National Review: The Forgotten Victims of Government Overreach
In a mythical world, justice proceeds like this: After being wronged by a government injustice, a victim lawyers up and sues the government wrongdoer. After a short time, a court corrects the error and restores the rights and property of the citizen. The government, appropriately chagrined, errs no more.
If only.
In the real world, lawyers are expensive, and few can afford them. In the real world, it takes years, sometimes decades, to achieve a just result from a court. And in the real world, government actors try every trick possible to evade an unfavorable judgment. This is the world that Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) and its clients operate in.
Justice in our world is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those with short time horizons. It is not for those who lack faith, perseverance, and the ability to see over the horizon. It is for those willing to fight inch by inch until the horizon is finally reached, and we can say, “Yes, we, our clients, and justice have prevailed!”
While PLF can relieve its clients of paying for attorneys, the cost of achieving justice in time, energy, and mental fortitude remains high. Take the case of Mike and Chantell Sackett, who wanted to build a modest family home on a small lot in Priest Lake, Idaho.
In 2007, when the Sacketts began to prepare their land for their new home, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) threatened them with ruinous fines because of a supposed patch of wetlands on their property. The Sacketts fought back, arguing that no wetlands were on the property subject to federal authority. But it took the Sacketts and PLF 16 years and two trips to the Supreme Court to beat back the EPA.
Their first trip to the Supreme Court vindicated their right to challenge the EPA’s claim there were wetlands on the property. The second trip resulted in a unanimous 2023 decision that the EPA had no right to regulate wetlands that were not connected to a navigable waterway. Not only did that unanimous decision restore the Sacketts’ property rights, but it also freed up millions of acres nationwide from unlawful federal control.
Then there is the ongoing case of the Shands family’s attempt to build a family vacation home on a small island in the Florida Keys purchased by Dr. R. E. Shands in 1956. At that time, its zoning allowed for up to seven homes. Dr. Shands passed away before he could fulfill his dream, and it was not until 2004 that his children tried to resurrect his plans. But by then, the county had other ideas — the seven-acre property was rezoned as a bird sanctuary. The county, however, refused to pay the Shandses for their island. The family sued.
After 15 years of yo-yoing between the trial and appellate courts, the Shands family finally won. Noting that the Shandses had been allowed to use their property only for “beekeeping or personal camping,” the court found that the Shandses’ property had been taken, and they are entitled to compensation. But even now, the case is not over. The county is seeking a rehearing; it will presumably appeal if that is not granted. Rather than doing the right thing and paying the Shandses for their property, the county assumes it will outlive the family while the case drags on.
This sort of long-drawn-out multigenerational litigation is not unusual. In another one of our successes at the Supreme Court, Coy Koontz Jr. won nearly 20 years after his late father began the case. Coy Koontz Sr. started this saga in 1994 when he applied to build a small development in Orange County, Fla. When the St. Johns River Water Management District demanded that Koontz spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix up district property miles away in exchange for a permit, he sued. It was not until the Supreme Court called the demand extortionate that the case finally concluded in 2016.
And there was farm owner Willie Benedetti. He sued after Marin County, Calif., told him he could not build a home for his son Arthur on his 267 acres because Arthur was not a farmer. Sadly, Willie died before concluding his case, and his son could not continue the litigation after the case was dismissed.
Long and drawn-out court battles are not confined to cases dealing with property. In 2018, New York City rejiggered its premier high schools’ admission standards so fewer Asian students would be admitted. That was after the city’s Department of Education deputy chancellor complained, “I walked into Stuyvesant High School, and I thought I was in Chinatown.” PLF sued in 2018 on behalf of students and parents hurt by the new admission rules. We are arguing that the city violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Six years later, after numerous lower-court setbacks, the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that our case could proceed. Undoubtedly, there will be more resistance to our arguments in the lower courts and more appeals. But ultimately, thanks to the perseverance of our clients, we should prevail.
In all these cases, justice has been anything but swift. In some cases, it has been elusive. While we have relieved our clients of the financial burden of paying their attorneys, nothing can relieve them of the years taken from them as their cases drag on and on in the courts.
Keep this in mind while watching Supreme Court news this term. The Court has been granting new cases since reconvening — but for every case granted, around 99 are denied, and countless others are stuck in various stages of legal purgatory. Even when a case does make it to the Supreme Court, a victory isn’t the end of the legal battle.
Justice is hard-won — so good luck to all those facing long years and long odds in pursuit of what’s right. Justice is also no myth if we fight long and hard enough to take it from an ideal to a reality.
This op-ed originally appeared in National Review on January 23, 2025.
