Articles

Today, the president is signing an executive order designed to bring more accountability to federal agencies. This executive order comes partly as a result of PLF research and cases battling bureaucratic overreach. PLF client Andy Johnson will be at the signing ceremony. Below is an article from 2016 that Andy wrote describing, in his own words, hi ...

For years, Pacific Legal Foundation has been helping to protect individuals from the irrational and abusive expansion of the Clean Water Act (CWA). In far too many cases, the government has claimed violation of the CWA when individuals use their own land in a way that does not pollute federal waterways. Often, the government has used the CWA to reg ...

POTUS on WOTUS: "It's a horrible, horrible rule. Has sort of a nice name, but everything else is bad." Victory in California Supreme Court on Coho Salmon delisting petition Petition for rehearing filed in tax foreclosure scheme Supreme Court denies forced-unionization case Administration action on bathroom rule may affect judicial d ...

caption id="attachment_38835" align="alignright" width="225" Would you bet your freedom that you know which of these is protected?/caption Last week, PLF's motion to intervene was granted in a case threatening to radically expand criminal liability under the Endangered Species Act. As you may recall, we represent several southwestern agricultu ...

Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House and Congressman from Wisconsin, wrote a timely piece for today's Omaha World Herald criticizing the EPA's new waters of the United States (WOTUS) definition. Ryan aptly sets out that the new rule is about power, and nothing less: The Obama administration's sweeping new rule, dubbed Waters of the United States (W ...

Several weeks ago, the New York Times ran a front page article about the Andy Johnson's stock pond and the EPA compliance order threatening him with more than $16 million in fines. Here's a taste: The sun was sinking and the brook trout were biting, so Andy Johnson and his daughter Aspen, 6, stepped onto their sun-bleached pier, hooked some mealwo ...

caption id="attachment_38450" align="alignright" width="352" By Riverhugger (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons/caption In the Wall Street Journal, attorney and former high-ranking EPA official Bill Wehrum has an op-ed $ arguing that the Animas River spill shouldn't lead to criminal punishment, but neither should similar accidents caused by privat ...

Recent press coverage of PLF's challenge to the compliance order that Andy Johnson received from the EPA has highlighted some of the Orwellian language in the Clean Water Act. As you'll recall, EPA is threatening Andy with tens of millions of dollars in fines for constructing an environmentally-beneficial stock pond on his private property. Some of ...

Andy Johnson owns eight acres of land in Fort Bridger, Wyoming, where he's made his family's home and raises livestock. A small stream crosses his property and provides water for his livestock, as it has for prior owners going back decades. In 2012, he erected a small dam on the stream to create a stock pond to provide more reliable, safer access t ...