This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, October 13th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown. Never let it be said that local officials are necessarily less tyrannical

than their state or federal counterparts.

In Ohio, a case of one couple's incompatible landscaping could end up costing them literally

millions of dollars and fines.

Maurice Thompson directs the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law.

He's taking the case.

We discussed the fight last month.

Thanks in part to Tyson-Tims.

The Supreme Court has come down on the side of, yes, there are in fact such things as excessive

fines.

And you are handling a case that involves this issue it's almost much much

much larger as an issue so describe what describe the case.

It's hard to believe in some ways that new constitutional ground has yet to be broken and needs to be broken on one of the enumerated Bill of Rights,

but the Eighth Amendment includes the successive fines clause and doesn't say anything more.

And like you say, we know that taking a small-time drug dealer's expensive car is

excessive but that raises the question what about these very ubiquitous and very common trivial code violations where they're enforced with anything from $100 a day fines to $1,000 a day fines.

And that's just the case that we have,

the 1851 Center has in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals now where our client is being fine

that amount for quote unquote incompatible landscaping. What does that mean?

Good question.

The term incompatible landscaping is not defined in the Columbus City Code.

...