Eric G. and Robert Thomas, the Director of Property Rights Litigation at the Pacific Legal Foundation, dive into an enlightening chat about the often bewildering and sometimes downright head-scratching world of property rights and government regulations. You know, the kind that can make you question whether you're really the king of your castle or just a tenant in the government’s grand scheme. Robert lays down some serious truth bombs about how the Pacific Legal Foundation stands up for homeowners like you and me, fighting against overreaches that can threaten our cozy domains. It’s like having a legal superhero ready to swoop in when the bureaucratic bad guys come knocking at your door. In this episode, we explore cases that really showcase the absurdity of regulatory overreach. Picture this: imagine being told you have to tear down your house if you want to make even the simplest changes, or being caught in a web of red tape where the local government’s whims dictate what you can do with your property. Robert shares some jaw-dropping anecdotes about how the California Coastal Commission has tried to stretch its powers beyond reasonable limits, and how the Pacific Legal Foundation has successfully challenged those overreaches in court. It’s a rollercoaster of legal battles, victories, and a few defeats that remind us how critical it is to keep our property rights intact. But it’s not just all about California; the conversation takes a wider turn as Eric and Robert discuss how these issues resonate across the country. From Oregon to New Mexico, there are stories that echo the fight for property rights that many homeowners are facing today. Whether it's about zoning laws that feel more like a straitjacket or absurd fines that seem designed to squeeze the last penny out of you, this episode is packed with insights that will make you rethink the role of government in your home. So, grab your favorite drink, settle in, and get ready to be educated and entertained about the rights that protect your home sweet home.

Takeaways:

• Understanding your property rights is crucial, especially when faced with government overreach.
• Pacific Legal Foundation's mission is to defend individual liberties against government abuse, which is more relevant than ever.
• Zoning laws and regulations can severely limit homeowners' freedoms and should be challenged when unreasonable.
• The historical context of property rights highlights the need for vigilance against evolving government regulations.

Links referenced in this episode:

• aroundthehouseonline.com
• pacificlegal.org

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Pacific Legal Foundation
• California Coastal Commission

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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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You're tuned to around the House, the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with expert advice that's helped millions tackle everything from remodels to repairs.

Hosts Eric G. And John Dudley have got you covered with the best advice and information about your home.

Now let's get this hour started.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining me today.

We've got a fun one ahead.

We're talking here with Robert Thomas from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

These are the guys that help you protect your property rights and everything around your home like that.

Welcome to around the House, Brother.

Thank you very much, Eric.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for coming on today, man.

I love what you guys are doing.

And I just found you guys recently because it popped across my SO social media feed and I went, oh, more people fighting for the little guy.

And so of course, I reached out and said I want to have you guys on the show because I love to see that you're helping homeowners and other people out there as well.

Wonderful.

That's great news.

And we not long ago, we're the oldest of first of all, let me go back and say that our primary mission is to represent property owners and others for free in court to test cases where their governments, local and distant, are infringing on their property rights.

And so we've been around.

I'm glad you found us recently, but I'll say that we've been around for more than half a century originating down here in California.

But now we I have lawyers in my property rights group nationwide from coast to coast and from time to time beyond coast in so we've had cases in Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, other places.

So across all 50 states and territories.

So I'm really glad you found us.

Yeah, thanks, man.

And again, I think it might have been the one of the things I've been talking about on the radio from time to time is for instance, like the California Coastal Commission.

They're legendary and in kind of making up their own rules and going along the way, especially right now with I got a buddy that was an architect who lost his he was in one of the mobile homes and the view homes in the Pacific Palisades.

They're looking right down the beach.

So he's got years ahead before they even think of putting something back on there, if they do.

But it's been fascinating following that and Everything else is going down there, or quite frankly, what's not going on down there.

It's interesting to.

For us here in California to see how the coastal commission, statewide agency with broad jurisdiction within the coastal zone, a few hundred yards inland from the coast, but the tentacles reach further, which we've known about for years here for decades and have considered sort of one of the biggest offenders when it comes to reasonable exercise of our property rights.

How, because of the southern California fires and other events lately, has really resonated, and now people outside of California are seeing.

Beginning to see how can that be?

Or they're beginning to ask those type of questions that we've asked and challenged for many, many years.

One of the very first cases that pacific legal foundation won, took on and won was against the california coastal commission.

As a condition of doing something as simple, straightforward, and simple as, oh, I want to tear down a beach bungalow and put up a house.

In a case called nolan against california commission, coast.

California coastal commission was our very first big win.

And it is very interesting to us that the excesses of that agency are now being recognized outside of the golden state.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

It's crazy.

And you're right.

I've been following that coastal commission for a number of years, just kind of watching stuff because you.

In.

In my business and remodeling and design, you kind of watch that stuff and see how it goes.

And.

And every time, I mean, even the latest stuff that you guys have, the new case that you guys have been working on, I was kind of reading through that real quick, and what they're.

I think they're asking for the homeowner to.

To be able to tear their house down at a moment's notice and basically give their rights away as homeowners just to get approval or a potential approval for a new house.

Exactly.

And again, it's one of those things that until you see it almost in writing, that it's kind of hard to believe that that would come out of our government, our government that's supposed to be there, chosen by us, working for us.

I mean, if you.

In this 250th birthday of the United States.

We have to go back and remember that if we ever wondered what, what the whole purpose of government was, well, 250 years ago, they actually wrote it down in a document and said the whole purpose of government is to protect people's life, liberty and property and their pursuit of happiness.

So government's supposed to be there to help us.

But it does seem a lot these days that governments there design.

Its purpose is to do something else and it isn't protect us exactly.

In the case you mentioned, One of the conditions of, okay, we'll give you permission to do x, y and z, but in return for that, you have to agree to bind yourself and future owners to tear down your house.

Excuse me, tear out that, Tear out the improvements and tear down your house.

If some commission, the commission in the future thinks you should.

And that, that, that just seems insane until you read it in writing.

And there it is, plain as day.

Yeah.

And, and so we're taking that on almost right after we closed the books on a big One of our biggest wins in decades against the coastal commission in of all places, the California supreme court.

We did not have to go to the u. S. Supreme court on our latest.

Wow.

But just last month beat the California supreme or in the California supreme court Ruled for us unanimously.

A small, modest little home builder in central California had received the permission from the county.

He was out.

He wasn't in the.

In inside any city.

So he looked for permissions like you do in unincorporated areas, Looked for approvals from the county and the county, which had a long history with this guy, and he had made.

Made some very modest home development, Single family residences, and had actually followed through and done everything the right way.

So the county was pretty familiar with this guy and issued, said, yeah, yeah, you can continue on that project and build two more homes.

Well, the coastal commission got wind of it and then in again.

This is one of those things that until you see it in writing, it kind of makes no sense.

Under California law, the coastal.

Any two coastal commissioners can appeal another government agency's approval of a permit in the coastal zone to themselves.

It's like judge, jury and executioner.

Right?

We tend to think, no, the judge should not be the prosecutor.

But under the California system, two coastal commissioners can object and say, we appeal the local government's approvals to the very commission that we sit on.

And that's what happened here.

And that there was a fight and there was, it was essentially a fight where the two wolves are deciding over which of them gets to eat the Lamb in a sense, the county saying no, we have jurisdiction to decide this issue.

And what we say goes.

The commission saying no, no, no.

We're the ultimate deciders of what goes on in the coastal zone.

And after a very long process, our client was vindicated.

The property owner, the home builder.

The California Supreme Court unanimously said that, oh no, Coastal commission, butt out.

You're exceeding your jurisdiction.

You're not supposed to be doing that type of thing.

Local, county, you have the authority to decide these things.

You decided that he should be allowed to build and get out of the way.

And it ordered the California Coastal Commission to dismiss its own appeal and let these permits go into effect.

So we think that one, that one pretty significant win after a long period where California courts were very much in rule in favor of the coastal Commission.

So that gives us some, lets us take heart that this latest case, the courts will see it in much the same way.

Make sure and follow us on social media and our YouTube channels.

To find all the links, head to aroundthehouseonline.com we will be right back.

Talking about your property rights from Robert Thomas from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

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Find out more about us@aroundthehouse online.com now let's get back to talking about your property rights with Robert Thomas from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Finally, maybe getting, as one columnist put it down here, a reckoning on its, on its excessive use of its own power.

No kidding.

And it's not just California.

I mean I'm in Oregon.

Up here my little brother and I have a, a beach house out in Cannon Beach, Oregon out there and small town politics, man.

You got hotel owners that are on the city council that want to shut down as many of the short term rentals as they can and they just passed one that I'm furious about where we can't use our fire pit because we are renting short term rentals a few times a year and they have outlawed the use of fire pits for anyone that is renting to anyone short term rental.

So my neighbor across the street can use a fire pit perfectly fine.

The here's the crazy part.

The city owned RV park next to propane tanks and fireball and fire prone RVs and I'm an RV owner, that's perfectly okay to use it there.

But if you're renting short term and you're the homeowner, you can't use a fire pit in the city.

So it doesn't.

Let me get this straight.

It doesn't say, well, someone's renting your property short term, they can't use the fire pit.

But, but for the other 364 days of the year that you live there and don't rent it to somebody else because you rent it that one day to somebody else, then you can't use the fire pit, correct?

100%.

Okay, well, that makes a whole lot of no sense to me, let's put it that way.

And yet the city apparently doesn't have those concerns because in its own, when it rents out space, hey, no problem is it, that they think you're going to be renting to arsonists?

I mean, what's the problem?

And on top of that, there's zero history of fire pit structure fires or anything like that in the, there's nothing in recent history that has come up that I can even search in the news and find.

So there's just no story there.

But it's, it's the, it's the personal interests, it seems from my opinion at least, of the people that are living in the city that are like, oh no, we're going to control this because they want their hotels to be full and if they can have a fire pit at their hotels, that's the crazy part.

It all not to.

I know I did okay in high school history and I, I should have, I should have stuck with that maybe, but, but, and the reason I bring that up is that this is, this all stems back a hundred years.

Where does this come from?

People always ask me that.

Where, how come government can come up with all sorts of things that make no sense.

And I tell them it started at least with respect to property regulation and the limitations on the uses of property about a hundred years ago with the advent of something we're very familiar with now, municipal zoning.

Before that, governments restricted people's uses for what were harmful uses.

You couldn't make use.

Nobody has the right to make use of their property in a way that is potentially harmful to somebody else or harms the public.

And that that notion goes back a thousand years.

And then about 100 years ago, local governments started codifying that principle rather than leaving it up to individual homeowners saying, hey, my neighbor is running a garbage dump on their property and they shouldn't be able to do that because it interferes with my use.

And allowing the courts to take care of those problems.

Municipalities started this thing called zoning, where they said, okay, this part of town is the residential zone.

Here's the height limits, here's the use limits.

You can't make a commercial use in a residential zone.

And here's the other thing, too.

Setbacks.

Right.

You can't build.

You may own the square footage, but you can't build out to the lot line.

You gotta set it back for various reasons.

But you could on the north side of the street, but not on the south side of the street.

Yeah, and that's where that stuff gets.

A little crazy and.

Yeah, exactly.

And.

And you can see it in some instances where.

Okay, height limitations initially came about because the.

The fire truck ladders couldn't reach up more than three stories.

Oh, okay.

Well, then maybe three stories should be our height limit in this town.

Oh, that makes some sense.

And we didn't have.

We didn't.

We didn't know about sprinklers and things like that or setbacks.

Well, things like fire trucks had to go between buildings in order to put out structure fires.

And so you wanted some space between buildings and not lot lines.

Buildings built right next to each other with no gap.

But over time, like everything else, sort of mission creep, let's call it, sets in and the setback itself becomes something that maybe has its own.

It's there for its own purposes almost.

Well, anyway, this was challenged 100 years ago in a case out of Ohio, and the owner said, hey, these restrictions that you're putting me into, these zones kind of arbitrarily really impact my property rights because you haven't shown that I'm doing anything harmful.

It's one thing to say I can't do harmful things with my property.

That's no infringement on property rights.

But to simply say, hey, this is.

This is the residential parts of town.

And in that case, village of Euclid.

Now, the city of Euclid, a suburb of.

Of Cleveland, said no apartment buildings.

And.

And when challenged on that, the city claimed that apartment buildings were harmful and detrimental to the health of the community, which is today, 100 years later, almost a laughable.

Yeah.

Rationale.

But in the end, the Supreme Court held that if there's any sort of rational relationship between the restriction and the furtherance of what the court called the public health, safety, welfare or morals, and it's not hard to see how you can.

Almost anything is going to qualify on that standard.

Yeah, Just depending on constitutional muster.

And we've lived with what we lawyers call the rational basis test.

If there's any rational basis for the restrictions, courts take a handoff approach.

And that's the answer I give to people when they say how can, how wait, these things make no sense to us.

How can they possibly.

These regulations be upheld.

Aren't they unconstitutional?

Yeah.

And.

And see about changing that.

And that's one of our missions that we do at PLF is we have cases and are looking for other cases that are challenging that 100 year old standard.

We said what may have made sense 100 years ago doesn't make sense today.

And zoning laws and similar types of restrictions.

Micromanaging your ability to use your property in what seem like obviously reasonable ways really does infringe on your property rights.

And the burden should be on the government, not the homeowner.

The burden should be on the government to show that its restrictions on your uses are necessary and will actually result in improvement of the or protection of the public health, safety and welfare.

And not on the owner.

Where it is now under this Euclid case.

It should not be on the owner to prove that, well, there.

I won't.

What I'm doing won't harm this.

It's.

It seems that the burdens are distributed all wrong.

And so, yeah, we're trying to change that.

Yeah, I just saw an interesting one happen locally and I'm talking blocks away from my house.

So the city and the county, a couple cities and counties are going to take this little narrow road that goes between houses and make it a thoroughfare because we are a state of.

We have the urban growth boundaries which says you can build here, you can't build here, that kind of stuff.

So this road was gonna go through and people were gonna lose all their backyards.

I mean it was gonna be a fence three feet off the back of their house kind of thing as they go through.

Because around the house.

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First time catching the show.

Find out more about [email protected].

Now let's get back to talking about your property rights with Robert Thomas from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

So they were gonna have to go through some farmland and along the river a little bit.

The homeowner, which I think she and I could be wrong here, but I think she might have been elderly or she was.

She donated her riverfront property to be a wetland reserve.

Well, the county rule says you can't put a road through a wetland reserve.

It has to be a hundred yards away.

That killed that project.

And I was like, wow, somebody used the wetland rules back against them to stop a project.

And I went extreme.

But wow, interesting.

We've seen that not only from the federal government enforcing, say the Clean Water act and stretching it way beyond what Congress laid out.

Congress back in the people forget it was the Nixon administration.

Yeah.

It was the Clean Water Act.

And it was.

It was a comprehensive but limited to certain things that the federal government has jurisdiction over waters of the United States.

And over time, like a lot of other things, that mission creep set in and stretched the notion of waters of the United States to was at one point there was actually something called the migratory bird rule.

It was considered that if your pond in your backyard, ducks on their way north and south landed in there, that was considered a water of the United States, therefore subject to Clean Water act jurisdiction.

When it was just this pond in your backyard.

Yeah, a court knocked that with the Supreme Court knocked that one down.

And then the most recent sort of knockdown of that was again one of our cases involving a property in Idaho where the only connection to an actual thing you might deem navigable waters of the United States was subsurface.

We're all connected, I guess.

But you know, it was never Congress's intention.

So there's those.

You also have a lot of.

We have 50 states doing a lot of similar type of restrictions and regulations on those.

And then layer on top of that things that are now becoming vogue, these things called wildlife corridors to allow year and the antelope play across your property.

And as they migrate, they need a path and you cannot build in the path.

So it's a no build zone on your property that follows deer trails, I guess.

And we've been dealing with some of those.

Speaking of Cannon beach, there's also one that's popped up in the news lately about.

I understand Cannon beach is near a beach, let's put it that way.

Y.

And because of that sand in the winter time, because of the tides and the winds and the weather blows up onto people's property and starts collecting.

Well, for the longest time, the Oregon I think it's.

The Department of Environment issued permits to people to clear off the sand.

But recently, apparently there's been a change of heart somewhere in the department because now these permits that have been issued for years, allowing property owners not only to clear their own land from the sand and their houses to keep them from getting buried In Lawrence of Arabia Dunes, I suppose we're also clearing out the public access ways to and from the beach.

Yeah.

Allow the public to get to the beach.

And we're burying those paths in sand.

And the owners are like, yeah, we'll clear those out, too, because we're, we're Oregonians and, and we appreciate the ability for the public to get to the beach.

Well, for some reason, they shut them down and said, no, you can't do that.

So meanwhile, all this publicly owned sand is piling up on the homeowners.

It's even worse than that because I'm watching it in Cannon beach because it's, it's right behind the beach house that we have there.

It's.

It's.

We're a block off the beach.

Well, 20 years ago, I think, and I could be wrong in the time it could be 30.

But they went in and planted some, some grasses in front of the beach houses just to kind of keep things going and to keep that sand from moving around as much.

Well, the problem was that it's a now considered an invasive plant species.

It's not supposed to be there.

Well, this sand is now grown up because as sand does, when it starts to collect, it keeps collecting.

And now there's this huge sand dunes.

All these homes that had a beautiful view of the beach now look at grasses and sand.

They wanted to clean that out and level it back out and restore it the way it's supposed to, except now there's some bird or something that's living in there, and they can't go in and do that.

And so they won't let them touch it.

But habitat for.

It's some habitat for something.

And now all of a sudden they can't go in and do anything with it.

And it's just burying the homes.

And so it's, it's even a step beyond that.

It's the, it's.

The bird species is going to get hurt if you remove that.

But at the same time, every year that gets a foot or two taller.

And now these people's homes, which were view homes, are really view homes anymore.

Right?

They're sitting behind a sand dune.

Yeah, exactly right.

And that's getting taller every year.

And they can't.

At some point it's going to come onto their property as well.

So.

Yeah, absolutely.

These.

You and I could talk all day about various situations that seem utterly ridiculous and yet are either not subject to challenge or the courts have upheld government action.

And that's like, for us, it presents a target rich Environment in that sense.

Right.

We have no shortage of people calling us up and saying, hey, I hear you work for free.

Here's a case I have that, that might fit the agenda, including not only just sort of generically property rights, but also specifically about homes that, that U.S. and Oregon constitutions expressly protecting property, private property and property, but most, the U. S. Constitution and the, and the state constitutions also protect homes specifically in an area that a lot of people don't think about.

That I would like to put on your radar as well since you're about the home.

Right.

That, that searches and seizures.

Right.

We tend to think of, oh hey, come back with a warrant man, as sort of a thing, a criminal law type of right.

A right not to be searched and seized subject to police and other seizure by, without a, without some probable cause and a warrant issued by a judge.

Right.

A judge looks at and say, yeah, there's a good chance you're gonna find the murder weapon on this guy's property.

And I'm here's a warrant to go find it, to go look for it and find it.

But what we're seeing more and more now is what we call administrative or blanket warrants where in order to get some license to do an occupation that you have to agree to warrantless unannounced searches at any time government, zoning or other inspectors want to come in and search your records.

And in a time where more and more of us are working out of our houses, that implicates the right.

And what's nice about the U. S. Constitution in particular, it says not only is your property protected, your person's homes, houses and effects are protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.

But we see this more and more.

And so you have physical therapists who work out of their home saying in return for a license, you've got to open, be available for inspection unannounced, anytime, or you mentioned short term rental operators.

We see that as well, saying as a, as a condition of getting this license from the government to operate your business, you got to open your records, your houses.

We're going to be able to come in and look around, see if there's any violations of law.

And so I wanted to put that on your radar as well, because that we've got a textual basis in the constitutions.

Is your home, your house is protected?

Yep.

Yeah.

So that's clearly written.

There's no doubt about that.

No, there is there.

At least in my mind there isn't.

Yeah, I mean to me that's black and white.

That's how I see that one.

Another case?

Well, yeah, not so much.

So that's.

That's what our job is as specific legal foundation.

I'm watching a court case, pay it play out because I owned a home by this lake.

And here in.

In Oregon, we have Lake Oswego, which is south of.

Of Portland.

And that one's been going on for a number of years because it's a private lake.

When I purchased my house, I had a portion of the lake that I owned.

It's on my deed of my home, so.

And it added value to it because I had beach rights, I had boat rights at all these things I could do.

This has been for over 50 years, probably close to 100 years, this has been a private lake.

It was a tiny lake that they were using for a big iron mill before, and people started putting their cabins around it.

And when they did that and they incorporated the city, so many houses around owned part of that lake because it was done over private property.

And that's how they maintained the lake and.

And all the other stuff.

Well, now the state is saying that, well, shoot, that's not a private lake.

All our.

All our waterways are navigable and public, including your private lake that they own.

But they're not paying anyone for taking away their.

I mean, that added 40,000 bucks to the price of my home.

They take that away.

I'm like, where is.

Where's my compensation for that?

There you go.

Right?

I mean, there is a way.

If they want to turn your lake into a state park, pretty likely there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

If they do it the right way, which is use the eminent domain power, take it for public use, and then what you.

The bar you note, compensate you at the fair market value for what you lost.

Yeah.

And fortunately, there is a. I won't say obscure, but a little known.

It was a private marina in Hawaii that the Corps of Engineers said, everybody, hey, come on in, water's fine.

Navigate from the ocean and go water skiing in this private marina.

And the Corps declared that it was open for public use because it was navigable.

And the owners objected and took the case all the way to the U.S. supreme Court.

And 5 to 4 want a decision that said, no, if it's private under state law, has been private for a long time, that the.

The government cannot just declare that it's open and public property.

The only way to do it properly is to take it by eminent domain and the.

The processes and protections, including compensation that you have there.

You can't just say, hey, this is used.

It was private property yesterday, but today it public without doing something.

So that's.

That's a.

That's a fascinating case.

And again, back to Oregon among us dirt lawyers is famous or infamous for a case from your Oregon Supreme Court that did that with respect to the beach rights in Cannon beach of all places, that for a longest time, Oregon law considered certain portions of the beach private.

Well, along comes a challenger to say we want to use this, that or the other thing along the beach and along a riparian or properties near next to that that are adjoining waterways, whether it's the ocean or the rivers.

And there's this thing called.

This little doctrine called the public trust that we have the right to.

Goes back to Roman days that people have the right to use navigable waters.

But the Oregon Supreme Court said that right also includes the right to access navigable waters.

Even if Oregon law for the longest time said that.

That it had to cross over what was Oregon law said was private property.

Well, the court kind of did a little sleight of hand, in my opinion, and rewrote 150 Years of Oregon law to declare the property public and never was private, notwithstanding what 150 years of Oregon law said.

So you have to be a little bit careful about those type of things.

Unfortunately, there's a.

We can again, we can talk about these situations over and over where that happened.

Yeah.

And we're in the business of trying to take that little obscure case from Hawaii that the U.S. supreme Court decided favorably in the property owner and remind people that it's still the law that you can't do things like it sounds like they're doing to you at the lake.

Yeah, yeah.

I just sold my house this last year, so I did take some.

I would say I took a loss a little bit on that because people are like, well, who knows how that's gonna go?

The Supreme Court in Oregon gain let said, okay, well, now you have.

People can access the lake even though it's.

They've made it very hard to do it.

They have to kind of crawl down a sea wall and, And.

And to get in there.

So somebody in theory could get in there with a.

With a paddle board or something, but there's absolutely no physical way yet for them because they haven't taken the.

Everything's private around there.

So there wasn't a public boat launch because it was private.

So it's all private.

Property.

But the only city park that's up against it, you have to climb down a little seawall, go across some rocks and, and you could get in down there.

But I'm just waiting for phase two.

Right.

What do they, what type of boats?

I mean, do they.

Is there.

If there's no launch facility, they bring in kayaks and, and rafts?

Well, for that there are launch facilities, but those are part of what they call these easements that are for the owners that are.

So I had the ability to join one of three easements.

And so you pay for the maintenance of that easement and it'll have a bow launch, it'll have a dock, it'll have picnic spots and boats you can borrow or kayaks you can borrow and canoes and stuff like that.

But you could go out skiing and stuff on it, no problem.

The public can't use those.

Right?

The public can't do it.

But they just gave them right to put their own kayaks or something on there.

So.

Okay, that's the first, that's kind of the slippery slope of the first part through the Supreme Court there.

But I bet you there's 10 more years of court cases in that beast.

Yep.

And, and another one to watch is we've got a case that originated in a New Mexico non navigable river, non navigable stream.

And the public was coming in and using that.

It's not supposed to be publicly accessible because it's non navigable.

It's private property.

Not only the riverbed, but the, the access to that thing.

But the state of New Mexico sort of rewrote the laws and put up, effectively put up a sign telling the public come on in.

And because of that, not only was the owner's quiet enjoyment of the property disturbed, but of course people come in and have a party on the stream and kind of, they're not good stewards of the land and, and our clients had to keep it up or, and clean it up all the time.

And we're now taking that case.

We unfortunately we lost those cases in the lower courts, but we're now taking that case.

Supreme Court, US Supreme Court on, on that issue.

But so yeah, your, your situation is not unfortunately limited to your.

You and your lake, but is one that, that is quite common and frequent across the country.

I'm sure every state has their own issues with that depending on where you're located.

But you guys also do a lot of what I would call either separation of powers or due process stuff too out there from hey, I permitted this 40 years ago, but now you want me to tear it down?

Yeah.

I mean, not only within.

We have several sort of distinct units within Pacific.

The firm, the law firm, Pacific Legal foundation, mine focuses on property rights.

We have three other groups.

One focuses on energy and environmental laws like Clean Water act and state overregulation or let's say in some states they have anti fracking measures in place and anti energy measures.

We have another group, as you say, focuses on maybe a more technical issue of separation of powers.

And it's essentially trying to curb in excesses in our system.

Doesn't like concentration of power in any particular branch of government.

We tend not to be that trustful, I suppose, of government.

And the more that power is confused and distributed, the better off we all are.

We see that trend going in the other direction.

And so we've got a group set up designed to focus on those issues.

And the other issue that we focus on a lot is called equality and opportunity.

That somewhere in the mix we think the idea of equality in the law has really become inequality in the law in favor of particular people or groups or things.

And we have a group set up designed to look for those type of cases as well.

Yeah, yeah, it's wild.

I mean, and then, and again I see stuff here where we're seeing battles here in Oregon just.

Just because I see it in the news here and it's local.

But you've got issues now that it's been going through the courts where the state says, well, you have to use a union person for this job.

And those kind of things also get interesting too because again, they're telling you who you can hire and who you can't due to.

Not because of the quality of the work, but just you have to follow this because they want to support an.

Organization forcing employees who don't want to be in the union or don't want to have their union dues go to.

Let's say if a union makes endorses political candidates or makes political statements saying, hey, okay, hey, I don't want.

These are mandatory union dues.

So you're effectively putting words in my mouth that I don't agree with.

Right.

I have to pay for a union that goes out and makes political statements.

So you see some of that as well, right?

Pretty commonly, yeah.

And the U.S. supreme Court and several state courts have dealt with that issue lately.

And that's held handled by one, one of the other groups I just mentioned within our law firm does that.

We don't do that within my property rights group.

My colleagues do that and others.

So if you have a case like that, give them a call.

Yeah.

The other one I'm seeing too is just building department issue stuff.

That's just way crazy.

I mean great example city of Portland here, when they took all of their permits and went electronic with them, they somehow lost about eight years of permits in that transition.

So I have had multiple clients go through projects where they were told by the previous homeowner they have plans with a permit stamp on it that it was accepted, but there's no record of it.

And the city goes, well prove that you got a permit.

Yep.

And they put the burden on you.

Yep.

That I know of at least one other situation like that invalidating something like 10,000 historical permits and then now saying all of these owners have either have illegal structures that at least in the county's position go back with daily violations of I don't know, $100.

But oh, you've been in violation by our records, the records we lost or don't have.

You've been in violation for 25 years at 100 bucks a day.

And that is one thing we're raising right now.

We're about to file a lawsuit against the city and county of Honolulu for the short term rental issue.

And in, in the city and county it's minimum.

Well it varies but it's anywhere between minimum 30 days or 31 days or whatever it is.

And I think now it's up at, up at 180 days.

You can't rent for less than 180 days.

But they, the important thing is they also make it illegal simply to advertise your property for rent.

So it's sounds like can of beach.

Yeah.

And, and when I ask people to guess what the daily fine is, those people who have had dealt with building departments and planning departments before say I don't know, 150, 200 bucks a day.

No, 10 grand a day is the violation, is the cost.

And so we have a client, a, an 81 year old widow who from rented her property on one of the electronic platforms and while she was in the hospital due to a car accident, somehow her property, which she didn't rent for less than the minimally allowed legal period got advertised.

Or you could click and click two days or something instead of 31 days.

Yeah.

And city zoning inspectors went and clicked and sent her a notice of violation and said it took her 59 days once she got out of the hospital.

Oh, she got out.

Oh my goodness.

I better deal with this.

Dealt with it.

Fixed it within two Minutes dealt with the platform and said, hey, get that.

Don't make it so people can click.

Two days only.

It's 30 days here in Honolulu.

They did, but Meanwhile, it was 59 days at 10 grand a day.

So the city's coming after her for $590,000.

Wow.

That makes my thousand dollar fine for using the solo stove in the driveway looks small.

Yeah.

Or your fire pit.

Right, Exactly.

I mean, we look for those type of cases as well.

And again, fortunately for us, the US Constitution and state constitutions bar what they call excessive fines.

Yes.

And we think 10 grand a day for a mistake, kind of.

If there was a definition, an example in the dictionary of what an excessive fine is, that would qualify.

No kidding.

Especially when it's an administration issue of a website that she's not in control of.

Right.

And it's not like she rented it or intended to rent it, or these guys showed up and said, I have a reservation, you have to honor it.

She'd say, I can't.

It's illegal.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, that was, That's a, that's a property.

That's a VRBO or Airbnb or whoever was administrating that.

I have no idea who it was, but it was.

That's their problem.

But it's now her problem because it's costing her tons of money for that.

So look for that one.

One of the.

Not very soon.

Yeah.

When we will launch that one.

But yeah, I mean, again, there's.

There's not a.

You wish there wasn't.

Maybe in my.

My dream is to have the world such that I'd have to go be a. I don't know, a.

A estate planning lawyer or something like that.

Because none of these problems would exist.

Right.

That everybody.

The government played by the rules, did not come after people like this.

But I have to say, unfortunately, I don't think there's any danger of us being put out of business anytime soon because they keep doing it and it.

Seems like it's getting worse, not better.

A lot.

Those of us who've been around for a while have seen.

Seen a lot.

What's very good now is that with the Internet, with social media, with media itself, they cover these stories that would before, would never make anything maybe, but the local paper.

And so there's an opportunity to find out more what's going on.

And I've, I've wondered that same thing that you.

Is it that it's happening more?

Is it that we know about, that it's happening more?

Yeah, I'VE been around doing this for 35 years or so.

And so I'm so into it that, oh, it's always been this way, but maybe it hasn't.

Is it, is it getting worse?

Yeah.

And I think before, to be honest, I think what might happen too is you have your, your local, let's call it your local newspaper.

They maybe don't want to step on the toes of the local commissioners and hey, let's, let's, let's do a little tiny story on the back of the B section or something and you bury.

It where nowadays it's facility, right?

Where they have the weekly menu at the, of the senior facility or the school.

It's buried in there and they covered it.

But really now I think somebody posts it up on Tik Tok and it's out there.

Boom.

Right?

And, and we see that too with the willingness of lawyers.

Right.

Or clients, let's say.

And for the longest time before I came to this, the non profit that I work for now as a lawyer, that vibe was definitely there.

You had clients who had multiple projects maybe underway and you didn't want to be the guy that sues the city because they did a bad thing with respect to Project A, because you got Project B, C, D and E there.

But if you challenge them on A, there's at least a feeling that B, C, D and E, you're going to end up in the later box or in purgatory someplace.

And so there's that as well.

And, and there is a, a sense that sometimes local law firms may not want to do that, which is why our outfit, one of the reasons our outfit was formed is we don't have those kind of ties.

Right.

We're not in the area, generally speaking.

And so we're not bound to say we're worried about the political relationships with the local governments and appeasing them.

We can look for cases that are good cases to develop and shape the law the right way, regardless of what impacts they may have.

That makes sense.

You're not trying to step on, you're not worried about stepping on Jim and Tina's making up names down at the City Hall.

You're not worried about stepping on their toes because you got a barbecue with them next weekend.

Precisely, Precisely.

Makes sense.

We think that's helped, I mean, in terms of making the law more predictable, more uniform, more, let's say, government actions conforming to the requirements that you read either in state laws or the U.S. constitution or other places.

The whole idea of having these laws here Is to make it so you and I know how to shape our behavior in a way that's.

That's predictable and maybe we hope is least burdensome.

But boy, I've.

You've got to be a lawyer just to be a be.

If you want to do some remodelings on your house, not only have to be your own gc, you got to go be a lawyer too, right?

At.

At your own risk, right?

You, You.

You move a piece of dirt that's wrong, and it turns out that it's part of wetlands.

Better call me up because the u. S. Attorney could be knocking on your door.

And I thought I had a dirt field.

And there's literally a case like that from 15 years ago at the u. S. Supreme court.

Farmer plowed what every picture I've ever seen looks like just some fields for his crops.

Well, it turns out that it was deemed wetlands under government regulations.

And so he got criminally charged with violation of the clean water act.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's crazy.

You know, and it's.

And it's everywhere.

I mean, it's just.

Just like here with.

We pulled every permit we needed to on that cannon beach house remodel.

And the inspection for the permit for the short term rental permit that we had to do was 10 times the inspection of the building department and the electrical department.

And it's like, wow, way deeper inspection than even what the building department was doing.

There was a study released not too long ago about what wire home.

The average.

The median home price in California something like 900 grand.

Well, 200 grand or more of that is regulatory.

The costs of regulatory compliance.

And yeah, I'm not saying.

And we're not saying that we should just be the wild west and just build whatever you want, but there's got to be some kind of limits to that because it's.

It's forcing people out.

California had this massive out migration of people moving to places that are less burdensome, have less regular burdensome regulatory schemes, a little more freedom.

Florida is a prime example.

Texas is a prime example.

But you know, when.

When you lose your young people to other states because they can't afford to live there unless they live in two or three generation households with their grandpa and grandma.

Something.

Something's off kilter.

That should tell you something's off kilter.

So one of that's what motivates us in many circumstances is we're trying to, you know, ultimately, yeah, we're interested in shaping government behavior to the requirements of law, but also to the sort of the real consequences of not doing so.

And that's like, yeah, my house.

I can't afford a house because it's a million two in my neighborhood.

If I want to live in the neighborhood I've lived in with my mom and dad all my life, when it comes time to leave the nest, I can't afford to do so.

Well, that's crazy.

I mean like here for instance, they just put a hold on it because they're trying to get.

Because everybody's been leaving Portland.

Same kind of thing.

But as of a year ago, if you were going to go pull a permit to build a house on an existing lot that maybe had a burned down house or something on it, you could spend $90,000 on permit fees because you had to give money to transit, to the parks, to water and all of those little hoops to jump in to fund all these other little pet projects.

But nonetheless it still added $90,000 to the price of a house.

Yeah, they're very famous case and I always mistake how to pronounce this town in Oregon.

Tiger, Tigard.

Tiger right next door to me.

Right next door to me.

Oh well, very, very, very famous case along fano creek in yeah.

That went to the u. S. Supreme court on those permitting fees.

And the court said well, struck down the city's attempt to impose a.

A said not only did you have to give up some fees, but you actually give up a portion of your.

Your properties for a bike path for the.

For what?

A hardware.

Hardware store want to do a little renovation.

And so the city said as a condition of that, you gotta give up a bike path along the creek.

And the city's.

The owner was like what, what is what I'm doing have to do with a bike path?

The city's response was well, we can.

That's why.

Yep.

I forgot about that until you mentioned it.

I remember that because I remember that hitting a number of years back and that's exactly what it was.

Fano creek trail, which goes right up the road from me.

So forever on the trail.

One of the conditions when the owner finally wins and said and the city says okay, cry uncle.

And we tap out.

What do you want?

Owner?

The owner said well help me pay some of my attorney's fees.

And I want you to put a plaque on the bike path that said with the case name and citation from the u. S. Supreme court to remind people of that.

It's very famous among us dirt lawyers.

And we go there and let take pictures of the plaque that's Set into the ground right there on the bike path.

Okay.

I think for this episode, we're gonna have to.

I'm gonna have to go find that and use that as our cover.

There you go.

There you go.

I can.

I can give you the GPS coordinates.

There we go.

I think I know where it is because it's right over by the.

The pub.

That's there too.

That's on the trail.

So it's right on what the main street is.

Crosses the bike path.

Yep.

It used to be an Ace Hardware 100.

It's no longer anymore because the owners passed away.

But one of the things that Mrs. Dolan said she wanted before at the end of the case was she wanted that plaque to remind people.

And there it is.

So it's.

It's.

It's really neat.

I don't know why.

It's just.

It's.

It's.

It's not this spectacular national park, but we kind of go there and pay homage to her anytime we're in the neighborhood.

Absolutely.

Well, Robert, we're running out of time, brother.

What is the best way to people to.

To find you guys if they have a case, if they want to donate to the cause and help support you guys?

How do they do that?

You're talking my language.

The easiest, best place is like everything else on the Web, www.pacificlegal.org.

Or just hit your search engines and say, find me Pacific Legal Foundation.

You're going to find us.

We have a.

A place where we say if you have questions, comments, a potential case you want us to evaluate free of charge.

Give us some details.

Let us know how to find you.

Tell us what's going on and hit send and it'll come to us.

I get those every day.

We love talking to people and evaluating their cases.

Not.

We may not be able to take every case that comes along, but we're very happy to take a look at it without charging legal fees.

So find out what we do.

There's a donation place for donations.

We live 100% on donations, and our donors have very generously allowed us to go out and do things and fight the good fight.

So anything.

Most of our donors are small donors.

They're not big corporate donors, that sort of thing.

So most of our funding comes through smaller, modest individual donations.

Everything helps.

There's a big safety orange.

Yeah, the government litigates without budget.

Except it's your money if you have to hire private lawyers.

One of the first things I used to do was to tell a lot of clients, I want to take your case as a private lawyer, but I can't because it makes no economic sense to take your case.

And the government's going to sit there and string you out till you bleed out economically.

We don't worry about that with plf.

If the principal is good, if the case is good, we're in.

We stay the course.

You don't worry about budget.

Robert, thank you for coming on the show, man.

I love what you guys are doing.

Pacific Legal Foundation.

Robert H. Thomas.

Brother, thanks for coming on today and educating everybody.

I love this.

Eric.

It's.

It's a pleasure to have met you and to talk.

A little shy with you for the last hour.

I appreciate it.

Thanks, brother.

I'm Eric G. You've been listening to around the House.

Don't make the good story.

Knock one back.

No buzz, no worry.

No one ever talks about the shots.

They didn't take drinks.

They never drank.

Hell, they never raised.

Yee haw.

Y', all, it's only nine.