/>iLing Chi was a slow and torturous method of execution practiced in Imperial China. Better known in English as "death by a thousand cuts", ling chi took a terribly long time to kill the condemned prisoner.
The Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA, may also be killed by a thousand cuts. Since enactment, the CTA has been challenged in numerous courts around the country, bills have been introduced in Congress to delay implementation of the act, FinCEN has announced suspension of enforcement against U.S. citizens and domestic reporting companies. See Navigating the Changing Landscape of Corporate Transparency Act Compliance. Now, U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Jonker has granted judgment:
(1) declaring the Reporting Requirements of the CTA a violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches; (2) relieving Plaintiffs and their members of any obligation to comply with the Reporting Requirements of the CTA; and (3) permanently enjoining Defendants from enforcing any of the CTA's Reporting Requirements against the plaintiffs and their members, and from using or disclosing any information already provided by the plaintiffs and their members under the Reporting Requirements.
Small Bus. Ass'n of Michigan v. Yellen, 2025 WL 704287 (W.D. Mich. Mar. 3, 2025). Judge Jonker's comments on the Fourth Amendment are worth noting:
The Constitution generally, and the Bill of Rights in particular, are all about protecting citizens from the power of government. Governmental power has a natural tendency to expand and encroach on the freedom and privacy of citizens. That is true even when the government is pursuing goals—like crime investigation and prevention—that are worthy and important. The Fourth Amendment is one of the key limits on government power that protects the legitimate privacy interests of citizens from unreasonable government intrusion. In Orwell's 1984, “Big Brother” had omnipresent telescreens everywhere—including every citizen's living room—that made sure nothing beyond a smuggled, hand-written diary was truly private. The CTA doesn't go that far, to be sure, but it's a step in that direction. It compels citizens to disclose private information they are not required to disclose anywhere else just so the government can sit on a massive database to satisfy future law enforcement requests. It does so at a cost of billions of dollars to the citizens least likely to afford it. It amounts to an unreasonable search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.
