Articles

Author:  Damien M. Schiff Today PLF filed its opening brief in Sackett v. EPA, our Supreme Court case addressing the question of whether landowners have a right to challenge EPA's assertions of wetlands jurisdiction over their property.  Our brief addresses two related issues.  Did Congress intend to preclude landowners like t ...

Author: Anne Hayes Last week, an online discussion thread at the Spokane Spokesman Review had a link to a blog post from the Kootenai Environmental Alliance titled “What the Priest Lake Wetland Case is Actually About.” In it, the author, Terry Harris, attempted, theoretically, to clarify what our case, Sackett v. EPA, is all about.  ...

Sometimes lost in the minutiae and arcana of environmental and administrative law is the fact that, ultimately, we’re arguing about whether someone’s property can be taken from them, or devalued, or made entirely unusable, because of government or administrative fiat.  Kudos to Carla Garrison of The Washington Times for reminding ever ...

I was fortunate to appear on Armstrong and Getty this morning.  You can listen to the podcast here.  In the first segment we talked about Fisher exclusively.  In the second segment we talked about a lot of different PLF cases including Sackett and Obamacare.  Here is the Reason TV video on the Sackett case that was … ...

Some years ago, when I was an attorney here at Pacific Legal Foundation in our Environmental Law section, I worked on a Supreme Court wetlands case called Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC). In many ways, the Supreme Court’s decision in that case, and in two other cases, … ...

The headlines in response to PLF’s landmark victory today in Sackett v. EPA have, for the most part, been fair and accurate.  CNN, for example, rightly noted that with today’s decision, “‘Little guy’ wins high court fight over property rights.”  Reuters reports that “U.S. top court backs landowners, limit ...

Earlier today I remarked how the Natural Resources Defense Council completely botched its analysis of this morning’s decision in Sackett v. EPA. Among other things, NRDC oddly suggested that the Supreme Court “did not give anyone a license to pollute,” as if the Sacketts’ mere request for judicial review of EPA’s egreg ...

At the American Legislator, Senator Rand Paul (KY) highlights the absurd regulatory realities faced by people like the Sacketts, Charlie Johnson (a former PLF client), and other landowners throughout the United States.  Sen. Paul provides a sober reminder that, despite the importance of yesterday’s landmark victory in Sackett v. EPA, much wo ...

Yesterday we saw how the extreme environmental community is having a difficult time figuring out how to spin PLF’s victory in Sackett v. EPA.   Some of them claim that the decision is no big deal (ignoring the decades of circuit law precedent that was overturned by the Supreme Court’s common sense decision), under the false … ...