Articles

California has been having a rough year: In a short six months it was hit with wildfires, urban unrest, and even some small earthquakes. But this week the Golden State made a decision that should change its luck: It reformed its most powerful environmental regulation, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), to ease the way for new constru ...

The government stole from Lynette Johnson, a Guyanese immigrant in New Jersey, when it foreclosed on her property, sold it, and pocketed the difference between her property's selling price ($101,000) and her property tax debt (about $24,000). Finally, last week—after four years of Pacific Legal Foundation fighting for Lynette in court, and more ...

Senator Mike Lee stepped onto a political land mine when he proposed the federal government sell a tiny pinch of the 640 million acres that it owns, most of it west of the Rockies. Politicos from left and right condemned the proposal as a betrayal of a grand heritage. I too have an issue with Senator Lee's proposal: It doesn't go far enough. Not on ...

Last week, by a 6–3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government agency in Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas. This controversy centered on a license granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to a private company for the storage of "spent nuclear fuel" (known colloquially as "nuclear waste") in Andrews County, Te ...

The Constitution's Bill of Rights tells us what the government can't do—for example, it can't stop us from expressing ourselves. But when originally ratified in 1791, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, not the states. James Madison, the main author of the Bill of Rights, wanted at least some of the amendments to apply to ...

"Justice is the end of government." —James Madison, Federalist 51 When people are wronged by the government, they can come to Pacific Legal Foundation for justice. Meanwhile, PLF is also constantly working outside courtrooms to make laws more just. In the 2025 legislative session, Pacific Legal Foundation partnered with state legislators and al ...

It should go without saying: Squatters are not the same as overstaying tenants. Tenants that overstay had a legal contract with the property owner that allowed them to be in the home. Squatters never did. A property owner may not even know of squatters' presence. Squatting, simply put, is criminal trespassing. Yet several states have treated tresp ...

One of the most personal healthcare decisions a woman can make is how she brings her babies into the world. Whether she chooses to deliver in a hospital with a doctor, or with a midwife in a birth center or at home, a mother has the fundamental right to make that choice for herself. And yet, in many states, governments routinely interfere in this d ...

Tomorrow Americans celebrate Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. It is difficult to fathom what it must have been like to be enslaved, but most of us have an intuitive sense of what it means to be free. The drafters of the Declaration of Independence captured it in the preamble by identifying our inalienable rights: "Lif ...