Articles

Oral argument in Edmund’s lawsuit against discriminatory St. Louis policy

March 31, 2017 | By JOSHUA THOMPSON

This upcoming Wednesday, April 5, Wencong Fa and I will be in St. Louis for oral argument in E.L. v. Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation. We will be representing Edmund Lee and his mother La’Shieka White in their quest to strike down a St. Louis policy that prohibits African-American children from attending magnet and charter schools ...

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California Supreme Court decision adds redundant delay

March 31, 2017 | By JEFF MCCOY

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court held that the City of Newport Beach must conduct further environmental analysis for a proposed housing development outside the city limits. The property at issue is Banning Ranch, a 400-acre plot of largely undeveloped coastal property in unincorporated Orange County. The proposed development would add much-n ...

Articles

Video : Presidential Authority to Revoke or Reduce National Monument Designations

March 31, 2017 | By KYLE GRIESINGER

This week, PLF’s Todd Gaziano and Professor John Yoo (who is also a new member of PLF’s Board of Trustees) released a new study that explains why President Trump has the authority to reduce or revoke national monuments. … ...

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PLF Victory! Feds finally follow the law and reclassify manatee

March 30, 2017 | By CHRISTINA MARTIN

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the final rule to downlist the manatee from endangered to threatened. This comes in response to a nearly five-year battle with PLF to get the federal government to follow its own experts’ advice and the law, and downlist the manatee. But the roots of today’s decision go … ...

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Tenth Circuit overturns Utah prairie dog decision

March 30, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

We got some disappointing news yesterday when the Tenth Circuit overturned the federal district court’s decision that federal regulations prohibiting the take of Utah prairie dogs exceed the federal government’s constitutional powers. As you may not recall, since more than 18 months passed between oral argument and the decision, PLF is ...

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The Preble’s meadow jumping mouse should be delisted

March 30, 2017 | By DAMIEN SCHIFF

Today, on behalf of a broad coalition of sound science and property rights advocates, we filed a petition with the federal government to delist the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse from the Endangered Species Act. The Preble’s mouse has been considered its own subspecies since the 1950s, and has been listed as threatened since 1998. But f ...

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The Government, right or wrong!

March 27, 2017 | By REED HOPPER

In remarks to the U.S. Senate in 1872, Carl Schurz said,  “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”  This is a worthy sentiment that is gaining some traction in Congress with the advent of a new Administration. Under the Congressional Review Act, federal legislators … ...

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PLF to testify at congressional hearing on how ESA burdens development

March 27, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

It is a busy week for PLF’s DC Center. Our Executive Director Todd Gaziano will be speaking Wednesday at an event hosted by Senator Lee (Utah) to announce the release of an American Enterprise Institute paper coauthored by Todd and PLF trustee Prof. John Yoo. RSVP here. Tomorrow, March 28th, I’ll be testifying on the … ...

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Are all of Obama’s national monuments permanent? A new AEI paper says no

March 27, 2017 | By TODD GAZIANO

A few weeks before he left office, President Obama abused the Antiquities Act of 1906 again to proclaim 1.35 million acres in Utah and 300,000 acres in Nevada to be new national monuments. White House officials claimed that both monuments were “permanent” because there was no express authority to reverse them. … ...