A California falconer wins at the Ninth Circuit, Michigan will compensate people whose homes were stolen by the government, and President Biden proposes Supreme Court reforms.

Here’s what’s on The Docket.

Victory for falconer at the Ninth Circuit  

Good news for property rights, individual liberty, and the sport of falconry: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says falconers’ lawsuit against a California regulation can proceed. Lead plaintiff and master falconer Peter Stavrianoudakis—who starred in a PLF documentary about his case—sued over a regulation requiring falconers to allow warrantless searches of their property by government agents anytime. A district court previously ruled the falconers didn’t have standing to sue, but the Ninth Circuit disagreed: The government can’t impose a condition that violates your Constitutional rights then deny you the right to sue over it, the court held.

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Michigan Supreme Court says government must pay home equity theft victims

Matt Schafer owed $5,300 in taxes on his Michigan property, which was worth nearly $96,000. While he was out of town for National Guard drills, the County took his property and sold it at auction for $51,500, pocketing the whole sum. After PLF successfully challenged home equity theft at the Michigan Supreme Court in 2020 (and at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023), Matt and other victims filed a class action lawsuit arguing the government owed them restitution. It looks like they’ll finally get it: The state Supreme Court sided with Matt and the other victims, holding that “Constitutional takings require just compensation.”

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Reason Magazine: Biden's Supreme Court Reforms Are Unnecessary and Wrong  

According to President Biden, the Supreme Court's "extreme" decisions and ethical crises require urgent reforms, including term limits for Justices. But Biden is mischaracterizing what’s happened recently at the Court, PLF senior attorney Anastasia Boden writes. The Court's opinions last term were nuanced and largely unanimous, and there are no credible allegations of vote-buying. If Biden wants to restore faith in the Court, he'd do better to highlight these nuances rather than using the Court as a political talking point.  

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Utah filmmaker sues National Labor Relations Board, demands fair trial in real court

On the first day of shooting a feature film, movie producer David Wulf got a bad surprise: Union organizers had arranged a strike of the drivers, who drove off with production trucks. But a worse shock came later, when the National Labor Relations Board charged David with "unfair labor practices” and hauled him before an in-house tribunal. David was found guilty, without a proper chance to defend himself. 

Now represented by PLF, David is suing the NLRB over its sham court that stripped his right to a fair trial.

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Colorado homeowner dubbed ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ for protecting her property rights  

After Taralyn Romero bought a dream property next to a creek, she discovered the previous owners had allowed visitors to treat the land like public property. She didn’t want to cause drama with the town by asking interlopers to leave—but families left trash, children dug holes, and everyone ignored the signs she put up. When she asked some children to stop digging, their grandmother grew hostile—and Taralyn soon found herself the target of a town-wide campaign to label her “the Wicked Witch of the West.”

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To lower the temperature of political rhetoric, we must lower the stakes of presidential elections

The supercharged rhetoric of our presidential elections mirrors the supercharged powers of the modern presidency, PLF’s Kyle Griesinger writes. The accumulation of enormous power in executive branch agencies means that every change in presidential administration threatens a wholesale remaking of scads of policy questions. 

It doesn’t have to be that way: We can lower the stakes of the presidential election by returning lawmaking power to Congress, where it belongs.

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