Articles

PLF appeals Oakland art decision to Ninth Circuit

March 09, 2018 | By TONY FRANCOIS

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 ...

Articles

NRO piece on PLF suit challenging Oakland's public art exaction

July 31, 2015 | By TODD GAZIANO

Earlier this week, National Review Online ran my piece on PLF’s lawsuit against the City of Oakland. The lawsuit challenges an illegal ordinance requiring builders of residential and commercial projects in the City to either produce public art displays on the building sites or pay a fee for local artists to create such a display … ...

Articles

Is the Constitution cooler than public art? Not in Oakland

July 29, 2015 | By J. DAVID BREEMER

Watch out! The government-subsidized artists in the San Francisco Bay Area are coming!  As this news article explains, Bay Area artists are not happy about Pacific Legal Foundation’s recent legal challenge to the City of Oakland’s compelled public art ordinance.  The ordinance forces new developers to put public art on their propert ...

Articles

President’s weekly report — July 24, 2015

July 24, 2015 | By ROB RIVETT

A complaint that a four-year old could file? We filed this complaint in Oakland’s mandatory art fee case, Building Industry Association of the Bay Area v. City of Oakland.  The premise is simple — the City wants to be more like a big important city, a city with some “there” to it, and get from … ...