Articles

Since 2009, California has forbidden the use of suction dredge mining equipment until the agency in charge of regulating this mining — the Department of Fish and Wildlife — develops regulations to mitigate any adverse environmental effects. However, the Department doesn’t think this is possible and this temporary moratorium has be ...

PLF recently filed its opening brief and reply brief in the California Supreme Court on behalf of the California Building Industry Association, which is challenging the constitutionality of the City of San Jose’s regime of affordable housing exactions. An affordable housing exaction is a demand that a local government imposes on home builder ...

Congress has been busy over the last few weeks.  In the House of Representatives, the Committee on Natural Resources announced four new bills summarized here that seek to increase transparency in endangered species decision making and to reduce attorney fee awards in citizen suits.  Also, a new bill was introduced in the Senate which is … ...

Endangered Species Act — Saving Lolita  PLF filed this comment letter on the attempt by some radical greens to exploit Lolita, or at least to evict this Killer Whale from Miami’s Seaquarium , where she has been thriving for thirty years.  Her release into the wild could wellmean that her survival would be in doubt.  As our blog & ...

On Tuesday, Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit, on behalf of the Building Industry Association – Bay Area, to challenge the City of San Ramon’s new community facilities district tax.  The lawsuit argues that the tax, which will be paid by new City residents to pay for existing standard municipal services, violates several provisions o ...

Earlier this week I appeared on The Blaze Network to discuss the impacts of environmental regulations on California’s San Joaquin Valley in this year of extreme drought.  You can view some of my comments here. … ...

Today’s Cato Daily Podcast features my conversation with Caleb Brown about PLF’s challenge to Obamacare, which will be heard by the D.C. Circuit May 8. … ...

Tomorrow the United States Fish and Wildlife Service will announce that it intends to reclassify the Arroyo Toad from endangered down to threatened, since the factors that originally led to listing this amphibian under the Endangered Species Act have abated to the degree that it is no longer in danger of extinction.  Similar to recent … ...

This week, PLF filed a comment on a USFWS proposal to remove an exemption for captive orcas from regulation under the ESA. You may recall that this began with a PETA petition to list Lolita, an orca who entertains at Miami’s Seaquarium. The Service decided that the petition demonstrated that Lolita should be regulated under the … ...