Articles

Legislating through friend of the court briefs

May 04, 2017 | By JEFF MCCOY

As many Pacific Legal Foundation employees have written about before, the power of administrative agencies has increased greatly over the last century. Many Americans are now subject to rules adopted not by elected officials, but by unelected bureaucrats in the “fourth branch of government.” Even worse, it is common practice for courts ...

Articles

The home of the free (*government permission required)

November 08, 2016 | By TONY FRANCOIS

Wow, I was really dreading the possibility that somewhere, somebody was actually being paid to make a meal for someone else without permission from the government. Good thing that undercover sheriff’s investigators, and aggressive prosecutors, have this menace to the public sorted out. The good people of the government of San Joaquin County ...

Articles

Bureaucrats shouldn't be able to escape legal scrutiny

June 09, 2016 | By JONATHAN WOOD

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 ...

Articles

Oral argument in sea otter case

May 03, 2016 | By JONATHAN WOOD

This Friday, May 6th, the Ninth Circuit will consider whether federal bureaucrats can escape judicial review of their illegal acts by pointing to their prior violations of the law. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argues that PLF’s challenge to an illegal rule regarding the sea otter should not be heard because this isn’t the … ...

Articles

PLF prompts Fish and Wildlife Service to downlist arroyo toad

March 26, 2014 | By TONY FRANCOIS

Tomorrow the United States Fish and Wildlife Service will announce that it intends to reclassify the Arroyo Toad from endangered down to threatened, since the factors that originally led to listing this amphibian under the Endangered Species Act have abated to the degree that it is no longer in danger of extinction.  Similar to recent … ...