Pacific Legal Foundation is a repeat player at the Supreme Court of the United States. Our attorneys have won cases involving property rights, free speech, and Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts, cases that exemplify threats to liberty and property by the regulatory state.
Once his land was ready and all George needed was a county building permit, he was stunned when told he could have his permit, but only if he paid a so-called traffic impact fee of more than $23,000. George weighed the immense cost against the hard work he put into his land and his yearning for a retirement home, and he paid the fee under protest. The County ignored his protest, so George sued, arguing the fees constituted an unconstitutional permit condition under three Supreme Court decisions—including two PLF victories.
One of the longest-running legal battles in the history of the Clean Water Act doesn’t involve mega-polluters dumping toxic chemicals into America’s major rivers and lakes. Rather, it involves a couple who wanted to build a home on less than an acre of land in a residential neighborhood. And now, that case could have ramifications for property owners around the country.
Wil Wilkins and Jane Stanton live next to Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest. A road that crosses both of their properties is the result of a limited-use easement granted to the U.S. Forest Service by the properties’ previous owners in 1962. The general public is not supposed to use the road, but in 2006 the Forest Service began advertising the road as public. Since then, public use of the road has caused serious traffic hazards, road damage, fire threats, noise, trespassing, illegal hunting, and speeding, as well as a gunshot aimed at Wil’s cat. Because the Forest Service is essentially trying to gain a better easement than it paid for back in 1962, Wil and Jane are fighting back.
On May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court announced a unanimous decision in favor of Geraldine, ruling that home equity theft violates the Takings Clase of the Fifth Amendment. The Court explained that property rights are fundamental and cannot be erased by a state statute that redefines them out of existence. “The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the decision, “but no more.”
Cedar Point Nursery and Fowler Packing Company are California growers that produce fruit for millions of Americans. Collectively, they employ around 3,000 Californians. In 2015, the United Farm Workers (UFW) viewed the workers as ripe for the picking and sent union organizers to storm the workplaces during harvest time to encourage them to unionize. Even though property owners have a right to exclude trespassers, the state’s Union Access Regulation takes an easement that allows these union organizers to enter a business’s private property three hours a day, 120 days a year. The businesses asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate California’s unlawful regulation and affirm that government can’t allow unions to invade private property and disrupt commercial operations without paying compensation for a property taking. On November 13, 2020, the Supreme Court announced that the justices would hear the case.
The Supreme Court will decide whether Scott Pung’s heirs are entitled to the equity they had in their longtime family home.
It was an opinion day yesterday at the Court. Unfortunately, the Court is still clearing its docket of the snoozers before getting ready for the constitutional bombshells—so nothing much of note.
The quiet part of the term is over and the part that shapes doctrine (and headlines) is just beginning.
When you text your doctor, share your location with a rideshare app, or use your credit card at checkout, you aren’t broadcasting your private life to the world. You’re sharing specific information, f…
In April 2024, California retiree George Sheetz celebrated a rare legal milestone: a unanimous ruling in his favor by the U.S. Supreme Court. George sued his county government years prior after it ref…
Two quick, but important scoops. First, the Court released its opinion in the highly anticipated tariffs case. Second, PLF is back at SCOTUS (baby!).
On February 25, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Pung v. Isabella County, the latest legal challenge to the practice of home equity theft to reach the high court. Pacific Legal Found…
On Wednesday, PLF heads back to the Supreme Court to continue the fight against home equity theft and protect property owners’ right to just compensation. Pung v. Isabella County began with a disput…
In the autumn of 2025, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the first case since the 1980s to address the amount of “just compensation” the government is required by the Constitution to provide…
Ohio entrepreneur asks Supreme Court to defend the right to use modern technology to gather and share lawful information.
Local governments have a nasty habit of taking everything you’ve got and leaving you dry. That’s how Isabella County, Mich., treated the Pung family, whose case was heard on Wednesday, March 11, b…
Supreme Court dissenting opinions aren’t just impactful—there’s an art to them, argues Anastasia Boden, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation and author of the “In Dissent” column at…
The Supreme Court unanimously revived a straight woman’s “reverse discrimination” case against her former employer Thursday, lowering the legal hurdle for white and straight employees to bring s…
Popular though such takes may be, they not only mischaracterize Justice Barrett’s record but betray a more fundamental misunderstanding of the job of a Supreme Court justice. Reasonable minds can di…
If homeowners miss property tax payments, even if they never received the bills, some towns grab the whole house and keep the proceeds.
The Pacific Legal Foundation said in a new court filing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is doing with the tailpipe emissions rule exactly what the Supreme Court said federal agencies cannot d…
“If the court embraces our view of the nondelegation doctrine, it would mean agencies can’t just go out and search for any sort of open-ended language to justify any rule they might want,” said …
The Supreme Court’s recent blockbuster cases have had to do with hot-button issues like abortion, racial preferences and guns. But this year, one of the court’s most highly anticipated cases has t…
On Monday, April 22, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. The question before the justices is: did the Ninth Circuit correctly hold that the Eighth Amendment preven…
California homeowner George Sheetz won a victory at the Supreme Court on Friday in his challenge to the constitutionality of a fee that he was required to pay the county to receive a permit to build h…
Overturning this 1984 case that gives deference to agency interpretations of statutes would better preserve the constitutional functions of each branch of the federal government.
PLF partners with private counsel on important public interest litigation at the appellate level. If you have such a case and your clients cannot afford continuing litigation, ask us about partnering to take a case to the Supreme Court.
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