> There's nothing in there about say, valuing accurate journalism that informs the public with relevant information.
I think your criticisms of them are unfair (at least with regards to this specific article) – and I'm speaking as someone who actually doesn't have a huge amount of agreement with their ideology (I'm no libertarian).
The grandparent is pointing out that the case was about a "fine" – the article itself doesn't use that specific word, but it is obvious to anyone who reads it that is what it is talking about. It links for more information to another page – https://ij.org/case/c-s-lawn-administrative-appeal/ – which does use that word. But I think, the author of this article (Rob Johnson) not using the term "fine", is not due to some attempt to mislead the reader – it is because the US government doesn't technically call it a "fine", calling it a "liability" is the language it uses, and being a lawyer he naturally gravitates to using the most technically correct language regarding the case. Part of the reason why it is called a "liability" not a "fine", is fines are ultimately kept by the government, whereas at least some of this $50,000 is allegedly unpaid wages which are to be ultimately paid to the employees, but the employer disputes the government's claim they underpaid them to begin with.
What the court case is actually about, is whether someone who is having a $50,000 liability imposed on them (whether as a fine or as back-payment of underpaid wages) has the constitutional right to have a proper trial before an independent judge and jury before having the liability imposed, or whether a "trial" before a "judge" who actually works for the executive agency issuing the liability is sufficient. Whatever is the right answer on that one, I don't think Johnson's position is per se unreasonable. And Johnson is picking on one of the several counterarguments to that contention that DOJ lawyers make in a brief – that constitutional protections against expropriation don't apply to money because money isn't property – and calling it out as unreasonable. I don't think Johnson is necessarily wrong here. Rejecting this contention wouldn't necessarily win the case for the non-government side, since this is really a threshold issue – are those constitutional limits even in scope here? Just because (contrary to this argument in the brief) you conclude "yes they are", doesn't mean that when you go into their details, you won't find that some exception to them applies. But if the whole thing is out of scope, you don't even reach consideration of the exceptions.