Imagine if when prosecutors accused a person of a capital crime, the government stopped his heart and said: We’ll let your friends try CPR if you win at trial.
That’s roughly the kind of due process some businesses get. Recently, Reason and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal called attention to two examples.
Let’s start with some blueberry growers in Oregon. According to a Journal editorial, the Department of Labor, showed up, looked at their books, substituted their own notions of worker productivity for the records the companies kept, and concluded that the growers were paying less than minimum wage. So the bureaucrats decreed that their blueberries couldn’t be shipped across state lines unless the growers paid the back wages they allegedly owed and waived their right to appeal.
In other words, before the question of whether the growers had violated the law was ever litigated, a core aspect of their business—selling their product—was stopped
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