Articles

On November 8, voters in San Francisco weighed in on a pair of ballot initiatives aimed at easing the city's affordable housing crisis. Let's at least give city officials this much credit — they do, in fact, appear to recognize the city's serious housing problem. But their solutions fall flat. Of the country's major cities, San Francisco ranks in ...

To anyone considering donating to a nonprofit organization (and I know a few good ones!), I have some great news: The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld your constitutional right to privacy of association. On July 1, in a 6-3 opinion in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 2021 DJDAR 6702, the Supreme Court struck down California's attempt to d ...

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard argument in a case asking whether you have the right to privacy when you make charitable donations.  Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 19-251 (S. Ct., filed Aug. 26, 2019); The case involves a California requirement that all nonprofit organizations soliciting donations within Cal ...

Do you have the right to privately support charities and causes you believe in? And what standard applies when the government seeks to discover otherwise-anonymous donors' identities from nonprofit organizations? On Jan. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra to clarify the answers to those qu ...

The California Coastal Act of 1976 created a new state agency, the California Coastal Commission, and granted it tremendous authority over development along California's coastline. But the act also gave local governments a powerful tool to gain back some control — local governments are allowed to submit a local coastal program to the commission f ...

A Manhattan Beach duplex with a unique paint job has been mired in controversy. A few months ago, Manhattan Beach resident Kathryn Kidd hired a local artist named Z the Art to paint her house in a bright pink color with a pair of cheeky emoji faces. While Kidd enjoys the house, her neighbors have made it clear that they do not. A report earlier ...

This morning the Ninth Circuit denied Americans for Prosperity Foundation's petition for rehearing en banc in AFPF v. Becerra. For those who don't remember, the Foundation sued over a California law that requires tax-exempt nonprofit organizations to hand over an IRS form that contains names and addresses of their donors. The trial court agreed wit ...

By any measure, Hurricane Katrina was a disastrous natural catastrophe. But for many landowners in St. Bernard Parish, what might have been a damaging but survivable storm was transformed into total devastation by a series of government actions and omissions stretching back decades. Last week, we filed this amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to ...

Originally published in the Daily Journal, September 11, 2018. The 3rd District Court of Appeal recently ruled that the public trust doctrine can apply to groundwater extraction, but the court left some questions unanswered. A recent ruling in the 3rd District Court of Appeal will very likely increase environmental litigation in California an ...