Articles

Today, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law published my article, Are Critical Area Buffers Unconstitutional? Demystifying The Doctrine of Unconstitutional Conditions. Although the article focuses on developments in Washington state law, it contains arguments relevant to property rights practitioners elsewhere. For example, the article explains ...

On behalf of its client the Marquette County Road Commission, PLF filed its Reply Brief in Marquette County Road Commission v. EPA. … ...

One of the things that makes Washington’s legal landscape so unique is that the state constitution was drafted by people who, having just witnessed the Civil War, were wary of state and federal government. As a result, our constitution provides many protections rarely found elsewhere in the country, such as a provision prohibiting the governm ...

Can Congress dictate to states what their own laws must be? Anyone familiar with federalism will likely immediately say “no.” Our Founders drafted a Constitution that preserved the independence of the the states, believing that dividing power between the federal government and the states would be a bulwark to protect our liberty. To pre ...

This morning, the Ninth Circuit upheld the Army Corps of Engineers’ Clean Water Act jurisdiction over the Fairbanks, Alaska, property of our client, Universal Welding. The case, Universal Welding & Fabrication Co. v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, addressed a rarely invoked exception to the agency’s Clean Water Act jurisdi ...

Jessica Oates is the single mother of Jabez, a four-year-old boy who was excited to start his first day of school. Unfortunately, administrators at Barbers Hill ISD in Texas told the 25-year-old mom that Jabez wasn’t allowed to attend. This wasn’t because Jabez resided in a different district or didn’t have the necessary paperwor ...

In a brief filed earlier today, PLF attorneys urge the U.S. Supreme Court to answer this important question concerning the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that property shall not be taken without payment of just compensation. In the past, the U.S. Supreme Court instructed that a dispossessed owner must be put in “as good position pecuniaril ...

Today’s Ninth Circuit oral argument in U.S. v. Robertson produced an interesting series of exchanges between the Justice Department appellate attorney and Ninth Circuit Judges Gould and McKeown. A key issue in the case, as I laid out in this morning’s post, is whether the Clean Water Act’s counter-intuitive definition of “na ...

Today the Ninth Circuit is hearing oral argument in U.S. v. Robertson. Joseph Robertson is presently incarcerated in federal prison in Colorado, serving an 18 month sentence for building two ponds on land owned by the Forest Service in Montana. He is 78 years old. One of the counts for which Mr. Robertson was imprisoned … ...