Articles

In 2017, officials in Gratiot County, Michigan, seized Donald Freed’s $97,000 home to pay an overdue tax debt of $1,100. The county sold his property at auction for $42,000 and kept all of the proceeds from the sale. Shockingly Michigan’s property tax law requires this all-too-common practice. It’s a nice racket for the county, wh ...

By any measure, Hurricane Katrina was a disastrous natural catastrophe. But for many landowners in St. Bernard Parish, what might have been a damaging but survivable storm was transformed into total devastation by a series of government actions and omissions stretching back decades. Last week, we filed this amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to ...

In 1996, Dr. Mark and Bella Greene, a couple from Pennsylvania, bought an older beach house in Playa Del Rey, Los Angeles. Their plan is to remodel this home and spend their retirement in southern California close to their son and their grandchildren. A few years ago, they started the process to get permits for … ...

This week PLF appealed the district court’s decision in BIA Bay Area v. City of Oakland to the Ninth Circuit. This case challenges Oakland’s law compelling home builders to buy art commissions from (preferably local) artists if they want a building permit. This law violates the First Amendment, by compelling artistic speech, and the Fif ...

Squash the wrong bug, go to jail The price of selling your home in Santa Barbara? An illegal warrantless search. Free speech wins one in California legislature! Brief filed in Oklahoma First Amendment right to say who you are case Oral argument in Florida takings case Allies file amicus briefs in support of our bird … ...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently announced that it will hear oral argument in the Cedar Point Nursery v. Gould on November 17 in San Francisco. In that case, PLF represents California citrus growers in their constitutional challenge to a law that forces them to give up their property for the benefit of union organi ...

As you will recall, since last year, Christina Martin has been keeping you up to date on Michigan’s unjust, and unconstitutional foreclosure law in Wayside Church v. Van Buren County. Before PLF took over the direct representation of the victims of this unfair law, including Wayside Church, it filed an amicus brief to support them in the U.S. ...

This week several groups filed “friend of the court” briefs supporting PLF’s Supreme Court petition in Wayside Church v. Van Buren County. Two of the amicus briefs—one by AARP and the other by the Buckeye Institute—focus on the need for the Court to review Michigan’s unjust tax foreclosure law. Under this unjust and unc ...

This morning PLF filed this amicus brief in the California Court of Appeal for the Third District in support of the County of Siskiyou. We asked the Court of Appeal to overturn this superior court decision, which expanded public trust considerations to permits issued for the use of groundwater. Adopting the superior court’s rationale could & ...