Articles

What does suing schools have to do with supporting our troops?

December 03, 2012 | By RALPH KASARDA

Hans Bader, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wonders too.  In his latest article, he writes about a peculiar attempt by Congress to overrule the Supreme Court with respect to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.  The changes would allow agencies to be subject to disparate impact … ...

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PLF asks court not to throw out Matt Sissel’s challenge to Obamacare

December 03, 2012 | By TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

Today, we filed this brief in the federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to hear Matt Sissel’s challenge to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As you’ll recall, we argue that if Obamacare’s requirement that everyone buy health insurance is really just a “tax,” as the Supreme Court said in ...

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Claremont Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence files brief supporting PLF's Obamacare challenge

December 03, 2012 | By TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

Our friends at the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence have filed a brief in support of our challenge to the Obamacare “tax.” The brief explains the history of the Origination Clause and why it is that our founding fathers chose to give only the House the power to draft “bills for raising revenue.” “By checking th ...

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Important property rights victory in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States

December 04, 2012 | By BRIAN HODGES

In a major property rights decision, the United States Supreme Court today, in an 8-0 opinion, held that the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution protects against all government invasions of private property, even if the intrusion isn’t permanent. The decision in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States reverses a Federal Circu ...

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Arkansas Game & Fish : buying unity at the expense of clarity?

December 04, 2012 | By BRIAN HODGES

Professor Ilya Somin, writing on the Volokh Conspiracy, praised today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States as “a rare unanimous victory for property rights” and “an important step in rejecting the federal government’s extreme position that temporary flooding can never be ...

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South Carolina conservation proposal recognizes incentive problem

December 04, 2012 | By CHRISTINA MARTIN

South Carolina’s legislature is looking for ways to protect its wetlands from development by increasing a deed tax to fund the purchase of development rights to vital wetlands. Although problematic in other ways, such an approach is preferable to the government’s usual tactic of increasing regulations on private property owners, not onl ...

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Last-minute EPA rule dominates questioning at Decker oral argument

December 05, 2012 | By BRIAN HODGES

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center earlier this week.  Recall that the issue in Decker is whether logging road owners and users must obtain federal National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to cover stormwater runoff on the roads.  PLF filed an amicus brief on behal ...

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Will the courts enforce the Origination Clause against Obamacare?

December 05, 2012 | By TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto writes that our challenge to Obamacare is unlikely to succeed. Assuming that Obamacare’s monetary exaction for not buying insurance is a tax, as the Supreme Court called it in its June opinion, still not all taxes are “bills for raising revenue,” which the Constitution requires to be g ...

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Much ado about nothing, part II

December 06, 2012 | By DAMIEN SCHIFF

Last month I wrote about a very peculiar case just argued this week in the United States Supreme Court—Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council—concerning the Clean Water Act’s regulation of stormwater.  The case is peculiar because all the parties and the federal government as amicus agree o ...