Articles

Today, PLF filed a challenge to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to terminate Congressionally mandated protections for the Southern California marine ecosystem and fishing industries. As part of a compromise between conservationists, the Service, and the local fishing industry, Congress authorized the Service to move a population of ...

Environment — Endangered Species Act — Sea Otters We filed our complaint in California Sea Urchin Commission v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service.  The Service has a statutory duty to contain a transplanted colony of California sea otters in Southern California.  As noted in our blog, because the Service decided last year to i ...

There has been a lot of coverage of our Sea Otter suit over the last week, not all of it fair. As we explained when we announced the filing, this case is fundamentally about the rule of law and balance in environmental regulation. It’s not about opposing the otter’s recovery. In 1986, Congress passed a … ...

Students from UC Santa Barbara have produced a documentary on the termination of the sea otter management zone, which PLF is challenging on behalf of four California fishing groups that are threatened with both the loss of their livelihoods and criminal punishment. The documentary does an excellent job explaining the human consequences of the Servi ...

Yesterday PLF filed a brief opposing the government’s motion to dismiss a challenge to the termination of protections for southern California fishermen from prosecution as sea otters expand into their fishery. As readers will recall, the case arose because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to renege on a deal struck by Congress betw ...

This week, a federal district court judge dismissed a challenge brought by fishermen to federal bureaucrats’ decision to illegally expose them to criminal prosecution for continuing to pursue their occupation.The court accepted the government’s argument that, despite the fact that the challenge was brought less than a year after the ru ...

PLF has filed its opening brief in the Ninth Circuit challenging the dismissal of a challenge brought by Southern California fishermen against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to violate federal law by terminating protections for them and their fishery guaranteed by Congress. The trial court dismissed the case, accepting the go ...

Property Rights — Suction Dredge Ban Undermined The California Court of Appeal has issued a decision that seriously undermines California’s ban on suction dredge mining. Adopting the argument of our amicus brief, the Court held that a state ban forbidding all commercially beneficial use of a federal mining claim is preempted by federal ...

Property Rights — Coastal Land Rights Victory We received a mixed, but largely favorable opinion from the federal trial court in Sansotta v. Town of Nag’s Head. This is the case where the town refused to allow beachfront homeowners to protect their homes during a storm, and then declared their homes to be nuisances because … ...