Articles

We’ve all heard about how the California Coastal Commission loves to micromanage and bully coastal cities and counties.   Whether it’s second-guessing the most insignificant local project, or requiring municipalities to include in their local laws severe restrictions against property owners, the Commission is rightly seen by many loca ...

Earlier this week the San Diego Union Tribune covered our Lynch v. California Coastal Commission case which challenges the Coastal Commission‘s policy of phasing out private beach stairways and making it very difficult to build protective seawalls.  As previously noted, PLF represents Encinitas bluff-top residents Barbara Lynch and Thomas ...

On Friday, we filed our Respondents Brief in the California Court of Appeal (4th District) in Lynch v. California Coastal Commission. … ...

On Monday, July 14, at 9:00 a.m., I will be in the California Court of Appeal (San Diego) arguing an appeal brought by the California Coastal Commission in Lynch v. California Coastal Commission.  At stake is two Encinitas families’ right to repair a private beach staircase destroyed by storms, and to install (and keep) a state-of-the-art ...

Yesterday, I argued Lynch v. California Coastal Commission, in the California Court of Appeal in San Diego.  As I explained last week, the appeal centers on the Commission’s refusal to allow two families to rebuild a shared, private staircase down to the beach, and its imposition of an arbitrary 20-year expiration date on a seawall (with a ...

Equality Under the Law Project — Implicit Bias Victory The Iowa Supreme Court today issued this unanimous opinion in Pippen v. State of Iowa, tossing out an “implicit bias” discrimination lawsuit against the State of Iowa. Under the theory of the case, because Iowa state government officials had, unbeknownst to themselves, an  ...

Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys represent two bluff-top homeowners in Encinitas: Tom Frick, and his neighbor, Barbara Lynch. They applied to the California Coastal Commission for a permit to install a new seawall to protect their homes from erosion after a massive storm destroyed the old wall. They also sought to rebuild a stairway connecting th ...

Environment — When is a wetland not federally controlled? We filed this complaint this week in Universal Welding v. United States Army Corps of Engineers.  The Corps is asserting jurisdiction over some of Universal’s low-value wetlands in North Pole, Alaska, just outside of Fairbanks.  The problem is that under the Corps’ own r ...

Over the weekend, San Diego journalist, Thomas K. Arnold, penned a stinging rebuke of the 2-1 court of appeal decision in Lynch v. California Coastal Commission, which threatens bluff-top homeowners’ property rights—including the right to protect their homes with seawalls. Arnold rightly criticizes the Coastal Commission’s “ ...