Last Friday, the Wyoming Supreme Court unanimously sided with PLF client Tom Hamann in a major victory for property owners everywhere. Tom’s case stemmed from a 2018 dispute in which Heart Mountain Irrigation District (HMID) manager Randy Watts, accompanied by another HMID employee, entered Tom’s ranch on false pretenses, causing thousands of dollars in property damage. To make matters worse, Tom was left with permanent brain damage after being struck by HMID’s excavator bucket. 

As PLF’s Collin Callahan explains, this ruling is a powerful reminder that “government agencies cannot hide behind bureaucratic technicalities to avoid accountability when their employees, acting within the general scope of their duties, infringe upon the rights of private citizens.”

The California Legislature has called accessory dwelling units (ADUs) an “essential component” in addressing the state’s “severe housing crisis.” Yet many bureaucrats and elected officials around the state routinely block the development of ADUs in their communities—often grasping at absurd justifications. 

Laguna Beach Mayor Alex Rounaghi even admitted in a public meeting last week that the City “looked at every single possible way [to block this ADU]” before finally granting PLF clients Steve and Karen Reinecke the coastal development permit (CDP) to which they are entitled. He went on to explain that if the City continued its crusade against our clients, they’d be setting themselves up for a lawsuit they’d surely lose.​​​​​​

In January 2024, a First Supply, LLC truck was struck by a drunk driver while stopped at a red light. Although First Supply’s driver was not at fault, the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office seized the truck as evidence—without a warrant—as part of the criminal investigation into the drunk driver.  

Despite repeated attempts by First Supply to get the sheriff to release the truck, they were met with unhelpful responses and a lack of clear information. The truck sat—impounded without a warrant—for nearly a year and a half before the government finally returned it in July 2025.  

Last week, we joined our friends at Liberty Justice Center as co-counsel in the fight to restore First Supply’s due process rights and recover just compensation for its losses.​​​

Both the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution protect the right to due process. Yet too often, small businesses—like PLF client Christopher McKenna’s Redondo Auto Spa—are stripped of their rights to a fair trial by unaccountable bureaucrats levying potentially ruinous fines and destroying livelihoods.

Fortunately, Christopher’s not one to back down from a fight, and we’re grateful for his courage in taking this stand. ​​​​​

On Wednesday, PLF attorneys filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER) and one of its student members, Kai Peters—a UC San Diego junior challenging the university’s so-called “private” race-based scholarship fund.   

In his coverage of the filing, Aaron Sibarium of The Washington Free Beacon noted our complaint’s “novel application of a 150-year-old law”—formerly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, now Section 1985—could have widespread implications in similar cases of outsourced discrimination at universities around the country. ​​​​​

PLF’s latest research report, based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to the 50 best public law schools in the country (as ranked by U.S. News & World Report), confirms what legal insiders have speculated for years: Accreditors are using their quasi-governmental authority to push institutions toward likely unconstitutional and unlawful practices.  

According to PLF’s Alison Somin and Caitlin Styrsky, 20 of the 45 schools that responded to our survey received commentary from accreditors that explicitly highlighted their failure to meet the American Bar Association’s diversity standards—such as having too few minority or female faculty and lacking diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) task forces.

Demand for energy, especially electricity, is expected to grow rapidly in the years to come, but political interference—like the EPA’s permit revocation for a major wind farm project earlier this year—subsidies, and excessive regulations are stifling energy development across the country and hurting American consumers. 

As PLF’s Megan Jenkins argues in Powering Spaceship Earth, a project of the Abundance Institute, “The best way forward is to let markets—not politicians—determine which energy sources are most efficient, reliable, and cost-effective.”

PLF attorneys have been tracking the development of race-based reparations proposals springing up across the country. Proposals have included things like direct cash payments, grants, and government programs with race-based eligibility requirements—often in direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.  

In our latest roundup, PLF attorney Andrew Quinio breaks down developments from the past two months in cities and states across the country, including Washington State, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Michigan, among others.