Articles

The voluntary preservation of agricultural lands is a noble goal. Forcing landowners into government-run conservation efforts against their will, however, is something else entirely. And a desire to conserve pastoral farmland doesn’t excuse government from following the laws and constitutions of California and the United States. For several y ...

One thing that nearly all Californians agree on is that the price of housing in this state is too high. The relentlessly rising prices are unmistakable evidence of a housing shortage: not enough homes are built to meet the rising demand. Husband and wife entrepreneurs Shelah and Jonathan Lehrer-Graiwer thought they could help meet that … ...

  Dear Californians, this is your California Coastal Commission: willing to fine property owners over four MILLION dollars for blocking “public access” that doesn’t exist. Even to those who have spent years following (and fighting) the Coastal Commission’s brazen overreaching, this is downright appalling. Two years ago, ...

According to the California Coastal Commission staff, any permit where public access has not been granted can be automatically appealed on the grounds that California likes public access. A standard that weak is no standard at all, and certainly not what the legislature intended when it provided only limited grounds for appeal under section 30625 ...

Whether people want to donate to the Tea Party or the Socialist Party, they have a right to keep their donations anonymous. Since 2010, California has tried to interfere with those rights, requiring all nonprofit organizations to hand over donor names and addresses. Thursday PLF filed this brief as friend of the court in the Ninth Circuit case ...

Last Thursday night, Damien Schiff and I had the opportunity to speak before 150 or so gathered residents of Acton, Agua Dulce, and a few other nearby unincorporated communities of North Los Angeles County. We were invited to speak about the importance of property rights historically and today, the harm to property caused by “regulatory R ...

As many of you may be aware, we are just one week away from oral arguments in the Supreme Court in the case of Murr v. Wisconsin. Murr is the latest in a long line of property rights cases litigated by Pacific Legal Foundation all the way to the highest court in America. Todd Gaziano and … ...

There’s more than one way to skin a cat (or so I’ve heard). Well, there’s also more than one way for the government to prevent development on private property. Damien Schiff and I recently published an OpEd in the Country Journal for Acton and Agua Dulce about a new state law that has a big … ...

Jeffrey McCoy and I just had an OpEd on the Banning Ranch decision published in the San Francisco and Los Angeles Daily Journal. A PDF version is available here. As we previously posted, last week the California Supreme Court issued an unfavorable decision in the case of Banning Ranch Conservancy v. City of Newport Beach. In that … ...