Week in Review: Arizona House Honors Goldwater

May 11, 2019

For 30 years, the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has been working to empower all Americans to live freer, happier lives. This week, the Institute was honored to be recognized by the Arizona House of Representatives for its 30 years of defending freedom with a special proclamation offered by Representative Anthony Kern.

Rep. Anthony Kern (right) offers proclamation at the Arizona Legislature honoring the Goldwater Institute, represented by Goldwater President and CEO Victor Riches (left).

“Arizona is fortunate to have one of the country’s leading free-market organizations right in our own backyard,” Representative Kern said.

“The Goldwater Institute has been staunchly defending freedom and protecting liberty for 30 years, and the contributions they’ve made to our state and the country have expanded the rights of individuals and saved millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. I congratulate the Goldwater Institute on 30 successful years and urge them to keep up the fight for freedom.”

You can read Rep. Kern’s full proclamation here.

Texas Bar Case is about Protecting Everyone’s First Amendment Rights

Adding Up the Hidden Costs of Mental Healthcare

When a person with severe mental illness has a psychological meltdown, what comes next is predictable—and often tragic.

If that meltdown results in detainment, this can set off a mental healthcare crisis. Due to a lack of inpatient beds, people with severe mental health issues who end up in jail often find themselves waiting days or weeks until a coveted bed in a psychiatric hospital opens. Then it falls on police to transport the patients to distant hospitals that may be hours away. For police departments, the costs in time and budget are significant, as a new Treatment Advocacy Center study shows.

The study’s findings echo a report by Goldwater Institute National Investigative Journalist Mark Flatten, who looked at one part of the problem: anti-competitive “certificate of need” laws, which block companies from building badly needed mental health facilities, all to protect existing healthcare companies from competition.

Read more about the problem in a new article from Flatten on the In Defense of Liberty blog.

Texas Bar Case is about Protecting Everyone’s First Amendment Rights

Leave it to the media to turn a principled defense of Americans’ First Amendment rights into a sneaky, politically motivated attack on a state bar association. But that’s just what happened this week when the Texas Tribune reported on a lawsuit challenging the Texas State Bar Association’s mandatory membership dues.

In fact, the case stands for the proposition that a state bar violates the First Amendment when it forces lawyers to pay for its political activities and political expression. It follows Janus v. AFSCME, in which the Supreme Court upheld the principle that under the First Amendment, we all have the right to choose what speech we will and won’t support with our money.

The Goldwater Institute filed a brief in the Texas case and is representing clients in similar cases in Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Oregon. Read more about it on the Goldwater Institute’s In Defense of Liberty blog.