Wesley Yu lives with his wife and young daughter in a modest, 1,000-square-foot home in East Palo Alto, California. The Yus, dreaming of a little more space where their three-year-old could play safely and grandparents could visit comfortably, began exploring the idea of building a new home and a small guest unit—or accessory dwelling unit (ADU)—on the adjacent lot they own.  

But they soon learned that East Palo Alto’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance was going to be a major obstacle, forcing them into an impossible choice: dedicate one unit on their property as “affordable housing” or pay an in-lieu fee of nearly $55,000.  

Now, Wesley and his family are taking a stand—challenging the City’s unconstitutional and extortionate housing ordinance in federal court.

You don't need a law degree to know that when the federal government loses a case at the Supreme Court, it’s supposed to follow the ruling. But as PLF attorney Sean Radomski explains in his latest at Reason, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seem to think those rulings don't apply to them.

In Chiles v. Salazar, a culture-war bombshell set to be argued at the Supreme Court this fall, therapist Kaley Chiles is challenging a Colorado law that bans her from using talk therapy with minors “that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”  

As PLF’s Ethan Blevins points out, the right to receive information is an often overlooked but essential component of First Amendment protections. While pundits will zero in on Kaley Chiles’s controversial therapy, Ethan argues many will miss the case’s broader significance for the millions of Americans who rely on technology—like telehealth—for their well-being and survival.

On Tuesday, North Carolina joined a growing movement of states seeking to restore the separation of powers. After Governor Josh Stein vetoed the widely supported REINS-style legislation—short for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny—in late June, the General Assembly voted to override the veto earlier this week.

“We applaud North Carolina lawmakers for enacting this important legislation,” said PLF state policy counsel Jaimie Cavanaugh. “Creating a legislative review process for new regulations will ensure that state agencies continue to work for and represent the will of those who elected them.”

It’s fundamentally impossible to eliminate all risks—and every product has a “reasonably foreseeable” potential for misuse. Yet that’s exactly the sort of arbitrary and incoherent reasoning used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in its enforcement actions against nursery-product manufacturers—like PLF client Jamie Leach and her small family-run business, Leachco.  

If the goal is rightly to minimize and prevent injuries and deaths, it’s vital that the CPSC construct a clear and accurate assessment of where the actual risk resides. The agency’s current “reasonably foreseeable” standard could be used to ban virtually every product on the market—and should be reined in.