Since our founding in 1973, PLF has successfully challenged restrictive, arbitrary barriers to the use of natural resources in courtrooms across the country—including at the Supreme Court—supporting energy development, mining, logging, fishing, farming, and homebuilding.  

Now, we’re expanding our efforts with the launch of our newest practice group: Environment and Natural Resources (ENR).

• We’ve launched a new case on behalf of Dr. Sedigheh Zolfaghari—a retired pediatrician of more than 25 years—challenging an Army Corps of Engineers ruling that defies well-established Supreme Court precedent. 
• We’ve published a new research report demonstrating how the productive use of natural resources makes human flourishing possible. 
• PLF’s Mark Miller and Megan Jenkins coauthored a blog post outlining our vision and core goals for the group. 
• We’ve announced an upcoming webinar introducing the group and some of its brightest minds on July 24. 
• Our work has been featured in Politico Pro’s Morning Energy newsletter. 

Keep an eye out for more updates in the coming days and weeks, as we announce new ENR cases, research, legislative efforts, and commentary that will help reshape the way Americans think about law, land, and liberty.

In the last few days of 2024, the Biden administration quietly released Public Land Order 7956—an administrative maneuver that halted mineral development across more than 20,000 acres in western South Dakota. Despite investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in good faith to secure a permit for mineral exploration in the region, F3 Gold suddenly had the rug pulled from under it.  

The minerals buried in South Dakota are vital to American industry and national security. Gold is not only a financial asset—it also plays a role in semiconductors, defense technology, and clean energy systems. 

Fortunately, as PLF’s Jeff McCoy explains, these kinds of land withdrawals are subject to oversight via the Congressional Review Act. The Trump administration is well within its authority to submit Public Land Order 7956 to Congress for review—and it should—so that Congress can undo the harm caused by the Biden administration’s eleventh-hour maneuver.

On July 3, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the Make America Beautiful Again (MABA) Commission “to conserve America’s lands and waters, cut red tape, and drive conservation and economic growth.” It was almost prescient timing with the launch of our new Environment and Natural Resources practice group just days later—and to give credit where it’s due, the new Commission has a lot going for it.  
 
But as PLF’s Mark Miller points out, “The idea of cutting red tape is great—but adding another layer of federal bureaucracy to do it? That’s not great.”

Almost 40 years ago—as the lone dissenter in Morrison v. Olson—Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia warned of the rise of a “fourth branch” of government: an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy wielding power once reserved for the president.

On Independence Day, PLF senior attorney Anastasia Boden reminded us that Scalia wasn’t just concerned about abstract principles; he was concerned about liberty. He believed that the genius of the Constitution lay not just in its express guarantees of individual rights, which are a “dime a dozen” in governing documents around the world, but in the structure that protects those rights.

Last Friday, Bethany Mandel—author, podcaster, and homeschooling mother of six—shined a spotlight on one of the more disturbing tentacles of our modern nanny state: the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). By highlighting the story of PLF client Jaimie Leach and her multi-year battle against CPSC overreach—Bethany exposes how the CPSC has drifted from its 1972 mandate “to protect Americans from dangerous products” into an oppressive arm of the nanny state.

​​Bethany’s op-ed echoes PLF’s latest research report—Paternalism and Product Safety: The CPSC’s Approach toward Infant Nursery Products—which examines how the CPSC’s tendency to treat misuse of nursery products as a defect takes safe and useful childcare tools away from parents while doing little to make kids safer.

The right to a jury trial is one of the core tenets of our legal system. Its significance to the Founding Fathers was such that King George’s denial of jury trials was included as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence and served as an impetus for revolution. 

But as PLF editorial writer Brittany Hunter points out, even with jury trials guaranteed in the Constitution, many regulatory agencies—such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—routinely deprive Americans of that right when enforcing alleged legal violations.