Articles

What is home equity theft? Home equity theft happens when the government takes your home to recover a property tax debt worth less than the property, and refuses to compensate the owner for the difference between what was owed and what was taken. Government can take property to collect unpaid property taxes, but taking more … ...

On Wednesday, November 30, PLF attorney Jeffrey McCoy argued Wilkins v. USA at the Supreme Court. Montana neighbors Wil Wilkins and Jane Stanton have been trying to protect their remote forest homes after the U.S. Forest Service opened their small private road to the public, in violation of a decades-old easement agreement. When Wil and … ...

We have sad news to share: Our client Patrick Nollan—the courageous plaintiff in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, PLF’s first Supreme Court victory—passed away earlier this month at the age of 76. We offer the Nollan family our deepest condolences. Patrick Nollan’s portrait hangs in our office as an inspiring reminder of his ...

By Mark Shirley The restaurant business is hard work. Long hours, narrow profit margins, fierce competition — given the challenges, it’s not surprising that 60 percent of new restaurants fail in their first year. I was prepared for all those challenges and more when I launched my barbeque business, Ole Time Smokehouse, in a food … ...

This op-ed was written by John Yoo, a member of PLF’s board of trustees and a law professor at University of California, Berkeley. In February, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to eliminate merit-based admissions standards at Lowell High School, one of the city’s top-ranked public schools, with the stated goal of increasing di ...

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a victory for property owners with their decision in Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid. The Supreme Court affirmed that the government cannot force people to allow third parties to trespass on their property. In 2015, union activists stormed Cedar Point Nursery to harass the farm workers … ...

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, an important property rights case. Cedar Point could set a major precedent determining whether the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires the government to compensate property owners when it forces them to give outside private parties extensive access to thei ...

What’s at issue in this case?  The right to exclude trespassers is a fundamental part of property rights. California’s unconstitutional access rule allows a favored third party, in this case unions, to invade a business’s property for three hours a day, 120 days a year.   What’s the law in question in the ...

In recent years, Americans are paying renewed attention and having new discussions on race, racism, and discrimination. Some of those discussions have been positive and constructive, but some have been divisive and political. One of the more academic and historical aspects of that discussion has come from a project by The New York Times called  ...