Seattle is blocking a construction company from building much-needed new housing, doctors and patients are challenging California’s telehealth restrictions, and a PLF attorney reflects on the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Here’s what’s on The Docket.
70 years after Brown v. Board, a resurgence of race-conscious admissions policies in schools
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The 1954 Brown decision is respected and widely quoted by people across the political spectrum—even people who today support racial preferences in public schools. “Advocates of affirmative action say that racial preferences are different than 1950s-era segregation because they’re not enacted out of ill will,” PLF attorney Anastasia Boden writes. “But as the Supreme Court ruled last term, using race in modern America is not benign.”
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Fighting Seattle’s permitting extortion to build new housing
Construction company Oom Living is suing the City of Seattle for blocking construction of housing that could help ease the city’s housing shortage. Oom planned to build new homes on two adjacent lots purchased in Seattle in 2022. The lots already had water and sewer connections. To maximize housing potential, Oom worked with the City to subdivide the two lots into three. At first the City was cooperative—but then Seattle Public Utilities rejected the company’s application for a water availability certificate and demanded the construction of a new 173-foot water main in exchange for the building permit.
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A year after Sackett, the EPA remains defiant
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On May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the Environmental Protection Agency in a victory for Idaho homeowners Mike and Chantell Sackett. The EPA had overreached in its broad interpretation of the Clean Water Act to include sometimes-soggy residential land like the Sacketts’, the Court held. But a year later, EPA officials are still trying to use the Clean Water Act to aggressively go after homeowners, contravening the Court’s decision.
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Doctors and patients fight for telehealth in California
California requires doctors to be fully licensed in California before treating patients in that state—even if they’re treating them via telehealth calls. For patients like Shellye Horowitz, a Californian with an extremely rare bleeding disorder who lives in a remote coastal location, telehealth restrictions prevent access to specialists who are fully licensed in other states, like Dr. Sean McBride in Oregon. Now Shellye and Dr. McBride are challenging California’s telehealth restrictions in court.
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What is the soft bigotry of low expectations?
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In September 1999, then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush gave a speech to the Latin Business Association about education. “Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards,” he said. “I say it is discrimination to require anything less—the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Now, 25 years later, the soft bigotry of low expectations is unfortunately shaping too many education policies, from cutbacks in honors programs to new admissions processes that set lower standards for students from certain neighborhoods.
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The Antiquities Act and the limits of executive power
After several Native American artifacts were looted in the early 1900s, Congress passed the Antiquities Act of 1906 to allow presidents to establish “national monuments” and protect historic landmarks, structures, and similar objects on federal lands. This delegation of authority was modest—at first. But modern presidents have expanded their monument-making powers: Nearly 90% of all areas designated as national monuments have come after the year 2000. These include vast swaths of land and even ocean.
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