Property Rights

In 2021, the Texas Legislature passed Texas House Bill 20, a law that bars social media platforms like Facebook, X, and WhatsApp from banning, censoring, or manually demoting accounts within a social media platform's algorithm so that fewer people see their content based on what those accounts have posted (de-boosting). This bill and others like it ...

The government took his home in 2018 over a $588 property tax debt. But a few days before Christmas 2024, Kevin Fair, an ailing Nebraska widower, found out he was getting back the title to his home.   Now a GoFundMe has raised over $16,000 so Kevin, who recently had a stroke, can build a ramp for his home, make some other repairs, and meet upco ...

There are legal victories, and then there are legal victories—court rulings so decisive, so sharply written, that they can only be considered a judicial knockout.  Case in point: Al Hadian and Ralph Bookout's New Year's Eve victory against the California Coastal Commission.  The (brief) backstory  Al and Ralph sued the Commission in 2022 ...

In one of the first legislative exactions opinions issued since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Sheetz v. County of El Dorado, the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division just struck down a provision of New York City's rezoning plan that would have imposed "Arts Fund" fees on certain landowners. New York's SoHo and NoHo districts have long be ...

Good news for North Dakota's Northland Township this month, as it appears its case against the federal government will come to an end before it even began. Represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, the small town of just 56 people was gearing up to take on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) over its regulatory abuse of what is known as a "pr ...

If you want to build housing on your property, can the government demand that you first give your land to someone else to live on? Or that you pay for someone else's house (on someone else's property) before you get a permit to build housing for yourself? You would think the answer would be a resounding, "Of course not!" But consider the case of Je ...

"Eminent domain abuse." Thanks to Susette Kelo and her brave stand against the government's taking of her now-iconic pink house, "eminent domain abuse" is a commonly understood and widely disdained government practice. In Susette Kelo's case, Kelo v. City of New London, the City used its power of eminent domain to take her home (and over a hundred ...

President-elect Donald Trump made the housing crisis a focal point of his presidential campaign. He correctly diagnosed a national problem: housing costs must come down to improve the country's economy and its standard of living. But having made the right diagnosis, federal leaders, like President-elect Trump and his administration, also expect sta ...

Ethan Blevins, legal fellow at Pacific Legal Foundation, recently joined The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast for a lively discussion on the issue of federal land in the United States. Charles and Ethan explored the history of federal land management, the federal government's shift away from homesteading toward a policy of land retention, the issue o ...