IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE AZALEA ISLES
CLOSING STATEMENT
Your Honor:
The
Constitution requires Parliament to approve the government's budgets. The parties disagree about how Parliament may fulfill that duty. The Plaintiff argues that every budget approval must specify a fixed amount and a fixed period, even though such language does not expressly appear in the Constitution.
The Government submits that Parliament may also approve certain expenses in advance, even though their exact amounts will not be known until later. The
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment does exactly that for court-ordered fines. A court determines the fine, Parliament authorizes its payment from non-allocated Treasury funds, and the Executive carries out those decisions. Parliament has made a financial choice that ministers must follow. The absence of a dollar figure written into the
Act does not mean that officials can decide for themselves how much the government owes.
Settlements and other payments connected to legal proceedings require separate consideration because officials have a greater role in determining those expenses. The Government addresses that distinction below. It asks the Court to uphold the
Amendment in full or, if the Court rejects the broader payment authority, to preserve the provision allowing payment of court-ordered fines.
I. The Constitution empowers Parliament to make budgets and does not prescribe a particular method of budgeting.
A. Approving a budget and carrying it out are different responsibilities.
Article 3 assigns Parliament both lawmaking responsibilities and the duty of "approving budgets." Passing a law and approving the money needed to carry it out serve different purposes. A law may establish a government activity without deciding how it will be financed, and permission to conduct that activity does not, by itself, authorize officials to spend Treasury money on it. Parliament must still approve the spending (
Constitution, art. 3, Duties of Parliament).
The two duties answer different questions. A law establishing a government activity answers whether officials may undertake it. A provision approving payment from a particular account answers how the government may finance it. Parliament can address both questions in the same Act without making either duty meaningless.
Section 6 expressly concerns payment, identifies the funds officials may use, and specifies the expenses those funds may cover. The Court must examine those terms to decide whether Parliament has approved the spending or instead left that decision to the Executive. The Government's argument therefore depends on what Parliament enacted, not merely on the fact that it enacted a law.
Article 2 supports this division of responsibility. It gives the Executive the task of executing the law and states that it “derives its power directly from the Parliament.”
Article 1's protection against government overreach requires officials to remain within that authority (
Constitution, arts. 1(10),
2). Parliament must make the decision that belongs to it, but officials do not take that decision away from Parliament merely by putting it into effect.
The Plaintiff relies on the rule against surplusage, which requires a court to give each provision a meaningful role. In
Luke Thegreatfired, the plaintiff claimed copyright in legislative work and argued that Parliament could acquire ownership only after registration. The Court rejected that argument because
the governing law transferred parliamentary works automatically. Requiring registration first would prevent the automatic-transfer provision from operating as written. The Court explained that “statutes must be interpreted so that every provision has effect.” It dismissed the claim because Parliament owned the copyright and the plaintiff therefore lacked standing to sue for its infringement (
Luke Thegreatfired v. Lysander Lyon (2026) CV 09, Post No. 8, Order of Dismissal).
The Government accepts that principle. Applied here, it requires Parliament to approve the financing of an activity even when Parliament has already authorized the activity itself. Our proposed reading of
Articles 2 and
3 is that Parliament must decide what expenditure public money may meet and on what financial terms. Officials may carry out that decision, but may not supply a spending authority Parliament has left unstated. For fines, the very Section 6 inserted by the
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment identifies the source, the liability to be paid, and the amount payable by reference to that liability. Part II of this closing statement explains why those choices are sufficient even without a fixed total or expiration date. That is the constitutional interpretation the Government asks this Court to adopt.
Luke Thegreatfired requires the budget duty to retain meaning, but does not decide which financial terms fulfill it.
B. The monthly ministry process is one way Parliament approves spending.
Section 1 of the
Budget Act establishes the ordinary monthly process. Each minister requests a budget from the Prime Minister. If he approves the proposal, it goes to Parliament, where the Speaker holds a separate vote for each ministry. A simple majority approves the budget, and Parliament is directed to make the allocations before the third day of each month. Parliament thus decides the funds assigned to each ministry through a recurring approval process (
Budget Act, §§ 1(a), (c)–(e)).
Section 6 creates a different route for the legal expenses it covers. Instead of first assigning the money to a ministry's monthly budget, Parliament permits the specified payments directly from Treasury funds that remain otherwise unallocated. The fact that this route differs from
Section 1 does not settle whether it satisfies the
Constitution. Rather, this simply requires the Court to read both provisions together as part of the government's budgeting process.
The Supreme Court's decision in the
Appeal on the Matter of Aero Nox v. Azalea Isles (2025) CV 15 explains why the various provisions of the
Budget Act must be read in the context of the whole statutory scheme. That appeal concerned whether a restriction on changing residence during an election also reached a person's first registration. The District Court had concentrated on the
Voter Registration Act without adequately considering the connected election laws. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded because of procedural errors and the failure to consider that statutory context. It explained that meaning comes "not only from the words used, but from its place in the broader statutory scheme" (
Appeal on the Matter of Aero Nox v. Azalea Isles (2025) CV 15, Post No. 18, Court Opinion ¶ 3; Decision).
Here, Parliament added the alternative payment route to the same
Act that establishes ministry budgets. Section 1 continues to govern ministry allocations, while Section 6 expressly identifies other funds for particular legal expenses. Requiring those same funds to pass through a ministry allocation first would deprive that choice of source of its intended operation. As such, Parliament supplemented its statutory process by enacting Section 6. Whether the resulting arrangement fulfills
Const. Article 3 is a further question, which the Supreme Court's decision does not answer.
That distinction matters because
Article 3 imposes the duty to approve budgets without prescribing
Budget Act Section 1's monthly procedure. Parliament remains bound by the constitutional duty when it changes the procedure it previously enacted. The Government therefore relies on the financial terms in the very Section 6 inserted by the
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment to satisfy
Article 3. We do not claim that changing the
Budget Act permits Parliament to change the
Constitution, nor that the constitution requires a particular monthly mechanism substantially similar to that in the Budget Act (
Budget Act, §§ 1, 6;
Constitution, art. 3, Duties of Parliament).
As it turns out, the
Budget Act already recognizes payments outside the ordinary monthly process. Existing government and Cabinet wages continue unchanged while a budget is awaited, and qualifying export purchases may fall outside ministry budgets. Each arrangement has limits of its own. Their relevance here is that monthly ministry allocations are one part of the
Act's funding framework, rather than a procedure that the
Constitution itself makes exclusive (
Budget Act, § 1(g)(i); second § 3, “Export and Budget implications,” §§ 3(c)–(d)).
C. The source of the money and Parliament's approval to spend it are separate questions.
In that framework, allocating funds means setting money aside for a particular budget or purpose. Authorizing an expenditure means permitting a payment to be made. The two can occur together when Parliament approves a ministry budget, but
Section 6 of the Budget Act as amended by the
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment would separate them. The section permits a qualifying payment from general treasury funds that have not already been assigned elsewhere. The money need not first become part of a ministry's allocation for the Section to identify it as an authorized source.
The Government reads non-allocated in that ordinary sense of funds not already set aside for another purpose. Existing allocations remain outside the source Section 6 makes available. The provision does not establish a separate reserve of a fixed size and the Treasury balance available under it may change (
Budget Act, § 6(a)). This reading accords with the
Guiding Principles' approach to ordinary language and their recognition that an interpretive principle in one category of those principles may apply in other categories where appropriate (
Guiding Principles, General Principles; Principles of Contractual Disputes, Plain Meaning Reading).
This explains the distinction the Plaintiff's argument overlooks. The funds are outside existing allocations, but their proposed use is expressly addressed in a law Parliament passed. Whether that law supplies constitutionally adequate budget approval remains to be decided. Calling the funds non-allocated cannot answer that question by itself.
The source restriction is only part of Parliament's decision. The Court must also consider which expenses Parliament approved and how the amount of a payment is determined. For court-ordered fines, the answer appears in the authorization itself.
II. Parliament has approved payment of court-ordered fines by reference to the amount owed.
A. The amount still owed on the fine limits the authorized payment.
Section 6(a) of the Budget Act as amended by the
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment permits the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice to use the specified Treasury funds “to pay court-ordered fines” against the Isles or its executive ministries. (
Budget Act, § 6(a).) Those words connect each authorized payment to an obligation the court has imposed. The amount still owed on that obligation determines how much can be paid under this clause.
For example, if a court imposes a $1,000 fine and none of it has been paid, that fine cannot justify a payment of $1,500 under
Section 6(a). The additional $500 would not pay any part of the fine. Once the fine has been paid, the same order cannot justify another payment under the clause. This is why the Government says Parliament selected a way to determine each payment instead of leaving ministers to choose an amount for themselves. The rule does not impose a ceiling on all fines combined, but it does restrict every payment made under this authority.
Those limits determine how much can be paid, but there is also a separate decision about the money used to pay it. A court order establishes the government's obligation to pay a fine. It does not, by itself, establish that Parliament has approved drawing money from a particular Treasury account. Parliament made that additional decision in Section 6(a), which permits the specified funds to be used for these fines. The Government therefore relies on the enacted statute for parliamentary approval. The court order determines the amount owed, and Parliament's decision determines that the identified Treasury funds may be used to pay it.
The Plaintiff argues that the absence of a fixed amount and period makes this arrangement something other than a budget. (Plaintiff's Closing Statement,
Post No. 20.) That objection concerns total exposure, which the $1,000 example alone does not answer. Section 6(a) places no aggregate ceiling on future fines and contains no expiration date. The Government's answer is that Parliament chose to authorize the actual cost of a specified liability, payable from the identified funds, rather than reserve a predetermined sum toward that cost.
That choice has financial substance. Parliament decided which obligations the available money could meet and authorized payment up to the amount remaining on each one. It thereby accepted that further qualifying fines could require further expenditure under the same rule. The unknown total results from future court decisions, rather than a power given to ministers to select additional purposes or determine the fines themselves. A minister cannot increase the authorized amount by proposing a larger program or negotiating a more expensive purchase. The payment must remain tied to what is owed under a qualifying court order.
On the Government's reading of
Articles 2 and 3, those decisions satisfy the budget duty in these circumstances. Parliament has approved both the use of public money and the measure of the expense, leaving officials to apply an independently ascertainable amount. A fixed overall reserve would make a different choice by limiting the total authorized for a period (something which is somewhat dubious when court-ordered fines are not readily predictable).
Requiring Parliament to make a financial choice does not necessarily require it to choose that form of limit. The Government asks the Court to recognize payment of the actual qualifying liability as another way Parliament can make that choice. (
Constitution, arts. 2–3;
Budget Act, § 6(a).)
The same reasoning explains the continuing duration. Parliament chose a rule that applies as qualifying fines arise, and the arrival of a later budget period does not enlarge what officials may pay. The source, the covered liabilities, and the measure of payment remain unchanged until Parliament changes the law. Requiring renewal at fixed intervals would impose an additional procedure. The Government submits that the
Constitution protects Parliament's control over the spending decision without requiring that procedure for this defined liability. The Court should therefore uphold Section 6(a).
This argument concerns fines within Section 6(a). A damages award, fee, or settlement does not automatically become a fine simply because a court orders payment. The Court can decide the constitutionality of the enacted category without expanding it to every payment arising from a judgment.
B. The constitutional gap-filling power also properly explains Parliament's accounting choice.
Article 3 includes among Parliament's duties "filling any absence of law in accordance with the
constitution." This supports Parliament's decision to clarify the paying account, but does not independently establish that the resulting spending authority is constitutional.
The
Amendment's preamble identifies the problem as uncertainty over the account responsible for government fines, with the Ministry of Justice bearing the burden. That explains why Parliament selected non-allocated Treasury funds as an available source: Parliament sought to relieve the Ministry of Justice of the disproportionate burden of paying government fines (see:
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment, preamble).
Section 6(a) answers that problem by identifying a source and expressly authorizing its use for qualifying fines. The Government relies on the financial choices explained above to show that this solution also fulfills Article 3.
III. Parliament also set limits on the payment of other legal expenses.
A. Allowing officials to carry out a legislative decision does not necessarily transfer Parliament's power.
Settlements differ from fines because officials negotiate the amount and terms of the payment. That difference deserves consideration, but executive discretion does not itself establish an unconstitutional transfer of power. The relevant question is whether Parliament has made the decision assigned to it and left officials to carry it out.
The Plaintiff seeks to distinguish administrative handling of misdemeanor criminal cases by relying on Parliament's constitutional authority over courts. That answer does not address the separate reasoning in
Aero Nox v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 22. An industrial-property owner there challenged inspection charges under the original
Industrial Regulation Act, including Parliament's decision to leave inspection scoring criteria and formulas to rules made by the Ministry of Urban Development.
The Court distinguished the Act from the Ministry's rules implementing it. If those rules failed to meet legal standards, the resulting charges or punishments might need to be reversed. But such a failure "would not, on its own, make the
IRA itself constitutionally deficient." The Court also found that the plaintiff had not sufficiently demonstrated why delegating those details was unconstitutional (
Aero Nox v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 22, Post No. 46, Court Opinion ¶ 4).
The comparison is between the decisions Parliament made and the choices it left to officials. In
Aero Nox, Parliament established the inspection scheme while leaving the Ministry to formulate scoring criteria and formulas. Here, Parliament identified expenses that Treasury funds could meet while leaving officials to decide whether and when to settle particular claims, and to negotiate their terms. Those choices determine whether the government agrees to a payment and how much it promises. The Government must therefore explain why the discretion left here is consistent with the budget duty. The case establishes no shortcut around that question.
Aero Nox's narrower relevance is that assigning choices to officials does not, by itself, establish that Parliament transferred a constitutional responsibility. That reasoning concerned the Ministry's implementation of legislation and did not depend on treating it as another court. The Plaintiff's distinction concerning Parliament's power to create courts therefore leaves this part of the decision unanswered. The government ultimately lost
Aero Nox on other constitutional grounds, but that result does not erase the Court's separate reasoning about ministerial administrative rulemaking.
The Government's argument here is that Parliament approved expenditure for the conduct and resolution of government legal proceedings, while leaving the decisions within those proceedings to the officials responsible for them. That includes negotiating a settlement under the applicable laws. The Court must assess those remaining choices against the payment category and the rules governing its use, which the Government addresses next.
B. The Amendment does not give officials unrestricted authority over settlements or witness expenses.
Section 6(a)(i) first describes a category of non-court-ordered payments "related to Government legal proceedings." It then gives examples using the words "such as settlements and witness fees" (
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment, § 2, adding
Budget Act § 6(a)(i)). The words introducing those examples explain how the sentence works. Parliament identified two kinds of payment within the broader category, rather than limiting the provision to those two kinds alone.
The Government reads the connection to proceedings as a limit on the purpose of the payment. A negotiated payment to resolve a claim against the government falls within the named settlement example. An ordinary purchase of office furniture, with no connection to a legal proceeding, does not qualify merely because the Ministry of Justice makes the purchase. Officials must be able to explain the connection between the expense and government proceedings. Prime Minister approval cannot supply a connection the payment lacks. The Court can examine that connection if the use of the provision is challenged.
These examples illustrate the distinction without resolving every possible expense in advance. For an unnamed payment, the question remains how it relates to government legal proceedings and what law governs that payment. The Government does not suggest that the rules for settlements and witness fees impose a price limit on every other expense the clause might cover.
Settlements and witness fees appear together because Parliament included both as examples of non-court-ordered payments connected to proceedings. That grouping does not mean officials have equal discretion over their amounts. A settlement ordinarily involves negotiation, while ordinary witness fees follow statutory rates. The distinction matters when assessing what Parliament has left officials to decide.
1. The Government Contracts Act 2.0 applies to settlements that meet its definitions.
The
Government Contracts Act 2.0 defines contracts by the agreement and the promise of payment, rather than by the label officials give the transaction. Section 2(a) begins with "Any agreement" between an official government agent and another entity, individual, or business, and covers arrangements "where money is paid or promised to be paid." Section 3(c) then includes agreements negotiated directly with a member of the public (
Government Contracts Act 2.0, §§ 2(a), 3(c)).
A negotiated settlement in which an official government agent promises payment in exchange for dismissal or release of a claim fits those definitions. Calling the exchange a settlement does not remove either the agreement or the promised payment. The Government asks the Court to apply the
Government Contracts Act 2.0 on that basis. This is an argument from the
Act's terms, rather than reliance on a prior holding that every settlement falls within it.
The scope of that argument is important. The Government relies on the contract rules for settlements that satisfy the statutory definitions. If a payment does not arise from such an agreement, those rules do not become applicable merely because the payment concerns litigation. The payment must still meet Section 6(a)(i)'s requirements and any other law that governs it. Contract safeguards strengthen the defense of covered settlements, but cannot supply the entire constitutional defense of the broader payment category.
There is no practical conflict between applying that
Act and applying the
Amendment. The Amendment identifies the account that may fund a payment and requires Prime Minister approval. The
Government Contracts Act 2.0 governs how a covered agreement is made and supervised. Officials can comply with both. The requirement for Prime Minister approval does not state that his approval alone makes an otherwise noncompliant government contract valid.
For a settlement covered by the
Government Contracts Act 2.0, the government must follow the applicable Cabinet procedures, contract requirements, conflict rules, and publication duties. A single-use agreement needs a price, a completion date, an exit clause, and penalties for the other party's nonperformance. Those terms can specify when the claim must be dismissed or released and what happens if that obligation is not fulfilled. Parliament also retains the
Act's cancellation power, subject to statutory payouts (
Government Contracts Act 2.0, §§ 5(a)–(d), (f), 6(a)–(b)).
That cancellation power should not be overstated. The present argument concerns negotiated agreements providing for non-court-ordered payments. The Government does not rely on the power to cancel an agreement as authority to overturn a judicial order, recover money already paid, or restore a claim already released. The relevant safeguards are the requirements governing the covered agreement and the supervision the
Act actually provides.
The
Government Contracts Act 2.0 also addresses agreements financed through parliamentary authorization outside a ministry's ordinary budget. It provides that such an agreement should still be assigned to and published by the ministry closest to its subject matter (
Government Contracts Act 2.0, § 6(a)(i)). Parliament thus contemplated that an agreement could use a different funding arrangement while remaining subject to the
Act's rules. That is why a separate source of money does not, by itself, exempt a covered settlement from those rules. This provision helps explain how the statutes work together, although it cannot independently establish that the funding authorization satisfies
Article 3.
2. Ordinary witness fees already follow rates set by Parliament.
The
Court Reformation Act sets the ordinary cost of summoning a witness at $100, with a $10 fee per question (
Court Reformation Act, § 7(a)(ii)). Where a non-court-ordered witness payment is covered by both provisions, the
Court Reformation Act determines the ordinary fee, and
Section 6(a)(i) permits payment from the specified Treasury funds. Whether that permission satisfies
Article 3 remains the constitutional question before this Court.
Those rates do not limit the number of witnesses or govern every service someone might provide as a witness. They nevertheless answer the suggestion that every payment under
Section 6(a)(i) is priced entirely at an official's discretion. For ordinary witness charges, Parliament has already decided the rate.
C. Oversight helps enforce Parliament's decision but cannot take its place.
Cabinet approval cannot substitute for Parliament's approval. Cabinet belongs to the Executive, and a vote among ministers cannot fulfill a duty assigned to Parliament. Nor do publication, transaction records, or a later opportunity to cancel an agreement amount to Parliament approving each payment in advance. The Government's argument is that Parliament gave the necessary approval when it enacted the funding rule in
Section 6(a)(i). The other requirements help keep officials within that rule.
The
Guiding Principles explain why a useful purpose cannot end the constitutional analysis.
Liberal Construction Reading directs the Court to interpret citizens' rights in light of their spirit and purpose. The
reasonable-limitations principle then requires a "clear and compelling justification" for an infringement after close examination of the circumstances (
Guiding Principles, Principles of Constitutional Law). These principles protect constitutional rights. They do not permit an institutional duty such as parliamentary budget approval to be set aside whenever officials would find another arrangement more convenient.
In
Death Thegreatfired, an industrial-property owner faced automatic inspection failure and criminal consequences for refusing or restricting warrantless entry. The Court accepted pollution prevention as a legitimate objective, but explained that "a legitimate government interest does not automatically make a search reasonable." The scheme lacked safeguards such as individualized suspicion or judicial authorization that could justify the intrusion. The Court therefore rejected the government's reliance on the policy objective alone (
Death Thegreatfired v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 24, Post No. 66, Court Opinion ¶ 3).
The present case concerns budget approval rather than searches, so the safeguards appropriate to a property inspection do not supply a budgeting rule. The relevant lesson is that the government must defend how a law operates, rather than merely identify a desirable result. That is why the Government relies on Parliament's spending decision and the requirements governing its execution. The fact that the
amendment makes legal expenses easier to pay would not, by itself, establish its constitutionality.
For negotiated payments, the Government submits that Parliament may approve the funding source and the category of legal expenses while leaving officials to agree on particular terms under the governing laws. This requires the Court to accept that Parliament can make the necessary financial decision without fixing each settlement amount. The independent determination of a fine does not supply that reasoning for settlements. The Government instead relies on Parliament's express choice to fund the conduct and resolution of government proceedings, with officials negotiating within that purpose.
Payments must therefore concern those proceedings, obtain the required approval, and satisfy the law applicable to the payment or agreement. Payment approvals must also be documented, with Cabinet transaction records accessible to MPs (
Budget Act, §§ 4(a)–(c), 6(a)(ii)). The Court should uphold
Section 6(a)(i) as Parliament's approval to fund that defined category, implemented under those requirements. If the Court finds that the discretion remaining with officials is too broad, it should address that provision separately from the authority to pay court-ordered fines.
IV. The Court should consider the two payment provisions separately when deciding relief.
If the Court finds the broader payment authority unconstitutional, the Government asks it to confine its declaration and injunction to that provision, provided the fine authorization independently satisfies
Article 3. This request follows the Judiciary's responsibility to interpret the law and uphold the
Constitution. A defect in the discretion allowed for negotiated payments would require the Court to examine whether that defect also exists in the separately stated rule for fines. The Government submits that the text permits a limited remedy without requiring the Court to design a replacement spending scheme.
The text explains why the two payment provisions can operate separately.
Section 6(a) already identifies the officials who may pay court-ordered fines, the funds they may use, and the fines covered.
Paragraph (i) then provides that another category of payments "may also draw" from that pool. Those words add permission for further payments to an authorization that is already complete. Nothing in the fine provision requires a settlement or another non-court-ordered payment to occur before a fine may be paid (
Legal Fees Clarity Amendment, § 2, adding
Budget Act § 6(a)–(a)(ii)).
The preamble supplies a further reason to preserve that distinction. It identifies the account for fines as a problem Parliament wanted to resolve in its own right. Keeping
Section 6(a) would continue to serve that purpose even if the Court rejected the additional authority in
paragraph (i). The remaining provision would therefore carry out a financial decision Parliament expressly made, rather than a replacement arrangement designed by the Court.
The remaining arrangement would work as follows. The officials authorized by
Section 6(a) could use the specified funds to pay a qualifying fine. Their approval of that payment would be documented under
paragraph (ii), and the resulting Cabinet transaction would be recorded under
Section 4. MPs would retain access to those records. These steps require no new spending cap, funding account, or payment category (
Budget Act, §§ 4(a)–(c), 6(a), (a)(ii)).
Paragraph (ii) supports that reading because it applies to "All approvals of payment." It does not expressly confine its documentation requirement to the Prime Minister approval required by
paragraph (i). The Government reads it to include an authorized official's decision to make a fine payment under
Section 6(a). Removing permission for additional expenses would therefore leave the reporting rule with a continuing purpose: documenting the payments still permitted from the same funds.
Section 4 would also continue to require records of Cabinet transactions independently of
paragraph (i) (
Budget Act, §§ 4, 6(a)(ii)).
The inspection cases show how the Court can distinguish separate objections to the same law. In
Aero Nox v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 22, the Court found that the challenge to Parliament's delegation of scoring details had not been sufficiently demonstrated, but held specified provisions of the
original Act unconstitutional. Among them was a provision exposing new property owners to harsher punishment because of offenses they had not committed. The Court therefore examined which provisions caused a constitutional problem, rather than treating every objection to the
Act as having the same answer (
Aero Nox v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 22, Post No. 46, Court Opinion ¶ 4; Decision ¶ 1).
In
Death Thegreatfired v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 24, the Court likewise distinguished the challenged enforcement mechanism from industrial inspections generally. It explained that inspections could proceed with adequate constitutional safeguards, while declaring the automatic-failure mechanism unconstitutional as it had been applied to that plaintiff. The remedy addressed the combination of warrantless entry, automatic failure, and punishment that produced the violation (
Death Thegreatfired v. Azalea Isles (2026) CV 24, Post No. 66, Court Opinion ¶ 4; Decision ¶ 1).
Neither decision establishes a general severability test or requires the Court to preserve part of every unconstitutional law. They show remedies directed to the particular constitutional defects the Court identified. The Government seeks that same attention to the scope of the defect here. If the Court rejects
paragraph (i) because officials retain too much discretion over non-court-ordered payments, it should separately decide whether the fine provision presents that problem. If it does not and is otherwise constitutional, its complete text, independent purpose, and workable reporting requirements support leaving it in effect.
V. The Court should determine any legal-fee award separately.
If the Government prevails, the Plaintiff's request for legal fees on this constitutional claim should be denied. If the Court grants relief, the amount of any award still requires consideration under the
Damages Reform Act. That
Act recognizes a $1,000 weekly baseline for represented parties but permits adjustments according to the work performed in particular weeks. An award therefore need not equal $1,000 multiplied by every week the case remained open (
Damages Reform Act, § 2(a), (a)(i)–(iv)). The Government requests a reduction for any week in which little was achieved, based on the filings and any information the Court requests about the work performed.
VI. Requested relief.
The Government respectfully requests judgment in its favor, denial of the Plaintiff's requested declaration and associated legal fees, and discharge of the interim injunction entered in
Post No. 12.
Alternatively, if the Court finds
Section 6(a)(i) unconstitutional but upholds the authority to pay court-ordered fines, the Government requests that the declaration and injunction be confined accordingly. The fine provision and its related reporting requirements should remain in effect, and any monetary award should be determined separately under the applicable law.
