Articles

PLF asks Supreme Court to take up wetlands enforcement case This Wednesday we filed a cert. petition in the Supreme Court in Robertson v. United States. Joe Robertson is appealing his Clean Water Act conviction for digging water supply ponds to protect his property from forest fires. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed that a … ...

Ninth Circuit holds that permafrost is a navigable water Today the Ninth Circuit in this opinion ruled against our clients in Tin Cup LLC v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Tin Cup, a family owned pipe fabrication business in North Pole, Alaska, sought to expand and relocate its business. The Army Corps of Engineers claimed jurisdiction … ...

Today, PLF filed a renewed motion to dismiss in Center for Biological Diversity v. Zinke, a case that challenges Congress’ use of the Congressional Review Act to overturn a Department of Interior regulation that severely restricted certain types of hunting in Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuges. PLF’s motion, filed on behalf of its ...

PLF receives requests for assistance all the time. Although any request may turn into a major civil rights lawsuit, we must turn down the vast majority of these requests. PLF subsists on the generous contributions of our donors, and we need to use those donor dollars judiciously. Accordingly, we select only those rare cases where there … ...

Property Rights — Coy Koontz gets paid!!!!  In the “you can’t get something for nothing” category, the St. Johns Water Management District finally paid the Coy Koontz estate $602,000 for the temporary taking of the Koontz property. While it was only 22 years late, Coy Koontz has finally been vindicated. As you recall, we to ...

We’re from the Government and we’re doing you a favor That is essentially the government’s theme in its opening brief in Hawkes v. United States, our wetlands jurisdiction case at the Supreme Court. Our case is all about whether a property owner has a right to appeal a “wetlands jurisdictional determination” by the Co ...

It is ice cold under sunny skies in the nation’s capitol today, as Washington DC braces for yet another storm of the century this coming weekend. It is a fitting setting for the Supreme Court to hear oral argument today in the aptly-captioned Sturgeon v. Frost. In this case, the National Park Service is claiming … ...

The Supreme Court will soon decide how much control federal agencies can exercise over Alaska’s lands and waters. A California-sized chunk of the state sits within federal “conservation system units.” These conservation areas include national parks, wildlife refuges, preserves, and so on. Such areas are subject to special fede ...

The State of Alaska has asked the United States Supreme Court to review a decision of the Ninth Circuit which says that the federal government, instead of the state, has the power to regulate hunting and fishing in navigable waters in Alaska.  PLF has filed an amicus brief in support of Alaska, encouraging the high … ...