Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize property without charging the owner with a crime. Simply carrying cash can be deemed suspicious and make you a target.
Carrying Cash
Is Not a Crime.
Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize property without charging the owner with a crime. Simply carrying cash can be deemed suspicious and make you a target.
Local, state, and federal agencies seize billions each year. Even if you can prove your money was obtained legally, you may be forced into expensive and time-consuming court proceedings just to get it back. Until governments end civil forfeiture, you are at risk of losing your hard-earned money, even if you have done nothing wrong.
Help us make it harder for police to seize—and keep—cash from innocent Americans!
We are fighting to:
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Our Goal:
End Civil Forfeiture
We are the Institute for Justice, a non-profit civil liberties law firm that defends private property rights across the country.
The Institute for Justice aims to curtail, and ultimately, abolish civil forfeiture, one of the gravest abuses of power in the country today. IJ has filed more than two dozen cases challenging civil forfeiture nationwide. In 2019, IJ secured a landmark victory at the U.S. Supreme Court when it ruled unanimously in Timbs v. Indiana that the Eight Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause protects Americans against state and local forfeitures.