Articles

Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, upholding by a 7-2 margin the inter partes review process used by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to invalidate already-issued patent claims. At issue was whether this process must be heard by an … ...

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 ...

The Washington Supreme Court, today, issued its final decision in the public trust case, Chelan Basin Conservancy v. GBI Holding Co.  Broadly stated, the public trust doctrine holds that lands under navigable waters are open to the public for commerce, navigation, fishing, and recreation, regardless of who owns the submerged lands. Over the years, ...

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 ...

Earlier this week, the Washington State Supreme Court denied review of the very troubling appellate decision in Olympic Stewardship Foundation v. State of Washington Environmental and Land Use Hearings Office, in which PLF submitted an amicus brief. The appellate decision upheld a Jefferson County ordinance that requires all shoreline property own ...

The U.S. Supreme Court is deciding some of the most important (and divisive) legal questions with fractured decisions, leaving many to question whether those cases stand for any one legal rule. … ...

One of the key protections enshrined by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the requirement that any exercise of eminent domain must be for a valid public use. … ...

Earlier this year, the City of Seattle shocked the people of Washington—indeed, many across the nation—when it decided to impose an income tax on so-called “high-earners” in direct defiance of the Washington State Supreme Court, which has repeatedly held that the state constitution’s uniformity clause prohibits targeted income ...

When the Service rejected a delisting petition for the coastal California gnatcatcher, it acknowledged that it was not going to define “subspecies,” the very term upon which the denial rests, even while acknowledging that the term enjoys no commonly accepted meaning among scientists. Thus, by not defining that key term, the Service effe ...