Court’s decision is available here

Cedar Point Nursery owned a strawberry farm in California.  Cedar Point Nursery challenged a California regulation granting labor organizations a “right to take access” to its private property for up to three hours a day, 120 hours a year, for the purpose of recruiting the owners’ employees to join a labor union.  Cedar Point Nursery challenged this regulation as a per se physical taking of their private property in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Supreme Court agreed that the California regulation compelling landowners to allow union organizers a limited right of access to their property imposed a “servitude or easement” upon the owners’ land, which took the owners’ right to exclude others from their property.

As set forth in our brief, the Supreme Court’s decision, holding that a regulation imposing a servitude or easement upon an owner’s property is a per se physical taking for which the Takings Clause “imposes a clear and categorical obligation to provide the owner with just compensation,” emphatically supports the claims of landowners in Trails Act taking cases.