Weaponized environmental litigation halts home building across the country
This November, Californians have the chance to vote on a proposed reform to the state's environmental review process—a process that has been weaponized to halt construction projects across the state for years at a time. Proposition 45 aims to reform the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). While CEQA's intention is to adequately assess ...
Maryland audiologist fights Medicare’s ban on private-pay care
Medicare pays Dr. Alicia Spoor $29.21 for an hourlong comprehensive hearing evaluation. Keeping her Maryland audiology practice running costs about $235 an hour—and that's just to break even. Dr. Spoor is an audiologist, a doctoral-level clinician who diagnoses and treats disorders of hearing and balance. At Designer Audiology, her independent ...
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, ...
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 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 ...
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 ...
One family’s fight to save their multigenerational Idaho potato farm
Author Margaret Mitchell once wrote, "Land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts." For Jerry Bingham, his family's Idaho farm is more than land. It's the only home he's ever known. In 1950, his father purchased the thousand-acre farm near Blackfoot, Idaho. Je ...
The Dispatch : The American Bar Association’s Discriminatory Diversity Push Is Ending—For Now
For more than seven decades, the American Bar Association has been recognized as an authority to accredit law schools. The Department of Education recently recommended revoking that authority, and an independent advisory board will be meeting to discuss the recommendation on September 23. The department's report mostly emphasizes other legal concer ...