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Earlier today, the House Judiciary Committee passed the FAIR Act on a 26-0 vote. We rarely see such unanimity in this era of partisan polarization! Reason's Jacob Sullum has a helpful summary of how this bill would reform the federal asset forfeiture system:

Two years ago, the FBI seized the contents of safe deposit boxes used by hundreds of people at U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills business that offered secure storage for cash and other valuables. One of those dismayed customers was Linda Martin, a Los Angeles resident whose box contained $40,200 that she and her husband had saved for a deposit on a new home.

Martin, whose money was seized without any evidence that she was involved in illegal activity, is still trying to get it back. Her predicament is emblematic of the injustice wrought by civil asset forfeiture, a system of legalized larceny that allows law enforcement agencies to pad their budgets by confiscating allegedly crime-tainted property without charging, let alone convicting, the owner.

A bill that has attracted bipartisan support in Congress aims to address that problem. The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act includes several substantial reforms that would make it harder for the federal government to take assets from innocent people like Martin.

The FAIR Act, which Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) reintroduced in March, would eliminate the perverse financial incentive that encourages agencies like the FBI to seize first and ask questions later (if ever). It would assign forfeiture proceeds to the general fund instead of letting the seizing agency keep the loot.

The bill also would eliminate the "equitable sharing" program that lets state and local agencies keep up to 80 percent of the revenue from forfeitures they initiate. By authorizing confiscation under federal law, that program invites money-hungry cops to circumvent state reforms that make forfeiture harder or less profitable….

To keep seized property under current federal law, the government needs to prove it is more likely than not that it was derived from or facilitated a crime. The FAIR Act raises that standard to "clear and convincing evidence," and it enhances protections for innocent owners: When another person uses someone's property to commit a crime, the government would have the burden of proving that the owner "knowingly consented or was willfully blind" to that unlawful use.

The FAIR Act would also abolish "administrative" forfeitures ordered by federal bureaucrats. Only federal judges would have the power to order the forfeiture of property.