Tune in to Fox News Channel Saturday at 9pm to see John Stossel’s special “War on The Little Guy,” which features my lawsuit on behalf of Kentucky entrepreneur Raleigh Bruner. He’s the guy who wants to run a moving company…only to discover that if you want to run a moving company in Kentucky, you first have [...]
This morning the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided the case of Colon Health Centers v. Hazel, a case challenging the constitutionality of Virginia’s “Certificate of Need” or CON law for clinics that want to buy medical equipment to help screen people for cancer. The trial court had thrown that case out before hearing any [...]
Today, Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys filed a motion in Kentucky Federal District Court asking Judge Danny Reeves to strike down the Bluegrass States’ anti-competition law for moving companies. Representing entrepreneur Raleigh Bruner and his company, Wildcat Moving, we’ve argued that the state’s licensing law for movers violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids government from arbitrarily depriving [...]
(PLF attorney Timothy Sandefur (L) and client Raleigh Bruner (R) outside the Federal Court building in Lexington, Ky. yesterday) Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Danny Reeves issued an order blocking the state from enforcing its Competitor’s Veto law for moving companies, at least until he has the opportunity to decide whether [...]
Under legal precedents established in the 1930s, business owners who want to defend their constitutional right to earn a living against unreasonable government interference face a very difficult task. They must overcome the “rational basis test,” a legal theory that says the judge must presume that the law is constitutional and the [...]
When the government says so.
The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto writes that Pacific Legal Foundation's challenge to Obamacare is unlikely to succeed. Assuming that Obamacare’s monetary exaction for not buying insurance is a tax, as the Supreme Court called it in its June opinion, still not all taxes are “bills for raising revenue,” which the Constitution requires to be generated by the [...]
Today, we filed this petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court, asking the justices to review a case that severely restricts Americans’ right to challenge the constitutionality of laws. The case, Hettinga v. United States, began when Arizona dairy owners Hein and Ellen Hettinga sued over a federal law that [...]
I filed a lawsuit this morning challenging the constitutionality of what may be the nation's most restrictive "Certificiate of Necessity" law. You can read about the case at PLF Liberty Blog.
I am a great admirer of Akhil Reed Amar’s books The Bill of Rights and America’s Constitution. In fact, all PLF law clerks receive a copy of the latter as part of their assigned reading materials. Amar’s excellence as an expositor of the Constitution lies not just in his familiarity with the source materials of [...]