The Docket : July 17, 2026
The Docket is PLF's weekly newsletter covering the cases, clients, and policy battles shaping the future of liberty in America. You can catch up on last week's Docket here and subscribe below to receive future editions in your inbox. An attorney reflects on the implications of George Sheetz's fight for property rights; Illinois en ...
The Hill : It’s not ‘just’ to erase someone’s home equity
In 2019, Isabella County, Mich., seized Timothy Pung's family home over a disputed tax debt of roughly $2,000. The county sold the house — worth nearly $200,000 — for just $76,000. Months later, the buyer resold it for $195,000. The result was that the Pung family walked away with less than half the market value of their home, due to a small ta ...
Sheetz after Sheetz : An epilogue from El Dorado County
When George Sheetz asked for permission to place a modest manufactured home on his rural property in El Dorado County, California, the County demanded that he pay $23,420 for county-wide traffic improvements before it would say yes. The fee was not calculated by asking what traffic impacts George's home would actually cause. It came from a countywi ...
The Docket : July 10, 2026
The Docket is PLF's weekly newsletter covering the cases, clients, and policy battles shaping the future of liberty in America. You can catch up on last week's Docket here and subscribe below to receive future editions in your inbox. Announcing a star-studded virtual Supreme Court Review; a new episode of In Dissent explores why t ...
DC Journal : The Administrative Procedure Act at 80 — Still Falling Short
Eighty years ago, in June 1946, Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Act. It was hailed by one of its principal drafters, Sen. Patrick McCarran, D-Nev., as "a bill of rights for the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose affairs are controlled or regulated" by federal agencies. In the intervening years, the APA has too often failed to ...
The Hill : New York’s no-bid contracting scandal — A quarter-billion dollars, awarded by race
Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Racial Equity Plan, released on April 6, commits New York City government to using racial classifications to guide more than two hundred goals across nearly every agency. Among other things, the plan commits specific percentages of city contracts to be doled out on the basis of race, a continuation of the city's longstanding ...
The battle isn’t over : What Pung means for the fight against home equity theft
Near the end of this year's term, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Pung v. Isabella County, rejecting the argument that the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause requires government to pay fair market value to homeowners when it seizes and sells their homes to collect a tax debt. That was the question presented in the case, and the Court ...
The National Law Review : A Fair Process to Avoid Home Equity Theft
In Pung v. Isabella County, the U.S. Supreme Court this week confirmed its decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County that when the government forecloses on a home to recover unpaid property taxes, it is entitled to keep only the amount owed and remit the remainder to the property owner as just compensation. The court clarified, however, that unlike t ...
MS Now : The Supreme Court stood up for privacy — but only to a point
The Supreme Court held today in Chatrie v. United States that the government conducted a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it acquired digital records about the cell phone location of a man accused of robbing a bank. This means that police generally need a warrant to obtain your location information from a service provider like ...