Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.

Hot dang! This week, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to hear an IJ economic liberty case that asks whether the state constitution protects the right to earn an honest living free of unreasonable, arbitrary, or oppressive laws. (We say yes.) Click here to learn more about the case.

Oh no! The Dept. of Homeland Security has proposed a new rule allowing them to require DNA of citizens and non-citizens alike, and then store it indefinitely for law-enforcement use. Click here for IJ's comment explaining how that would violate the Fourth Amendment.

And! Apropos of nothing, IJ client George Retes is featured on The Atlantic's Autocracy in America podcast, relating how ICE agents tear gassed him, pepper sprayed him, dragged him out of his car while yelling conflicting commands—and then held him incommunicado for three days before releasing him without charge. (And then DHS lied all about it on Twitter.)

New on the Short Circuit podcast: What do Joan of Arc's trial and qualified immunity have to do with each other? IJ's Tahmineh Dehbozorgi explains.

1. What is an "appropriations rider" passed by Congress? First Circuit: A law. So you have to follow it, even if you're the NIH.
2. Baltimore SWAT officer shoots mentally ill veteran in the back, killing him. Officer: Because he was running at me with a machete. Fourth Circuit: Denial of QI affirmed. To trial this must go.
3. Allegation: Baltimore officer is forced to resign after it's determined that she lied about punching a woman at a nightclub. But she presents a list of other officers who were not fired for similarly serious breaches, including an officer involved in the very same nightclub fight (on the other side) who also lied about punching a (different) woman. Fourth Circuit (over a dissent): Her racial-discrimination claim is undismissed.
4. You know when there's a chart in the procedural history section of a habeas case that you're going to need to buckle up. And so it is in the Fourth Circuit this week, where a Baltimore drug deal was broken up by cops and the purported seller threw a bag on the ground and made a run for it. The bag contained 10 grams of cocaine, and prosecutors rely on two chain-of-custody reports. But the reports have discrepancies, and one wasn't handed over until the second day of trial. That's a Brady violation and, accordingly, a habeas grant. Dissent: "Here we go again." The majority ignores the party presentation doctrine (the man clearly chose not to assert a Brady claim in his habeas petition), doesn't appropriately defer to state decision-making, and is just plain wrong.
5. "There is unrebutted evidence that [defendant's] lead counsel at trial fell asleep, more than once, during direct examinations of witnesses counsel then cross-examined in this capital murder trial." Which, sadly for the defendant, is the first line of the dissent in this Fifth Circuit habeas denial.
6. There is surely a polysyllabic German portmanteau for a Pyrrhic victory which the "victor" makes even more calamitous by doubling down. That term would describe this case, involving a Detroit tow company whose towing license was suspended by the city on suspicion of misconduct. District court says company was unconstitutionally deprived of due process by not being given a hearing, but grants only $1 in nominal damages because any hearing would have resulted in termination. Going for broke, company appeals to Sixth Circuit—resulting in both an affirmance and published opinion describing in gory detail not only the evidence that company was colluding with car thieves but also its nasty habit of charging illegally excessive fees.

Friends, we've been gratified to see all the scholarly interest surrounding the 20th anniversary of Kelo v. New London, including a re-argument of the case at William & Mary Law School and now a symposium at the Yale Journal on Regulation. Our own little contribution to the latter reflects on how we argued Kelo then and how we would do so today and documents the unprecedented backlash against the decision. The article also resurrects a mostly forgotten piece of the Kelo story: The city never needed to take anyone's property; it controlled all but 1.54 acres of the 90-acre project area, and it would have been easy to work around those who wanted to stay. Indeed, one property owner was allowed to stay: the Italian Dramatic Club, a members-only, men's social club where Connecticut's political elite rub elbows to this day—surrounded by vacant lots and debris from bulldozed homes. Click here for the full story from IJ's Scott Bullock and Dana Berliner.