In an important property rights ruling, a San Diego Superior Court judge has struck down restrictions imposed by Solana Beach on oceanfront homeowners' construction of seawalls to protect existing development and on the repair of damaged beach staircases.  "The court's ruling in the Solana Beach case is an important if partial win for property rights," said PLF Principal Attorney Larry Salzman

"The ruling affirms the fact that the Constitution and the Coastal Act protect the rights of coastal property owners to use and protect their property, so long as doing so does not harm the public. If government wants to take private property for public use, or force property owners to abandon their property, it must compensate them. "
                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                         
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Prodded by years of legal action by PLF, federal officials this week finally acknowledged the good news that the black-capped vireo, a small songbird in Texas and Oklahoma, has recovered to the point that it can be removed from Endangered Species Act coverage. "The government's announcement is a victory not just for the black-capped vireo, but also for PLF's dogged insistence that environmental regulators must be accountable," said PLF Senior Staff Attorney Tony Francois. "Moreover, it provides hope for relief for landowners who are subject to the unjustified regulatory restrictions imposed for a species that no longer needs the protection."

                                       

Attorneys with PLF and their clients, Greg and Diane Nies, will weigh potential options after the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in a surprise move, reversed itself yesterday and announced that it will not hear the important property rights case, Nies v. Town of Emerald Isle
 

"After litigating this case for five long years and finally getting it accepted by the state's highest court, it is very disappointing for the Nieses to have that court reverse itself and decline to hear the matter, without any explanation for the switch," said PLF Principal Attorney J. David Breemer. "The disappointment shouldn't be confined to the Nieses. Everybody who values property rights, no matter where you live, has a stake in the outcome of this case, because it involves the fundamental principle that government can't take private property without paying for it."


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The Chicago Tribune featured an op-ed by Larry Salzman, a PLF Principal Attorney, and Anastasia Boden, a PLF Staff Attorney, about the Chicago City Council's vote to prohibit pharmaceutical sales representatives from talking to doctors about medicines approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration unless they first get permission from city government. "The city's pharmaceutical representative licensing scheme is a useless law that burdens people in pursuit of honest work and dangerously tempts government officials to censor conversations among professionals," writes Salzman and Boden. "City officials ought to rethink and abandon it even before it takes effect next year."


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PLF's Chief Communications Officer Robert Krauter interviewed Todd Gaziano, Executive Director of PLF's DC Center, and PLF Attorney Jonathan Wood about the Antiquities Act and what it means for National Monuments throughout the state on this week's episode of Courting Liberty.


The Antiquities Act is an act passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. This law gives the President of the United States the authority, by presidential proclamation, to create national monuments from public lands to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features. The Act has been used, and abused, over a hundred times since its passage.       
                                                                                      
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