Articles

Today, we’re happy to announce that the union walk-around rule is no more. This rule was promulgated by OSHA back in 2013 and it permitted non-employee union operatives to accompany governmental workplace inspections — even when the workforce was not unionized. This made two fundamental changes to the walk-around rule as it had existed ...

The Endangered Species Act gives the United States Fish and Wildlife Service the authority to exclude areas from protected species’ “critical habitat” when the benefits of excluding those areas would exceed the benefits of including them. This power is significant, because the regulatory burdens—and consequent loss in value& ...

The Congressional Review Act (“CRA”) defines “rule” broadly, to include any regulatory agency document that impacts the general public. The Congressional Review Act adopts the definition of “rule” from Section 551 of the Administrative Procedure Act, with some modifications. Specifically, for the purposes of the ...

As absurd as the titular question seems to ordinary people, an E&E News story quotes several law professors claiming the answer is “yes.” The story is a detailed analysis of the Red Tape Rollback project that Pacific Legal Foundation has launched with its partners—Heritage Foundation, Club for Growth, Competitive Enterprise In ...

Late Friday, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas denied (in part) OSHA’s motion to dismiss our lawsuit challenging the agency’s “union walkaround” rule. Filed back in September, our lawsuit challenges the so-called “Fairfax Memo,” issued by OSHA in 2013. The Fairfax Memo grants uni ...

Yesterday, we filed a new case challenging a controversial rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The lawsuit, brought in the Northern District of Texas and styled National Federation of Independent Business v. Dougherty, attacks a 2013 OSHA “standard interpretation letter.” Often referred to as the “Fairfa ...

This week, we filed our reply brief to our request to the United States Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Building Industry Association of the Bay Area v. United States Department of Commerce. We have asked the High Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that landowners and other affected part ...

This morning, the Ninth Circuit held that federal agencies cannot escape judicial scrutiny for illegal actions simply because they have violated the law before. In PLF’s sea otter case, we represent fishermen in a challenge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent decision to terminate congressionally mandated protections for them ...

Yesterday, Townhall published my op-ed highlighting the importance of PLF’s big, unanimous Supreme Court win in our Hawkes case (and its predecessor, Sackett) and whether these cases foreshadow anything for one of our cases currently pending before the Court. As regular readers know, the Supreme Court ruled in PLF’s favor in Hawkes, ho ...