Articles

In 2017, officials in Gratiot County, Michigan, seized Donald Freed’s $97,000 home to pay an overdue tax debt of $1,100. The county sold his property at auction for $42,000 and kept all of the proceeds from the sale. Shockingly Michigan’s property tax law requires this all-too-common practice. It’s a nice racket for the county, wh ...

By any measure, Hurricane Katrina was a disastrous natural catastrophe. But for many landowners in St. Bernard Parish, what might have been a damaging but survivable storm was transformed into total devastation by a series of government actions and omissions stretching back decades. Last week, we filed this amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to ...

This week, PLF filed this amicus brief in Beach Group Investments, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection.  This case raises yet another example of how the lower courts are struggling to interpret the Supreme Court’s “final decision ripeness” rule in takings claims. The takings ripeness doctrine requires a final a ...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently announced that it will hear oral argument in the Cedar Point Nursery v. Gould on November 17 in San Francisco. In that case, PLF represents California citrus growers in their constitutional challenge to a law that forces them to give up their property for the benefit of union organi ...

For an example of how impossible it can be for property owners to ripen (i.e., get a court to hear) a takings claim, look no further than the decision today in GolfRock, LLC v. Lee County.  Even when the government regulates away the use of your land, it can sometimes be very difficult to get courts … ...

We recently filed our Ninth Circuit reply brief in Cedar Point Nursery v. Gould. The case involves a challenge to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board’s access regulation, which allows union activists to invade private property for three hours a day and 120 days per year. In its opposition brief, the ALRB argued that the access regulation ...

Property rights — limits on the public trust doctrine The Washington state court of appeals issued this opinion on the “public trust doctrine” in Chelan Basin Conservancy v. GBI Holdings.  The facts here involved a lake that had been raised 21 feet by a dam in the 1920s. GBI owned several acres of land that periodically flooded ...

This week, in Coleman v. District of Columbia, a federal district court held that the plaintiffs have grounds to bring their Fifth Amendment challenge to the District of Columbia’s taking of their property under its former tax-foreclosure scheme. Liberty Blog readers may recall that PLF filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Benja ...

We have written (and litigated) at length about the errors of the United States Forest Service, whether that be on forest access, ongoing water rights infringements, or the fire risk that the agency is imposing on its neighboring land owners. So, when the agency does something right, however small, we are obliged to acknowledge it. Last … ...