Washington Examiner : Backdoor rulemaking— The government’s obsession with guidance
Federal agencies repeatedly govern Americans through documents that are not supposed to carry the force of law. In theory, these "guidance documents" should merely explain how an agency is interpreting existing statutes and regulations. In practice, however, they often function as a shortcut around the lawmaking and rulemaking processes. That sh ...
American Heroes : The government took their children at 1 a.m. Without a warrant
Most parents assume that if the government wants to take their children, it first has to convince a judge. Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins learned otherwise. A mere 36 hours after Sarah took their infant son to the emergency room for a fever, child welfare and police officers arrived at their door in the middle of the night and took their two yo ...
Why a fund for young innovators is challenging California’s intrusive reporting mandate
There are thousands of venture capital firms competing to find promising tech startups, but remarkably few cater specifically to young college dropouts. In 2015, Michael Gibson and Danielle Strachman cofounded 1517 Fund with a specific mission in mind: to invest in young, renegade dropouts and "sci-fi scientists" developing tomorrow's breakthrough ...
Federal court hears oral argument on whether HISA’s private enforcement regime is constitutional
Philip Serpe walked horses at the Meadowlands Sports Complex as a teenager without pay and spent his high school evenings volunteering at the track. He won his first Grade 1 race at 28, trained three Grade 1 horses, and built a reputation at some of the top tracks in the country. Now he is serving a two-year suspension from his successful thorou ...
California architect did everything right—and the Board of Architecture fined him $29,000
When Jeffrey Hagen, a California-based architect, agreed to help a longtime client with a Las Vegas project, he did everything by the book. He drew up preliminary plans, submitted them to the city for a permit, and applied for reciprocity with the Nevada State Board of Architecture, truthfully disclosing that he was already working with a client an ...
City demands $600,000 for advertising a rental
When the medical team finally gave 82-year-old retiree Sandra May clearance to leave the hospital, she should have been able to focus on her recovery. Instead, she returned home to the news that her local government had slapped her with nearly $600,000 in fines—over a simple website error. Sandra May is a Hawaii homeowner who rents out a p ...
The Docket : June 5, 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. A California law mandating race- and sex-based profiling is challenged in federal court; a Washing ...
AL.com : Alabama wants to license birth centers as hospitals. That’s absurd.
Here's a bureaucratic puzzle: What do you call a small, home-like birth setting staffed bymidwives, designed specifically to offer low-intervention, low-cost maternity care to healthy mothers with low-risk pregnancies? If you're the Alabama Department of Public Health, apparently the answer is: a hospital. That's the absurd regulatory position a ...
Arizona court strips agencies of the right to supply their own facts in court
Under Arizona law, when a government agency asserted something as fact, courts were required to accept it, as long as any evidence supported it—even a shred, even if the weight of the evidence pointed the other way. That standard, known as substantial evidence review, gave agencies something no ordinary litigant enjoys: the ability to lose on the ...