Advancing American Freedom led a coalition of 19 other amici filing an amicus brief in Texas Top Cop Shop v. Blanche. In this case, Texas Top Cop Shop is challenging the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which requires the owners of almost all small businesses registered in the states to report their personal information to the federal government to be collected in a massive database.
Large government databases invite hacking and thus put Americans’ most sensitive information at risk. Even worse, in attempting to gather massive amounts of information about the American public, the federal government attempts to wield a power well beyond its constitutional design as a government of limited and enumerated powers.
Neither the Commerce Clause of Article I nor any other provision of the Constitution empowers Congress to regulate the wholly local, non-commercial activity of incorporation. Yet, for decades, the Court has allowed Congress to exercise expansive power over activities the Constitution leaves within the authority of state governments.
AAF’s amicus brief argues that the CTA should be struck down and Congress’s power reined in to begin to restore the constitutional balance of powers between the states and the federal government.
“The original meaning of the Commerce Clause is simple: Congress may ‘regulate the buying and selling of goods and services trafficked across state lines.’ The CTA, merely regulating incorporation, a non-economic activity, falls outside of the narrow power actually granted to Congress in Article I’s Commerce Clause,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “No enumerated power vests Congress with authority to pass the CTA.
The Court should grant the petition for certiorari and strike down the CTA.
”