Yesterday we received an adverse decision from the San Diego Superior Court in California Cattlemen’s Association v. California Fish & Game Commission, our challenge to the Commission’s decision to list the gray wolf under the California Endangered Species Act. Our lawsuit raised three arguments against the listing, which the Depar ...
In 2013, several environmental activist groups launched a lawsuit to expand the criminal reach of the Endangered Species Act. They challenged the United States’ longstanding interpretation of the statutes, which makes it a crime to “knowingly” “take” a protected species, to require defendants know their actions will ca ...
The Service claims it is exempt from Regulatory Flexibility Act requirements because critical habitat designations impact only other federal agencies. But this claim is in error. While critical habitat designations do require federal agencies to manage critical habitat, the restrictions of the designations also directly affect small businesses, ma ...
The Congressional Review Act should be one of the nation’s least controversial laws. To restore some measure of democratic accountability to the administrative state, it requires federal agencies to submit the rules they impose on us to our elected representatives for review before they go into effect. That’s it! The law imposes a simpl ...
Ok, that’s a slight overstatement. But not as much of one as you would think. Activist group WildEarth Guardians apparently dreams of a world in which people can be thrown in federal prison if they accidentally hit the wrong rodent scurrying across a dark highway, disturb the wrong insect while building a tree house, or … ...
This week, the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) published The Road to Recovery: How restoring the Endangered Species Act’s two-step process can prevent extinction and promote recovery. In that report, I explain how returning to Congress’ original design for the Endangered Species Act—according to which the statute ...
For decades, a federal agency had forbidden people in southwestern Utah from doing things that most of us take for granted in our own communities, like building homes, starting businesses, or protecting their airport, playgrounds, and cemetery from disruption, all ostensibly to protect the Utah prairie dog. Thanks to a lawsuit PLF filed on behalf ...
Trial court strikes down Seattle’s rule banning landlords from selecting their own tenants PLF asks Supreme Court to clarify “temporary” takings law Florida ends Walton County’s unconstitutional land grab PLF asks California to review “endangered” species Oral argument at the Supreme Court in criminal case that c ...
In the 80s, Congress enacted a statute authorizing the Service to move otters to southern California on the condition that it implement protections for the surrounding fishery and the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on it, including requirements that the Service exclude otters from parts of the fishery and exempt fishermen from criminal prosecut ...