Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law an amendment to Florida's Environmental Protection Act, SB 712, that in part prohibits local governments from granting individuals the right to sue on behalf of plants, animals, bodies or water or other elements of nature. It reflected the sensible idea that it is individuals who are harmed ...
The private vs. public beach debate is often characterized as debate on social justice. The logic is that blocked public beach access disproportionally hurts the poor who cannot afford to live in beachfront homes. In California, this is where the heroic California Coastal Commission enters: to protect the rights of such disadvantaged groups against ...
Kelly Lyles is a member of a dying breed: the mom-and-pop Seattle landlord. Her kind has become the target of an increasingly radical city council that has slammed the rental housing industry with a barrage of new-fangled policies over the last five years that protect tenants at all costs, including the cost of landlord property ...
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 version of this article will appear in The Culture Issue, the Spring 2020 edition of PLF’s magazine Sword&Scales ~~~ In classic westerns, the heroes and villains are straightforward. Bad guys wear black hats and descend on a small town protected by the white-hatted local lawman. We head toward a violent climax and when the ...
In the summer of 1910, a successful Yale-educated attorney named George W.F. McMechen and his schoolteacher wife moved to an upscale neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. After all, McMechen had achieved the American dream; he and his wife were well-respected, affluent professionals, and they wanted their home to reflect their success. But there was ...