Battleground America: Online event series examines critical issues at stake in America

America, as a country, stands for the ideal of freedom. The ability to live your life, for the power of the individual. For grit, hard work, and the entrepreneurial spirit. For the freedom to pursue your own happiness and the American dream. Our freedom—inherent in our nature as human beings—is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

These values are increasingly under attack. Bad ideas, and their policy consequences, too often undermine the values America was founded upon. But we’re not giving up on America.

Be sure to join PLF and our freedom-fighting colleagues from around the country each Friday in January for our virtual webinar series examining critical issues at stake in America.

Landlords should not have to work for free

Eviction bans have become one of the staple responses to the pandemic by governments across the country. Almost every state and many local governments have passed at least some sort of moratorium on evictions since the pandemic began. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adopted a nationwide eviction ban for certain qualifying tenants, and Congress just extended that ban in its recently passed stimulus bill.

Steve Simpson tells us that eviction moratoria may seem sympathetic, but they’re actually unjust.

Property destruction is a blight on the sacred right to protest

Over the past year, including this week, rioters have utilized violence and property damage to pervert America’s fundamental right to protest. But regardless of whether it’s being done under the guise of social justice or election results, violence and rioting are never protests.

Before the riots at the Capitol this week, Jim Burling wrote about how riots and property damage are an aberration of protests—an almost-sacred expression of our First Amendment.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of Pacific Legal Foundation’s quarterly magazine Sword & Scales.

It’s time to rein in the California Coastal Commission

The California Coastal Act of 1976 gave birth to the California Coastal Commission—a state agency in charge of development along California’s coastline. In the decades since, the commission’s mission and jurisdiction have steadily metastasized beyond all reasonable bounds.

As Jeremy Talcott explains, nearly any action along the coast requires permission from the commission, which has blocked home development, infrastructure improvements, and even Fourth of July fireworks.

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