The Docket: June 5, 2026
The Docket is PLF’s weekly newsletter covering the cases, clients, and policy battles shaping the future of liberty in America. You can catch up on last week’s Docket here and subscribe below to receive future editions in your inbox.
A California law mandating race- and sex-based profiling is challenged in federal court; a Washington farmer partners with PLF ahead of Washington State Supreme Court hearing; and a lifelong Hawaii resident fights for equal homestead access.
Venture capital firm challenges California’s demand to profile founders by race, gender, and sexuality
Danielle Strachman and Michael Gibson founded 1517 Fund after years of helping promising young people pursue projects in science and technology outside traditional academic and credentialed paths. Where most investors screen for degrees and pedigree, 1517 screens for ideas and potential.
A California law forces an altogether different approach—requiring venture capital funds to interrogate the founders of companies they invest in about their race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Represented by PLF, Danielle and Michael are fighting back with a federal lawsuit challenging California’s attempt to legislate its ideological preferences.
Washington Supreme Court to hear farmer’s case against overreaching state agency
In 1984, Ron Fodé returned to his family’s farm in Grant County, Washington, to take over operations for his parents. Forty years later, he’s still there. He and his wife, Robin, raised their four children on the land, expanding Fodé Farms into a 4,000-acre operation at its height, growing crops, caring for livestock, and even rescuing animals in need.
That legacy is now at risk because the Washington State Department of Ecology ignored the legal limits on its own enforcement authority and penalized the Fodés—without giving them a fair chance to comply.
Now, as Ron’s fight heads to the Washington Supreme Court, PLF has stepped in to represent him free of charge.
Hawaii resident challenges ancestry-based restrictions blocking homestead access
Living in Hawaii is expensive for a variety of reasons, including high demand and geographic isolation. But the state is also facing a housing crisis. As housing costs soar and options shrink, residents face an unexpected barrier—not cost, but ancestry.
Under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, access to certain homestead leases depends on meeting a 50 percent native Hawaiian blood quantum. But courts have consistently held that government classifications based on ancestry are no less unconstitutional than classifications based on race.
PLF filed a lawsuit challenging the program’s requirements, arguing that it is unconstitutional for the government to gate access to public benefits on the basis of ancestry.
How agencies make law without making law
Federal agencies issue thousands of guidance documents every year—interpretive rules, policy statements, letters, memos—ostensibly to help the public understand the laws and regulations they are subject to. In theory, guidance is supposed to be nonbinding. Agencies are required to make binding rules through a different process: congressional authorization and then rulemaking subject to the Administrative Procedure Act.
But as PLF’s Alessandra Caruso explains, “nonbinding” describes the document’s legal status, not its practical effect. When an agency decides to enforce its guidance, the consequences for the person on the receiving end are indistinguishable from the consequences of a formal rule.
Quick Hits
AL.com: Alabama wants to license birth centers as hospitals. That’s absurd.
Washington ranchers get their day in court—to fight for their day in court
Arizona law puts agencies on notice for deliberate permit delays
One mother’s fight to restore merit-based admissions in NYC’s Specialized High Schools
Arizona court strips agencies of the right to supply their own facts in court
