PLF heads back to SCOTUS to challenge racial discrimination in public school admissions
Pacific Legal Foundation is heading back to the Supreme Court next year with our case, The Association for Education Fairness (AFEF) v. Montgomery County Public Schools. Montgomery County, Maryland, is one of the largest school districts in the country. Four decades ago, MCPS launched a magnet program designed for gifted middle school students, ...
The Docket : October 16, 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 broad coalition of California farmers, ranchers, and businesses challenges an "occupied critical ...
Good enough for Google, but not for college? One student’s fight against discriminatory admissions
What does it take to earn a place at one of America's top universities? On paper, Bay Area high school student Stanley Zhong seemed like a textbook shoo-in for admission to any of the schools on his short list. But as Stanley and his family would soon discover, being qualified for admission and getting admitted into college are not necessarily the ...
The Docket : October 9, 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. Anastasia Boden's SCOTUS Scoop returns; California regulators dismiss a small business owner's $24 ...
The Supreme Court passed on lobster boat tracking. The question will return.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Frank Thompson's challenge to Maine's rule requiring lobstermen to carry a government GPS tracker on their boats at all times. The denial leaves in place a lower court decision that lets the state track Frank, a fifth-generation lobsterman from Vinalhaven, without a warrant 24 hours a day, whether ...
The Orange County Register : Washington’s energy permitting fast lane is slow
The federal government is America's largest landowner. For decades, policymakers and experts have assumed that the "quick" way to access resource-rich federal lands works as advertised. New research suggests otherwise. Developing the vast energy and mineral resources under federal control often means going through the National Environmental Poli ...
Religious liberty, farming, & climate change coming to the Court
We're back, baby! How was your summer? Sacramento is squeezing in its last gorgeous days of warm weather. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has had enough of a vacation. Time to get back to work saving the Constitution! The October 2026 term began today with the first oral arguments. We also got three new grants out of the Court's "long conference" ...
The Dispatch : Florence Allen Was More Than a First
Florence Allen's decision to become a lawyer came to her "like a flash out of the blue," a "revelation on high." It was an inconvenient one. When Allen entered law school in 1909, women could not vote, many schools would not admit them, and only about 1 percent of American lawyers were women. Her own undergraduate alma mater, Case Western Univer ...
A hollow victory for a California car wash owner
On September 30, a California Labor Commissioner hearing officer dismissed a $249,007 wage citation against Christopher McKenna's Hermosa Beach business, Rock N Roll Car Wash. After a multi-day hearing, the officer found that the Commissioner failed to prove any of the alleged violations and dismissed the citation in its entirety. The decision f ...