Property Rights

The Landlords v. Alameda County

The duplex he owned in Oakland, California, was supposed to be his ticket to a better life. He’d bought it in 2004, only five years after he’d come to the Bay Area as a friendless, homeless yoga teacher.

A Homebuilder in California and a Landlord in Seattle

In January, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s chief diversity officer sent an email announcing the “Diversity Word of the Month”—privilege.

These Parents Did Not Hurt Their Children—But Child Protection Agencies Targeted Them Anyway

Three days earlier, Sarah, a Ph.D. student in Waltham, Massachusetts, had taken her three-month-old baby, Cal, to the emergency room after his fever spiked to 103.6 degrees. At the hospital, doctors ordered x-rays to rule out bronchiolitis and discovered Cal had two partially healed rib fractures. Neither Sarah nor Josh had any idea how the rib fractures happened. When the hospital social worker talked to Sarah about the injury, Sarah was more concerned about Cal’s fever—he did have bronchiolitis, it turned out. The social worker probed the family’s home life, asking Sarah if her husband “often ignored” their children. She didn’t like Sarah’s response.

The Power of the Court: Now and Then

The morning after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mike and Chantell Sackett—Pacific Legal Foundation clients who battled the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 16 years over their half-acre property—NPR’s Morning Edition said the Sackett ruling seemed “different, more lasting” than other rulings.

A PLF Attorney Fights for the Forgotten

When the county seized and sold the Minneapolis condo of Geraldine Tyler, an elderly grandmother, to settle her property tax debt, it should have refunded Geraldine the excess profit from the sale above the amount of her debt. Instead, it kept everything.

The Man Who Got Bald Eagles Taken Off the Endangered Species List

Governments can behave in extreme ways when it comes to sacred animals. In Ancient Egypt, anyone who caused the death of a cat, even accidentally, was put to death.

An Immigrant Goes Up Against a Power-Hungry New Agency

Men and women who grew up under the world’s cruelest governments are different from the rest of us.

The Mountain Man v. The Forest Service

Mountain lions are solitary animals. They don’t move in packs; they prefer to be left alone. A mountain lion will stick to his territory. He’ll generally avoid human beings. But sometimes, hunters go looking for mountain lions. Here’s how a mountain lion hunt works in Montana: Tourists pay thousands of dollars to guides, who wait until a fresh snow blankets the ground. That makes the lion’s prints easy to track. Once the guides find a lion’s trail, they let loose a pack of hounds that chase the lion up a tree, pinning him in place.

The Grandmother v. The Theft

Geraldine Tyler, the 94-year-old Minneapolis woman at the center of next month’s argument before the Supreme Court.

Showdown at the Supreme Court

The first spectator arrived at midnight. He brought a sleeping bag and an umbrella, then waited outside the Supreme Court all night while it drizzled on and offOther spectators arrived between 2 and 6 a.m. By the time I arrived at the Supreme Court around 9:00 a.m., there was a line of people down the block, waiting in the cold.

GREED: Michigan Officials Steal Families’ Homes to Pad their Budgets

The House of Diamond Lake was estimated to be worth between $3 million and $4 million. It was nestled on the shore with other multimillion-dollar houses in the postcard-perfect Michigan setting. “Diamond is a very appropriate name for this beautiful lake,” one visitor to the area reports on TripAdvisor. “The water is crystal clear and sparkles when the sunlight dances on its surface. Water sports and fishing are a constant presence. You will see sailboats whenever the wind picks up a bit.” It’s no wonder Cass County officials were so excited.

SLOTH: California Takes Three Years to Approve Wheelchair-Friendly Home for Stroke Victim

They were trapped. David Tibbitts’ debilitating stroke in 2018 left him confined to a wheelchair. Stephanie, his wife, was having trouble moving David around the narrow hallways of their cramped 1930s-era home on the California coast.

WRATH: California Fines Doctor Millions for Protecting People from 20-Foot Drop

The 12 Gods of Ancient Greece were vengeful and petty.

LUST: This Montana City Treats Massage Therapists Like Sex Workers

Occasionally, Theresa Vondra gets a client who has the wrong idea about her massage business.

Breaking: PLF Is Going Back to the Supreme Court

But the Environmental Protection Agency says your small plot of land contains wetlands. Even though it’s in a subdivision surrounded by other houses, the EPA says you can’t continue construction—and they’re threatening to fine you tens of thousands of dollars a day.

A Distorted Image of the Court

The day after the Supreme Court delivered a victory for Pacific Legal Foundation in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation, published a column under this blistering, eye-catching headline: “Yesterday’s Union-Busting Supreme Court Decision Was a Segregationist Throwback.” Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision, Mystal wrote, used arguments “effectively repurposed from arguments segregationists used against civil rights activists.” We shouldn’t even be surprised by the decision, he scoffed, because “[t]he court’s conservatives have done everything they can think of to de-unionize America in service of mega-corporate interests.” By siding with Cedar Point Nursery, the Court “not only opened the door to continued union-busting” but also “reinvigorated long-discredited views of how property owners might use that property as an excuse to deny civil rights across the spectrum,”

Poison Pill

Peyman Pakdel and his wife, Sima are the kind of neighbors most people want. Peyman is an engineer who worked his way up to become part-owner of a small manufacturing company, Sima is a dentist with a family practice.

Béton Brut

Can society be designed? Can an expert engineer alleviate people’s pains and struggles with a good-enough central plan and blueprint?

The Forever Job

Legend. Icon. Renegade. Pioneer. The sobriquets Willie Benedetti collected during his lifetime are as numerous as they are grand.

A Flood in the Everglades

Born and raised in New York, Gilbert Fornatora’s family often vacationed in Florida, offering them a warm escape from the brutal East Coast winters. It was during these cherished trips of his boyhood years that he became taken with the Miami-Dade County region. But his interest in the area wasn’t due only to its scenic landscapes and warm sunshine. In the 1950s and 1960s, when Gilbert had become an adult, the investment potential in the western part of the county was expected to boom.

Whiskey’s for Drinking, Water Rights Are for Fighting Over

Drive east of of Portland, Oregon, on Highway 84 for a few hours and most of the trip you’ll be alongside the Columbia River, where some centuries ago, steely men named Lewis and Clark risked life and livelihood to paddle into uncharted territory.

The Government Is Getting in the Way of Ken Klemm Helping Native Species and Habitats Thrive

Ken Klemm is an American rancher who can talk proper land management techniques just as easily as Enlightenment theory and the importance of individual rights.

Jack LaPant Built his Farm from Nothing; the Army Corps of Engineers Nearly Took It All Away

In 1994, Jack LaPant moved his wife and two young children from the San Francisco Bay Area to the country to pursue the independence of running his own farm.

The Story We Didn’t Know: Mike Fahner’s First Fight Began in the Klamath Basin

It has been six years since a crowd of activist United Farm Workers stormed Cedar Point farms, disrupting more than 500 employees hard at work preparing strawberry plants to ship throughout the country. It has been five years since Mike Fahner, owner of Cedar Point Nursery, launched a lawsuit with PLF against California for giving special interest groups permission to invade farms. And it’s been six months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear Mike’s case, with the potential to protect the property rights of owners everywhere. Why is Mike so willing to swan-dive into a long, laborious fight that would put him under the scrutiny of national media, the public, and the most important judges in the country? Well, this is not Mike’s first fight with the government. Mike’s story did not begin in those early-morning hours in 2015 or even with the creation of Cedar Point Nursery 20 years ago. It began with the birth of overreaching environmental regulations and the family farm he was forced to abandon.

Victory! Rafaeli Case Ends Home Equity Theft in Michigan

The email came on Thanksgiving Day 2018, of all times.

Union Agitators Wouldn’t Leave His Property. Now the Supreme Court Will Hear His Case.

Mike Fahner has farming in his blood. He was born to a potato farming family in Northern California, and in the late 1990s he founded Cedar Point Nursery—a strawberry plant farm—in Butte Valley, California. Today, Cedar Point Nursery thrives as one of the country’s biggest strawberry nurseries.

Property Damage Is a Blight on Our Sacred Right to Protest

“Everybody watched it burn to ashes,” said Anmol Khindri. Khindri, a Kenosha, Wisconsin, resident, watched helplessly as his family business burned down. Rioters destroyed the business, a car dealership. “Nobody did nothing about it—nothing.”

President Trump Signs Executive Order with PLF Client Andy Johnson

In 2013, Andy Johnson built a stock pond on his Wyoming property to provide safer, more reliable access to water for his small herd of cattle. The pro-liberty public interest law movement was born out of a need to combat the escalating creep of government into people’s lives.

Attorney’s 18-Year Fight Against Williamson County Is Finally Rewarded

Dave Breemer is a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation who surfs in his free time and greets you with a cheerful “what’s up dude.”

The Achieve-Extend-Entrench Model for Embedding Liberty Deep in the Law

Fighting legal battles against the government can feel like David versus Goliath.

The Meeting Before the End of the World

Monday, January 27, 2020, was a public holiday in South Korea—a carry-over of Seollal, or the Lunar New Year.

Loveland

Used to be, when Detroit flexed its muscle, we all got stronger.

One Hell of a View

When Peter Douglas, longtime chair of the California Coastal Commission (CCC), died in 2012, the accolades flowed like wine. Though a state-level official, he was prestigious enough to land a New York Times obituary lauding him as a “sentry of California’s coast.” The same obit quoted a colleague who dubbed Douglas “the world’s greatest bureaucratic street fighter.” That was intended as a compliment, but the description also suggested something less savory about Douglas’ approach: Like a street fighter, he was willing to fight dirty if he thought it was the way to win.

Modern Capitalism Improves Our Ethics

There is a growing chorus of academics, politicians, and activists around the world today espousing the belief that, while capitalism and individual liberty have made the world richer, wealth has come at the expense of equality, compassion, civility, and morality.

Two Films that Understand the Many Meanings of Home

There aren't many positive depictions of property rights in our culture.

Progressive Magazine Boldly Accuses PLF of Doing Public Interest Law

A recent article by The Intercept described, in worried tones, the case of Cherk v. County of Marin.

Luxury in a Socialist Hotel

Despite its increasing popularity, many people remain unaware of what socialism really entails, and of its inevitable economic consequences.

Reflections from a Supreme Court Champion

Peace and quiet. That’s all Rose Knick—heroine of our 12th and most recent victory at the U.S. Supreme Court—wanted when she purchased her homestead in Eastern Pennsylvania nearly five decades ago.

Unnecessary Enemies

For many Americans, the cornerstone of “the American dream” is the possibility to someday own a slice of a beach paradise. But as you’ve read throughout this issue, when it comes to beaches—or any land along our coasts— government agencies have declared open season on private property rights.

A Scout and a Billionaire: Champions of Preservation

The first round of nerves really bubbled up when I finally made it to Philmont’s base camp. I’d been to Boy Scout camps and countless campouts before but this was the big one: This was Philmont. No amount of merit badges on a khaki uniform could prepare me for those visceral feelings of uncertainty, awe, and excitement for the adventure I was about to experience.

Property Rights: Conservationists’ Most Effective Tool

The concepts of property rights and conservation are unfortunately, and mistakenly, pitted against each other on a regular basis. But what happens when people are forced to fight for their property rights in order to conserve their land?

Why No City Wants to Be Seattle

City planners tremble as they whisper a new term that embodies their fears: “Seattle-ization.” Washington’s Emerald City, once the byword for urban vitality, is now outpacing San Francisco as a cautionary tale in how over-regulation strangles the housing market.

The Destructive Power of Rent Control

Bomb damage or rent control? That was the caption under a series of photographs in a 1981 book about rent control across the world. Looking at the photos, it was impossible to tell the difference. 

Uri Rafaeli’s Fight to End State-Sanctioned Property Theft

When I graduated from law school in Michigan in 2008, the state had fallen on hard economic times, even before the nation’s Great Recession.

The Government-Created Housing Shortage

The American spirit is synonymous with a can-do attitude—we are builders, creators, and innovators.

America Is the Real ‛Fixer Upper’

The worrisome decline in US home ownership hasn’t killed the dream of having a place of one’s own.

Clean Water Act Abuses Demonstrate the Need for Our Constitution’s Protection of Property Rights

Federal Laws can be valuable tools for protecting the environment. But as a result, environmental laws also limit the ability of property owners to protect public resources.

Edward Poitevent’s Victory at Supreme Court Is a Win for Property Rights and Government Accountability

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major victory for PLF client Edward Poitevent on November 27 in the case of Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the infamous “phan- tom frog” case, involving the feds’ abuse of the Endangered Species Act through critical habitat designations. But the decision is more than just a win for one client; it’s a big win for private property rights and government accountability.

Property Rights Are Our Best Tool for Protecting the Environment

Whoever coined the saying “you can’t beat something with nothing” understood why it isn’t enough to highlight where environmental regulation falls short, whether by failing to achieve environmental goals or failing to honor fundamental fairness. We also need to identify solutions that do better.

An Everyday Hero in the Battle to Restore Property Rights Protections

Margaret Hatcher once said, “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” PLF attorney Dave Breemer knows this full well, having fought the same property rights battle for the past 15 years. And sometimes one everyday person makes the difference.

A Stellar Victory for Free Speech in Florida

When Nancy Nemhauser and Lubomir (Lubek) Jastrzebski painted their house in the likeness of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” they didn’t expect to become a national sensation. But that’s exactly where they found themselves after city officials trampled their First Amendment rights by ordering them to remove the mural and threatening them with significant fines.

Seattle’s Unconstitutional Constraints on Landlords

PLF Client Kelly Lyles, a Seattle artist, epitomizes many of the values of her city—vibrant, quirky, creative. She used to cruise around in “Leopard Bernstein,” her leopard-print sedan festooned with plastic figures of safari animals. Her house is like an alternate dimension where the art- work adorning every surface seems to be observing you, rather than the other way around. Kelly is quintessential Seattle.

Property Rights Aren’t ‘Second-Class Rights,’ Pennsylvania Case Aims to Prove

PLF client Rose Knick never expected to make constitutional history. If she had her way, she would live quietly, raising horses and other livestock on her 90-acre farm in rural Pennsylvania. 

The Right to Rebuild

On October 10, 2016, Michael and Cathy Zito’s beach home at Nags Head, North Carolina, burned to the ground. Luckily no one was hurt, but as the Zitos were about to discover, the sadness of losing their dream home was nothing compared to the bureaucratic nightmare that followed.

At a Glance: The Battle of Ideas

Professor Andrew Kahrl writes in The New York Times that beachfront property owners have created “anti- social” and “environmentally destructive” barriers to beach access. He calls on Congress to dedicate all beaches to the states for public use.

A Line in the Sand: Property Rights and America’s Beaches

From the California coast to the Florida Keys, Americans treasure our nation’s beaches for their breathtaking beauty. But in the name of public access, and sometimes in the name of conservation, many local, state, and federal government agencies go too far in dictating how that beauty is protected.

Perseverance Pays Off

If any one characteristic could define PLF, it would be our perseverance. Our unwavering belief in the Constitution, and the individual liberty it protects, steels us even when we face the longest odds. When we defended the Sacketts’ right to challenge outrageous government threats and bullying, it did not matter that every court had denied similar property owners their day in court. We knew that justice would win out. We were rewarded for our stubborn belief in the Constitution with a unanimous Supreme Court victory in 2012.

How to Win Against a Government Bully

Ask any child navigating the world of playground politics and they’ll tell you there are few things worse than a bully. A bully can take away your free- dom and dignity to dictate their will or get you to fall in line.

Finding the Right Price for Preservation

What is nature's beauty worth? How can you put a price on a pristine beachfront or a secluded coastal alcove? Are some worth more than others? Are some worth preserving more than others?

WOTUS Victory Strikes a Blow to the Regulatory State

A unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22 vindicated 11 PLF clients like John Duarte and Kevin Pierce who simply wanted to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency in federal court. PLF’s victory ensures that future challengers to the Clean Water Act and regulatory malfeasance will have plenty of time to take the EPA to court.

Due Process: Criminals vs. Property Owners

One of America's most cherished constitutional guarantees is the promise that no one may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Many people know of the due process protections for people accused of a crime, such as the presumption of innocence and the right to counsel. But adjudication processes by regulatory agencies are different, and sometimes result in property owners being treated worse than criminals.

Challenging an Island Grab in the Florida Keys

PLF made its mark at the Supreme Court of the United States defending private property rights as protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and we hope to add to our proud record in a case from the Florida Keys known as Ganson v. City of Marathon.

National Impact of Nollan and Koontz on Property Rights

Nollan Outcome • In 1987, PLF won the Nollan case at the Supreme Court of the United States. That decision holds that when a property owner seeks a government permit, the government may not condition the permit on the uncompensated surrender of a public easement, unless it is necessary to mitigate harm caused by the property use.

Forced Farming Mandate Needs to Be Put Out to Pasture

Lauded for their taste and quality, Willie Bird Turkeys are sold by the tens of thousands each Thanksgiving in grocery stores and Williams-Sonoma catalogs. Willie has spent five and a half decades building his brand by combining traditional, free-range farming with sophisticated monitoring technology, and now he’d like to spend some time relaxing with his grandkids on his beloved Marin County property.

Defeat Inspires Renewed Effort to Defend Property Rights Nationwide

When you're in a long-term fight for freedom, you must treat any setbacks as challenges to keep advancing. That is how property rights advocates must respond to a recent defeat at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Nollan+30: How PLF Is Still Leading the Way for Property Rights

Government cannot steal. That was the essence of Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission. If government demands someone’s property in exchange for a permit, then the taking of the property must reduce a serious harm caused by the permitted development. It’s not enough that the government might want the property for “the public good.” Instead, the taking must directly reverse a harm that would otherwise be caused by the development.

Drawing a Line In the Sand for Private Property Rights

In the 1980’S the California Coastal Commission forced landowners to pay a price to obtain a coastal development permit. When permits were approved, they included an exaction requiring the owners to dedicate a portion of their property to the state to provide public access across their land. Even when the development did not interfere in any way with existing public access, the Commission demanded its tribute. You want a permit? Pay up with some of your property.