Articles

Our fight with EPA : Andy Johnson’s story in his own words

October 09, 2019 | By JONATHAN WOOD

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 … ...

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A postscript to the Utah prairie dog case : federal agency embraces state-led reform

April 13, 2018 | By JONATHAN WOOD

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 ...

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Ninth Circuit : Unelected bureaucrats can do whatever they want, no matter what the law or facts say. See Chevron.

March 02, 2018 | By JONATHAN WOOD

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 ...

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Property rights are key to protecting Maine’s rockweed ecosystem

November 14, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

the Maine Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral argument in a case that, befitting the season, is a cornucopia of PLF issues. … ...

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What constitutes a ‘subspecies’ under the Endangered Species Act?

November 02, 2017 | By KAYCEE ROYER

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 ...

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Secure property rights are the key to conservation

August 04, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

Too often, property rights and conservation are treated as if they are in tension. But, in reality, property rights are a proven means to encourage responsible stewardship, resolve conflicts over limited resources, and empower environmentalists to protect resources they value. To achieve these positive environmental ends, however, property rights m ...

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Homeowners in Lynch file petition for rehearing in California Supreme Court

July 21, 2017 | By JEREMY TALCOTT

Today, Thomas Frick and the heirs of Barbara Lynch filed this petition, asking the California Supreme Court to grant rehearing in Lynch v. California Coastal Commission. In that decision, the Court held that the two owners had forfeited their right to judicial review of conditions placed on a coastal permit. The owners had asked the California Co ...

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PLF petitions for rehearing in Utah prairie dog case

May 15, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

This morning, we filed a petition for rehearing en banc in People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service—our challenge to the federal government’s constitutional authority to regulate take of the Utah prairie dog. Three years ago, the District Court for the District of Utah ruled the regulation unc ...

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Supreme Court calls for the Solicitor General’s views on Rinehart v. California

May 15, 2017 | By JONATHAN WOOD

This morning, the Supreme Court asked the United States’ Solicitor General to weigh in on Rinehart v. California, PLF’s challenge to California’s suction dredge mining ban. The case raises significant questions about federalism, preemption, and state regulation of federal lands. … ...