Articles

Today, PLF attorneys submitted to the United States Supreme Court a petition for certiorari, asking the high court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding the legality of the San Joaquin Valley/Southern California water cutbacks imposed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on account of the Delta smelt, a small fish protected under th ...

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California will soon hear PLF’s challenge to San Francisco’s Tenant Relocation Ordinance.  This is the law requiring landlords to pay their tenants the difference between the rent-controlled rate they’ve been paying, and the amount it would cost the tenant to rent a comparabl ...

Here on the Liberty Blog, we have often posted about the perils of “disparate impact” laws; that is, laws that allow courts to find illicit discrimination in a facially neutral action without any showing of improper intent (here, here, and here, for example).  These statutes require businesses and government actors to engage in pernic ...

Today the Supreme Court announced it would accept review in the case Texas Dept. of Hous. & Community  Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project on the one issue that has escaped resolution by the Court twice before. That issue is:  Are disparate-impact claims cognizable under the Fair Housing Act? The Court has twice granted certiorari to ad ...

Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) today petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take review of a case that asks whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” applies to private property. The question may seem obvi ...

One of the bedrock principles of free speech is that the government cannot require a person to get a license before speaking. Although the government can punish certain abuses of speech—libel, for example, or threats—it’s almost never constitutional for the government to ban you from speaking without a license. Free speech is one of the ...

United States Supreme Court — Cert petitions We’ve filed three petitions for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court this week in three very important cases, each of which could contribute substantially to individual freedom if granted. First Petition — the Delta Smelt We filed this petition for cert in Stewart  ...

Last month, the Forest Service proposed a regulation that would require permits costing as much as $1500 to take photographs or film on Forest Service land. The public response has been overwhelmingly negative I tried but couldn’t make the sentence long enough for all the criticism…. To put this simply enough that a Forest Service R ...

Today, Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys filed a petition for rehearing en banc, asking the full U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to hear client Matt Sissel’s “Origination Clause” challenge to the Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare). The petition comes after an adverse ruling by a three-judge panel of the ...