Issues

Here's a bureaucratic puzzle: What do you call a small, home-like birth setting staffed bymidwives, designed specifically to offer low-intervention, low-cost maternity care to healthy mothers with low-risk pregnancies? If you're the Alabama Department of Public Health, apparently the answer is: a hospital. That's the absurd regulatory position a ...

Under Arizona law, when a government agency asserted something as fact, courts were required to accept it, as long as any evidence supported it—even a shred, even if the weight of the evidence pointed the other way. That standard, known as substantial evidence review, gave agencies something no ordinary litigant enjoys: the ability to lose on the ...

Every November, students vying for a spot at one of New York City's eight Specialized High Schools take the admissions exam that will determine their academic trajectory. The notoriously rigorous Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) spans three hours and assesses a student's abilities in English language arts and mathematics. Admissi ...

"Nonbinding." In government parlance, it means a document doesn't carry the force of law—that it's guidance, not a mandate. So why did an agency "guidance document" carry enough legal weight to prevent a family-owned Alaska business from moving its pipe storage operation to a larger lot—land bordered by a junk car dealer, a scrap metal deale ...

The King family has worked the same stretch of Central Washington for more than 70 years, running cattle across Grant and Douglas counties on land they've ranched since the 1950s. On May 21, a Grant County Superior Court judge heard oral argument on whether the Kings are entitled to defend that legacy before a jury—or whether Washington State ...

Let's say you've worked hard, saved money, and decided to buy a house to rent out. You want to purchase it outright, with cash, through an LLC to save thousands on financing costs and limit your personal liability. You're not laundering drug money. You're not funneling proceeds from some shadowy foreign government. You're doing exactly what million ...

Imagine losing a federal contract — despite submitting the lowest bid and the strongest proposal — because of the color of your skin or your sex. Most Americans would call that discrimination. The Constitution calls it unconstitutional. And yet, for decades, this is exactly what the federal government has been doing: It's allowed to engage in p ...

Between our two families, we're raising four children in Cache County, next door to the proposed data center in Box Elder County. As researchers working in environmental and energy policy at the Pacific Legal Foundation, handling data centers has been top-of-mind. And as parents, we spend a lot of time thinking about what kind of state our kids wil ...

In June 2022, a mistaken IP address led the South Bend, Indiana, police department to destroy an innocent family's home. Based on an officer's belief that a murder suspect had accessed his social media account at Amy Hadley's address, police acquired a warrant and stormed the building. Officers handcuffed Hadley's 15-year-old son and hauled him ...