Articles

Yesterday, PLF filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review a decision that diminishes property rights by throwing unnecessary obstacles to raising Fifth Amendment claims. The story behind this case began many years ago, when Simone and Lyder Johnson set out to build their dream home, along with some other possible residential development, i ...

In late May, PLF attorneys filed this brief on the merits in the case of Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania, which is currently before the United States Supreme Court. The Knick case is a property rights dispute arising from a Town's efforts to force Ms. Rose Mary Knick to allow the public to enter and walk on her private property seven days ...

The answer to that question should be simple. After all, the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution protects "life, liberty, or property" without qualification. And, for nearly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently treated property as a fundamental right, forbidding the government from imposing arbitrary or irrational restrictions ...

Markle Interests' brief filed with High Court in Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service This week we filed our merits brief in the Supreme Court supporting the landowers in Weyerhaeuser Co. v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service. Earlier this year, the Court granted review and we expect to hear soon from the Court when oral argu ...

Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene's Energy Group, LLC, upholding by a 7-2 margin the inter partes review process used by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to invalidate already-issued patent claims. At issue was whether this process must be heard by an Article III court, not an ...

Earlier this week, the Washington State Supreme Court denied review of the very troubling appellate decision in Olympic Stewardship Foundation v. State of Washington Environmental and Land Use Hearings Office, in which PLF submitted an amicus brief. The appellate decision upheld a Jefferson County ordinance that requires all shoreline property owne ...

For the law to be just, it must be non-arbitrary, such that it is applied in a predictable and uniform manner to all persons. Yet increasingly, the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding some of the most important (and divisive) legal questions with fractured decisions, leaving many to question whether those cases stand for any one legal rule. The Court ...

Supreme Court to hear PLF's First Amendment challenge to political apparel ban PLF presents oral argument on challenge to access regulation in the Ninth Circuit Since the Feds get to regulate "species" and "subspecies," shouldn't we have an understandable definition of "species" and "subspecies"? If seaweed is private property, that's ...

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States granted PLF's petition for certiorari in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, a First Amendment challenge to a Minnesota law that bans political apparel at the polling place. Minnesota interprets "political" broadly. Voters who wear shirts with any message that can possibly be associated with a politica ...