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 ...

Forty years ago, in Penn Central Transp.  Co. v. City of New York (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court explained that regulatory takings cases are "essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries" wherein courts are instructed to consider a number of case specific factors, including "the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant;" "the extent to which the ...

The tendency for courts to broadly defer to agency decisions frustrates the judiciary's core function as the adjudicative branch of government. Such deference also frustrates individual rights by sweeping constitutional guarantees under the rug. Take, for example, Washington State's Growth Management Hearing Board. The legislature created the ag ...

Washington State boasts one of the most protective constitutions in the nation. Among its unique provisions, the Uniformity Clause protects individuals from discriminatory taxation by requiring that any taxes be imposed in a uniform manner. In addition to that, the state legislature, long ago, passed a law forbidding cities and counties from taxing ...

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment promises that the government will not take private property unless it is for a valid public use and the owner is fully compensated. And yet, we all know that Kelo v. City of New London, Conn. (2005) allowed a Connecticut city to condemn a middle class neighborhood for private redevelopment in the name of " ...

It seems that some governments and courts prefer to treat Supreme Court precedent as an option, rather than a requirement. The Supreme Court has ruled—twice—that it's unconstitutional for government to charge permitting fees when the fees have nothing to do with the reason for the permit. Yet some courts continue to ignore the Constitution. Pe ...

In Washington state, property owners who want to challenge the constitutionality of a new land-use or critical area restriction must first try their case to the Growth Management Hearings Board—an administrative agency that lacks the authority to decide constitutional issues. Although this requirement was meant to streamline the ordinary types of ...

The answer to that question should be simple. After all, the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution protects "life, liberty, or property" without qualification. And, for nearly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently treated property as a fundamental right, forbidding the government from imposing arbitrary or irrational restrictions ...

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's most burden ...