Pacific Legal Foundation

10/02/2026

Minnesota says it wants less plastic waste. But when Simon Milne developed a boat wrap designed to biodegrade in landfills, state law put his competitors in charge of whether and how he could sell it. We just filed a lawsuit to stop this.

Simon Milne watched boat owners send mountains of plastic shrink wrap to landfills every spring. So, he built bioWRAP: it protects boats like plastic, but unlike plastic fully biodegrades in a landfill within 3 to 5 years.

Minnesota’s 2024 law requires boat wrap producers to join and finance an organization governed by bioaqualife’s largest commercial competitors, with the sweeping power to write statewide rules, set collection quotas, and levy producer fees.

Minnesota’s law punishes bioaqualife for offering a better environmental solution because it doesn't fit the State’s one-size-fits-all recycling mandate. Entrepreneurs deserve the freedom to solve problems with innovation.

09/28/2026

Joshua Diemert says the City of Seattle's race-focused workplace program fueled years of racial harassment against him. Today the Ninth Circuit reversed the dismissal of his claims and cleared the way for Joshua to finally have his day in court.

As a City of Seattle employee, Joshua was required to take part in the City’s Race and Social Justice Initiative, where trainers told employees that racism is in white people’s DNA and a supervisor pressured him to give up a role so a person of color could be promoted.

Today the Ninth Circuit said race-conscious trainings "may violate Title VII when they create a racially hostile work environment." And the incidents Joshua described were numerous, frequent, and severe enough for a jury to decide his claims.

We represent Joshua at no cost. Today’s decision sends a clear message: Title VII protects every employee from a racially hostile work environment, regardless of race

09/24/2026

Jerry Bingham began running his family farm after his father passed.

In July 2025, Idaho’s Department of Water Resources ordered them to stop pumping water, threatening to shutter the family farm permanently.

Of course, their crops failed, and future planting became impossible.

In Idaho, state law establishes a priority system for water rights, allowing senior users with longer-standing claims—like the Binghams’ 1950 claim—to access water before junior users. The law also requires the government to impose limits on junior users before senior users.

The DWR’s July order violated that law. Rather than meeting its mitigation goals by first limiting the water rights of junior users, the DWR unilaterally ordered every water user in the Eastern Snake River Basin whose claim originated after 1900 to stop pumping water, unless they agreed to a water mitigation plan or joined a water district.

The Binghams tried to work with the DWR, presenting five proposed water mitigation strategies that would enable them to preserve their rights and their family farm. None have been accepted.

The fundamental principle of western water law is ‘first in time, first in right. That means the government must either respect the Binghams’ senior water rights or pay them for its refusal to do so. Their lawsuit seeks a return to the lawful, predictable framework Idaho farmers need to steward resources, grow food, and plan for the future.

09/22/2026

Border agents searched immigration attorney George Anibowei's phone without a warrant five times since 2016. The government still has that data today.

Anibowei represents immigrants in deportation cases, so his phone holds privileged client communications. Worried that the next search could expose privileged conversations with clients, Anibowei now must leave his phone behind whenever he travels abroad.

The Supreme Court has already recognized that Fourth Amendment protections for cell phones must be strong because a modern phone holds the sum of a person’s private life. Federal appeals courts are split over whether border agents need a warrant to search cell phones.

We’re asking the Supreme Court to resolve that circuit split and affirm that the border is not a Constitution-free zone.

09/22/2026

VICTORY: A federal judge denied a request to reconsider a ruling in favor of Alabama family timber operators challenging a federal critical habitat designation for the threatened black pinesnake.

The court had ruled in favor of the families last August. Last Friday’s decision leaves that ruling in place and gives a fuller explanation of the court’s finding that the Fish and Wildlife Service assessment of the designation’s economic impacts was deficient.

“Alabama families have spent nearly six years fighting a habitat designation that disrupted their timber operations," said PLF attorney Charles Yates. "The court has now rejected an attempt to undo their win. Federal agencies must follow the law when they designate private land and account for the costs to the people who own it.”

The Skipper family has owned forestland in Clarke County, Alabama, since 1902, which it manages for timber production and conservation. In 1956 they established the Scotch Wildlife Management Area (WMA), agreeing to voluntarily open their land for the state’s wildlife conservation efforts and outd...

09/17/2026

Stanley Zhong graduated high school with a 4.42 GPA, 1590 SAT score, and a job offer from Google, but in 2023 the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering still rejected his application after adopting equity-focused admissions priorities.

In 2021, the Allen School had adopted a five-year Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access plan, with a goal of increasing the percentage of black, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander undergraduates to at least 15 percent.

We’re challenging UW admissions policies that impose a higher bar on Asian American applicants than applicants of other races.

Students like Stanley deserve to be evaluated on their achievements without consideration of race.

09/16/2026

The First Amendment protects your right to speak… and stay silent.

Dr. Azadeh Khatibi is fighting back against a California law forcing her to provide implicit bias training for students.

We’re asking the Supreme Court to take up Dr. Khatibi’s case and stop California from forcing ideological compliance of preferred viewpoints.

09/16/2026

LAWSUIT: We filed suit to stop trespassers with packs of hunting dogs from regularly intruding upon a retired brigadier general’s Virginia farm. The local sheriff refuses to help due to Virginia’s “right-to-retrieve” law and continues to allow the packs of dogs to harass the family.

When General Farris retired after 30 years in the Army, he bought an 80-acre farm in Virginia to enjoy some peace and quiet. Now trespassers are allowing their packs of noisy hunting dogs to invade his property, harass his family, and even urinate on a guest’s clothing.

Sheriff Darrell Warren has refused to provide any assistance to property owners like General Farris, claiming that all this is legal under a Virginia “right-to-retrieve” law that allows brief entry onto private property to retrieve wandering hunting dogs.

This interpretation ignores that the courts, the Attorney General, and the Department of Wildlife Resources have all stated: the “right-to-retrieve” law may decriminalize certain types of trespass, but it also intentionally preserves the landowner’s right to pursue all civil remedies.

The Supreme Court held in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) that the government can't force you to let others onto your land without paying just compensation under the Fifth Amendment.

09/10/2026

Border agents searched immigration attorney George Anibowei’s phone without a warrant five times since 2016. The government still has that data today. Pacific Legal Foundation is partnering with Texas Civil Rights Project to ask the Supreme Court to end warrantless phone searches at the border.

Anibowei represents immigrants in deportation cases, so his phone holds privileged client communications. Worried that the next search could expose privileged conversations with clients, Anibowei now must leave his phone behind whenever he travels abroad.

The Supreme Court has already recognized that Fourth Amendment protections for cell phones must be strong because a modern phone holds the sum of a person’s private life. Federal appeals courts are split over whether border agents need a warrant to search cell phones.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit where Anibowei brought his case held that a warrant is never required to search a cell phone at the border.

We’re asking the Supreme Court to resolve that circuit split and affirm that the border is not a Constitution-free zone.

Together with Trial Lawyers for Justice, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and Arnold & Porter, we’re urging the Supreme Court to take up this case and vindicate Anibowei’s Fourth Amendment rights. Photography by Rick Wenner.

09/09/2026

VICTORY! The City of Seattle has eliminated race-based priority placement and a mandatory “anti-racist” pledge from its P-Patch Community Gardening Program. The change follows a demand letter we sent with Fair For All, arguing that these violate the Constitution.

The Seattle Department of Neighborhoods told PLF that it had “reevaluated certain elements” of the program and would no longer assign priority status based on race or ethnicity or require applicants to sign the pledge.