Equality and Opportunity

"Justice is the end of government." —James Madison, Federalist 51 When people are wronged by the government, they can come to Pacific Legal Foundation for justice. Meanwhile, PLF is also constantly working outside courtrooms to make laws more just. In the 2025 legislative session, Pacific Legal Foundation partnered with state legislators and al ...

One of the most personal healthcare decisions a woman can make is how she brings her babies into the world. Whether she chooses to deliver in a hospital with a doctor, or with a midwife in a birth center or at home, a mother has the fundamental right to make that choice for herself. And yet, in many states, governments routinely interfere in this d ...

Tomorrow Americans celebrate Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. It is difficult to fathom what it must have been like to be enslaved, but most of us have an intuitive sense of what it means to be free. The drafters of the Declaration of Independence captured it in the preamble by identifying our inalienable rights: "Lif ...

Nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives are known as "advanced practice registered nurses" (APRNs). They're an essential category of medical professionals who work on the frontlines of patient care, especially in rural and underserved areas. But in many states, APRNs' ability to provide care is limited by collaborative practice agreements. ...

The Supreme Court just unanimously ruled that white, male, or other majority-group employees do not have to meet a higher legal burden to prove workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case, Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, questioned the constitutionality of the "background circumstances rule," which imposes ...

The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has opened a Title VI investigation into Thomas Jefferson High School's admissions policy—a 2020 policy that parents, teachers, and alumni challenged in court as discriminatory in a case litigated for three years by Pacific Legal Foundation. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court declined to ...

Access to healthcare is a nationwide problem. Lack of access might be attributed to too few facilities, too few providers, or unaffordable prices. States are finally waking up and acknowledging that decades-old policies may be exacerbating these problems. One of these bad policies is known as certificate of need (CON) laws. CON laws function lik ...

Emergency rooms across the country are overcrowded, forcing patients suffering from severe illnesses to wait hours for treatment. Worse, when there are sudden increases in illness—say from an influenza outbreak—hospitals are unable to address the problem. That is because many state governments have adopted Certificate of Need (CON) laws that pr ...

For over 100 years, the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) has been striving to maximize opportunities for students to engage in "transformative relationships with coaches and teammates in which their character and emotional maturity is developed to empower them to be effective in life." But has the IHSAA struck out in trying to achie ...