New York artists ask Supreme Court to hear lawsuit challenging $100-per-square-foot exactions
SoHo and Noho, New York City's once-vibrant artist quarters, are now the site of a legal challenge making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Pacific Legal Foundation filed a petition for a writ of certiorari yesterday asking the Court to hear a lawsuit challenging a controversial rezoning law that forces New York artists to pay more than $100 pe ...
Can California silence a doctor-patient phone call?
Trinidad, California, sits at the edge of the continent, a small coastal town nearly 300 miles north of San Francisco. In many ways, its remoteness is part of its charm. For Shellye Horowitz, who has a rare and potentially life-threatening bleeding disorder, it comes with a serious drawback: a state law that restricts her ability to communicate wit ...
Napa County collected taxes on her wine for decades. Now it wants $4 million because she poured it.
Napa Valley, California, is home to some of the most sought-after wine in the world. Here, the elements conspire as warm afternoon sunshine and rolling evening fog slowly ripen the grapes, giving them time to develop that deep signature complexity. Each bottle of Napa wine tells the story of the vineyard and the people who gave it life. These ...
Bloomberg Law : Doctors Can’t Be Made to Check Their Judgment at Exam Room Door
The US Supreme Court's 8-1 decision that doctors and therapists don't have to march in lockstep with a state-crafted consensus isn't just a win for the First Amendment rights of practitioners. It's also a win for the First Amendment rights of their patients. We are all better off when our health care professionals can speak their minds. In Ch ...
Washington Examiner : Permitting reform—The key to unlocking housing and energy affordability
For years, homeowners and builders have been trapped in a cycle of waiting — waiting for permits, waiting for inspections, and waiting for approvals that can take months or even years to arrive. Now, policymakers across the country are taking a fresh look at outdated permitting processes, and they're beginning to cut the red tape that has made bu ...
Judge’s ruling protects due process rights of Californians caught in federal registration trap
On April 9, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction blocking the Department of Justice from prosecuting California residents under a federal sex-offender registration law without first confirming with the state that those individuals are required to register in the first place. PLF represents a group of plaintiffs who are caught in a bind ...
A court finally tells FinCEN there is nothing questionable about buying in cash
When a federal court struck down FinCEN's real estate surveillance rule, Celia Flowers finally got an answer to the question that had been haunting her business for two years: Could the government force her to hand over her clients' private information? In 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) finaliz ...
The Hill : How the federal government is forcing states to spy on lobstermen
The federal government is forcing constant, warrantless GPS surveillance on thousands of small fishing businesses — and threatening their livelihoods if fishermen or state governments object. A federal regulation requires ten East Coast states to adopt and enforce an electronic tracking requirement for federally permitted lobster vessels. Comp ...
Orange County Register : California should extend lifesaving telehealth tech options
Dr. Gene Dorio and Robin Clough spent their careers looking after their neighbors' needs. In Santa Clarita, they were the kind of couple every community quietly relies on—running programs for seniors, checking in on isolated neighbors, and making sure residents had support when things went wrong. They were the helpers. Then came their own brus ...