Municipal & Local Govt law

In Debbane v. City and County of San Francisco, No. A172067 (Cal. Ct. App. Sep. 11, 2026), the California Court of Appeal upheld the invalidation of San Francisco’s Proposition M, which the voters enacted “to ‘tax’ owners of certain residential units in buildings with more than two units for any unit kept ‘vacant’ for more than 182 days.” Slip op. at 1. The purpose of Prop M is to make it too economically painful for property owners to withhold units from the rental market, “thereby increasing the number of housing units available for occupancy.” Id.
Continue Reading San Francisco Vacancy “Tax” Invalidated: You Can’t Be Forced To Rent Your Property

Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been closely following (because we represent the property owners!). In this Memorandum and Order, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island invalidated the Town of Johnston’s ham-fisted attempt to take the property of a local family in order to move the current Town Hall from its present location in the center of town to the very outer border of the municipality, and build a new government complex. What is really going on is that this scheme only came about after the Town learned of the family’s plans to build affordable housing on their own land.
Continue Reading Town Has Not Been Delegated Eminent Domain Power And Can’t Just Make Up Its Own Procedures

Worth subscribing: a newer (the archives go back to this post, late 2025) from lawprof Stephen R. Miller, named “Euclid Land.” The title should give you a hint about what the topic is, “a conversation about land use reform with law professor, urban planner, and author Stephen R. Miller.”…
Continue Reading New(ish) Substack: “Euclid Land” (Prof. Stephen Miller)

Here’s a cert petition that asks whether a local government (here, the granola-swanky Marin County, California) as a condition of approving a building permit may require a property owner to restrict uses of the land to commercial agriculture, and bind all future owners of the property as well. Because this is one of ours, we won’t be going into great detail but will instead leave it to you, starting with the Questions Presented.
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Can You Be Forced To Be A Farmer Under The Police Power?

Here’s our annual missive on why today (this year, Friday, April 3, 2026), the doors to most Hawaii state, county, and city offices are locked. What’s so special about this Friday? Well, this is the day Hawaii celebrates Good Friday. Yes, Good Friday is an an official state-sanctioned holiday in the 808 area code. How did it come to be that the State commemorates the date of the crucifixion, and how does that square with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Continue Reading Today Is Hawaii’s Secular Good Friday State Holiday – What’s Up With That?

Next week, we’ll be at the Denver Law School for the 2026 Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute’s “Western Places | Western Spaces” annual conference. Earlier in our career, we were a fairly regular attendee, but for mesne reasons (unrelated to the conference) our ability to attend kind of fell off. Recognizing that shortcoming, we attended the 2025 Conference last year. This convinced us that indeed, we were missing out. In short, the RMULI has returned as a featured event on our calendar.
Continue Reading Join Us At The Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute (Denver) To Talk Sheetz, And Housing

Pictured: PLF’s Steve Davis, getting us started. We’re underway today with the academic symposium “Euclid Turns 100: Rethinking an Antiquated Case and Reimagining Euclidean Zoning for the Century Ahead” at the George Mason Law School. Cosponsored by the law school’s Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy, Mercatus Center, and our outfit Pacific Legal Foundation, the symposium is designed to focus the discussion of housing, zoning, and property rights (hot topics in the headlines), and ask the question: has Euclidean zoning outlived its usefulness? And if so, what, if anything, should replace it?
Continue Reading Symposium: “Euclid Turns 100: Rethinking an Antiquated Case and Reimagining Euclidean Zoning for the Century Ahead”

In Grand v. City of University Heights, No. 24-3876 (Nov. 13, 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a complaint alleging a RLUIPA claim and others was not ripe because they are “land use” claims subject to Williamson County‘s final decision requirement.

A neighbor was “displeased” that Grand…

In State ex rel. Boggs v. City of Cleveland, No. 2025-Ohio-5094 (Nov. 13, 2025), the Ohio Supreme Court held that the City of Cleveland could be liable for inversely condemning land, even though that land is not in the City of Cleveland.

The city claimed that in order to be liable for inverse condemnation…