Articles

Recognizing the need to give parents more control over improving their children’s schools, the California Legislature passed–and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed–the Parent Empowerment Act, also known as the “Parent Trigger,” in 2010. The first such law in existence, the Act provides a mechanism for parents to force c ...

The Supreme Court has two opportunities to answer questions about when taxpayer dollars can go to religious institutions.  The Court has already agreed to review an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley.  Trinity Church operates a daycare facility, which includes a playground used by students an ...

President Obama has promised to nominate someone relatively soon for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court made vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing. President Obama hopes either to weaken the Senate majority’s resolve, which is to let the American voters decide who shall fill the vacancy, or to play politics with the issue. Alas, ...

Endangered species — holding California to the law We filed this petition this week against the California Department of Fish & Game, demanding that the agency reviews it decisions to list various species under the state’s endangered species act. The law is simple: Like its federal counterpart the agency must examine species every f ...

Today, the United States Supreme Court denied review in Sensational Smiles, LLC. v. Mullen. PLF, with the Cato Institute, filed a brief asking the Court to take up the case. As a result, the question remains open as to whether protecting favored groups from economic competition is a legitimate government interest, and constitutional. The case inv ...

On Monday, March 14th, I will be participating in a discussion hosted by Cato Institute entitled “Do Landowners Have a Right to Challenge Federal Regulation of Their Property? A Preview of Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes on the Eve of Oral Argument.”  Professor Steven Eagle of George Mason University School of Law and Ilya Shapir ...

This morning, the Supreme Court denied review in the legislative exactions case, California Building Industry Association v. City of San Jose (more about the case here). Although the decision ends the Association’s facial challenge to a city ordinance requiring new developers to build and dedicated new houses as affordable housing (or pay a s ...

American Farm Bureau v. EPA (15-599), a petition for certiorari which PLF supported as amicus curiae, was denied this morning.  The denial leaves the Third Circuit opinion in place, an opinion which stands as a shining example of judicial abdication via Chevron. The Third Circuit accepted, for example, EPA’s reading of the word “total& ...

Yesterday, February 25, United States Senator Chuck Grassley (R – Iowa) took to the floor of the Senate Chamber to inform his colleagues about PLF client John Duarte’s ongoing battle against the Army Corps of Engineers over federal claims that Duarte Nursery needed an expensive and onerous federal permit simply to plow its fields. Senat ...