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.
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 p ...
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 adver ...
On the morning of October 3, 2022, I argued Sackett v. EPA II at the Supreme Court. It was the opening case of the Court's new term. An element of theater I've argued at the Supreme Court only one other time previously—a decade ago, in this same case (Sackett v. EPA I). But even attorneys ...
On Monday, October 3, Pacific Legal Foundation senior attorney Damien Schiff will argue Sackett v. EPA at the Supreme Court. At issue is the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act. More than 350 organizations, states, and members of Congress have filed amicus briefs in support of ...
Taking on the United States government in court is not for the faint of heart—it takes courage, grit, and a deep belief in the cause for which you are fighting. When the government violated the terms of an agreement it made with property owners in Montana, one man refused to take the abuse lying down. ...
Mike and Chantell Sackett bought a parcel of land in 2004 near Priest Lake, Idaho, with dreams of building their family home on the site. Construction began in 2007—but stopped almost immediately when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in and issued a compliance order, claiming their land is a federally protected wetland and accusi ...
On July 5, Axios not-so-subtly warned us that "the Supreme Court's next target is the executive branch." The Guardian's headline was even more stark: "The U.S. Supreme Court has declared war on the Earth's future." With headlines like these, you might think we're experiencing the end times. Or, as Imagine Dragons put it in ...
The Supreme Court agrees to hear oral arguments in only about 70 cases each term. Those 70 cases are selected for review from a flood of roughly 7,000-8,000 cert petitions. Next term, two of those cases will be Pacific Legal Foundation cases: Sackett v. EPA, which the Supreme Court accepted for review in January, and ...
Schoolchildren are not known for their patience. But sometimes they have good reason to want something not next year, not next month, but now. Such as when their futures are on the line before the Supreme Court. The slow Supreme Court process In normal circumstances, it takes more than a year for the Supreme ...
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, affirming what Pacific Legal Foundation has argued on behalf of landowners for nearly a year—that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacked the constitutional authority to enforce its nationwide eviction mo ...
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a victory for property owners with their decision in Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid. The Supreme Court affirmed that the government cannot force people to allow third parties to trespass on their property. In 2015, union activists stormed Cedar Point Nursery to harass the farm workers ...
It’s essentially just a normal family home buildable lot, which was fully permitted by the county. So, it is kind of funny to think about the district court and the Ninth Circuit affirmed EPA has au…
The immediate stakes, of course, are whether the Sacketts may build their dream home. For more than 15 years, the Sacketts’ plans have been on hold, and, at long last, the end of their ordeal is in …
You might ask: What is the EPA doing telling ordinary Americans whether they can build a house? The agency claims that the Sacketts’ lot is a federally regulated “navigable water” under the Clea…
Although the Supreme Court likely won’t be talking much about guns and abortions this term, there will be fireworks on issues ranging from race preferences at colleges, to California’s politically…
The modern administrative state has become a behemoth not only subverting the horizontal separation of powers by making law through broad congressional delegations, but also subverting the vertical se…
On October 3, 2022, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency will be the first case argued in the new term at the Supreme Court. The case allows the Court to continue where West Virginia v. EPA left…
In Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Supreme Court held that land designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as “critical habitat” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) mu…
Perhaps one of the worst accusations that can be thrown at a judge is that they’re inconsistent, since it implies that the judge is ruling according to his or her whim rather than the rule of law. F…
Would a win for the plaintiffs challenging race-preferential admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina be an anti-democratic result — an example of how, as progressive legal comment…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must be held accountable for its open defiance of the Supreme Court’s directives. For decades, the FTC relied on a statute authorizing “permanent injunctions” …
Should racial preferences in university admissions be legal? The U.S. Supreme Court has an opportunity to revisit that hotly debated question if it decides to take up Students for Fair Admissions v. H…
PLF attorneys are available for speaking engagements and media interviews on cases at the Supreme Court.
To book a speaker, email [email protected]. To arrange a media interview or to receive a comment on a Supreme Court case, email [email protected].
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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