California Department of Public Health offers much-needed relief to personal care providers
Barbers, stylists, and other personal care providers across California were given new hope today. Small businesses all across California were devastated by California Governor Gavin Newsom’s March 19, 2020, stay-at-home and shutdown order. No industry was harder hit than the personal services industry, as hair salons, barbershops, nail sa ...
Daily Journal: A primer on amicus briefs as a tool to protect individual liberty
As a public interest legal organization, Pacific Legal Foundation litigates in multiple ways: Primarily, we initiate, defend and intervene in lawsuits on behalf of individuals and associations. These lawsuits champion the rights of our clients’ rights, and by extension, all Americans. We file as many as we can. Additionally, PLF files amicus ...
Senate confirms new OMB director, clearing path for increased focus on deregulatory priorities
Washington, D.C.; July 22, 2020: On Monday, the U.S Senate confirmed Russ Vought as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget by a vote of 51-45. “After years in which the previous OMB director had competing obligations, it’s wonderful that that OMB has a confirmed director who’s shown strong support for principled dereg ...
Strengthening property rights will improve affordable housing in America’s cities
Our nation is in the midst of a severe and ever-worsening housing crisis. For decades, we have seen far too few homes being built. And those homes that are built are often too expensive—particularly in major urban centers, where poor and middle-class families increasingly find themselves priced out of homes and apartments located near the … ...
The Detroit News: State’s highest court upholds fundamental property rights
“Government shall not collect more in taxes than are owed, nor shall it take more property than is necessary to serve the public.” With these words, the Michigan Supreme Court on Friday confirmed what Uri Rafaeli and his attorneys knew all along: The government violates constitutional property rights when it takes more than it is ̷ ...
Kady Valois
Kady Valois joined Pacific Legal Foundation in the summer of 2020 after finishing a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Jonathan D. Gerber on Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal. Kady practices primarily in PLF’s property rights group, where she defends individuals’ rights to use their private property free from burdensome ...
A chef cooking to stay afloat during COVID-19
Chef Geoff Tracy is an entrepreneur, cookbook author, and owner of restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area. Chef Geoff’s numerous awards include The Best Neighbor Award (for contributions to the community) and Washingtonian magazine’s “Best Local Chef.” He also served on the executive board of the Restaurant Association of ...
The Hill: To cripple the abusive campus ‘sex bureaucracy,’ rein in the Title IX coordinators
If you want to entrench a government policy, make sure someone’s job depends on enforcing it. Even if that person isn’t a true believer in the program initially, she will be by the time her first paycheck arrives — and increasingly after that. That’s certainly the case with the education system’s Title IX coordinators, who ...
Joe Luppino-Esposito
Joe Luppino-Esposito is deputy legal policy director at Pacific Legal Foundation, where he develops solutions and advocates for reforms for states and the federal government. Joe joined PLF to connect with others who want to fight government overreach and defend individual liberty. He’s learned that the risk in pushing hard in service of ...
Townhall: Congressional and state efforts to reform doctrine of Qualified Immunity underway
The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis over Memorial Day Weekend sparked protests and nationwide discussions of race, police abuse and criminal justice reform — a discussion that has yet to abate. His tragic death also renewed focus on a legal doctrine called “qualified immunity” that government bureaucrats and regulatory officers ...