Today, the president is signing an executive order designed to bring more accountability to federal agencies. This executive order comes partly as a result of PLF research and cases battling bureaucratic overreach. PLF client Andy Johnson will be at the signing ceremony. Below is an article from 2016 that Andy wrote describing, in his own … ...
This morning PLF filed this amicus brief in the California Court of Appeal for the Third District in support of the County of Siskiyou. We asked the Court of Appeal to overturn this superior court decision, which expanded public trust considerations to permits issued for the use of groundwater. Adopting the superior court’s rationale could & ...
Nearly two centuries ago, the Supreme Court recognized that the “unavoidable consequence” of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause is that States have “no power … to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control” federal policies that are otherwise consistent with the Constitution. California, unfortunately, has ...
PLF argues “no,” in an amicus brief supporting four states, industry groups, and an Indian tribe in their challenge to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) unlawful fracking regulation. It purports to regulate all fracking on federal lands based on the potential impacts of fracking to underground drinking water sources, despite t ...
Yesterday, Townhall published my op-ed highlighting the importance of PLF’s big, unanimous Supreme Court win in our Hawkes case (and its predecessor, Sackett) and whether these cases foreshadow anything for one of our cases currently pending before the Court. As regular readers know, the Supreme Court ruled in PLF’s favor in Hawkes, ho ...
The Johnson family’s long ordeal with EPA, concerning their construction of an environmentally-friendly stock pond on their private property, is finally over. After ordering Andy Johnson to remove the pond, on pain of tens of millions of dollars in potential fines, the federal government has agreed to settle the case. Importantly, under the s ...
Over the last two years since it was proposed, the “waters of the United States” or “WOTUS rule” has ruffled more than a few feathers. As soon as the rule was published for comment, industry groups, local governments, and others affected by the rule all prepared to voice their concerns and defend their interests against ...
As regular readers know, PLF argued a case in the Supreme Court of the United States last week, U.S. Army Corps v. Hawkes Co., concerning whether property owners can have their day in court when the federal government declares their land subject to federal control. During the oral argument, Justice Kennedy — long-considered the “swing ...
According to a Morning Consult poll sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Federation, Chesapeake Bay residents prefer state and local governments to federal regulators when it comes to protecting local water resources and regulating land use. The poll sought opinions from Chesapeake Bay watershed voters on a range of issues related to the EPA’ ...