745: Supreme Court Smackdown - Pacific Legal Foundation's Supreme Court's Victories Explored

Brian Nichols  
It's victory after victory at the Supreme Court and a lot of it is thanks to the Pacific legal foundation. So let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. For our Hey there, folks, Brian, you're on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us on of course, another moment don't have no tie in as always your humble host joining you live from our studios here in the lovely he's drinking Indiana. But today we are not just celebrating things all Fourth of July, which by the way, if you did did miss yesterday's episode, where we were proudly American, I'll go ahead and check out the episode with Kenny Cody great throwback to last year July 4 episode, but for today, we're talking about some wins in the world of the Supreme Court. Joining us once again from the Pacific Legal Foundation, James Burling. Welcome back to The Brian Nichols Show. Hey,

Jim Burling  
it's great to be with you again.

Brian Nichols  
Jim, great to have you back on the show. Thanks for returning and I am looking forward to talking about the winds. We're getting some W's there in the the wind column. Let's go ahead and talk about that. But first, do us a favor for the folks who are new here to The Brian Nichols Show audience reintroduce yourself and what the the great work you guys are doing over the Pacific legal foundation.

Jim Burling  
All right. My name is Jim Burling. I'm the Vice President of legal affairs of Pacific Legal Foundation. We are a nonprofit public interest law firm. We've been around for just a little bit over 50 years now. I've been with the foundation for almost 40 years. And we do public interest litigation in defense of liberty. We don't charge for legal services, we support people and property rights. We support people in trying to get treated fairly by the government despite what their color their skin might be. We try to help people win those economic liberties that are protected by our Constitution, basically, the Constitution or us, and if the constitutional right, we think it deserves protection.

Brian Nichols  
Jim, let's go ahead and talk about some of the wins that you guys have had over the Pacific Legal Foundation, which yes, again, talking about the wins, you guys actually help lead the charge on. Now. First, there obviously have been two big wins, though, that everybody's really talking about, and that is the student loan victory, and also the affirmative action victory. Let's talk about those, as well as some other wins that Pacific Legal Foundation has been privy to.

Jim Burling  
All right. So with the student loan case, there were a friend of the court. But the bottom line is everybody's heard that the Biden administration unilaterally decided to forgive about 440 to $480 billion in loans. $40 billion difference, it's not real money yet. Right? At least to the Biden administration. But a lot of people think, Wait a minute, if the Biden administration can do that that's part of the executive branch. Where does the authority come from? Because as you know, Brian, to have the conch to have the President do something, he has to be given authority, first by Congress. And so when you look at the authority that Biden said he had, it wasn't there, he said, a case of the heroes act of 2003 statute that was enacted in the wake of 911. That was the idea of giving relief for some of our troops going over to Afghanistan, it was eventually extended to allow for other national emergencies to have some relief in the terms of student loans. But when the statute talked about waiving or modifying terms, nobody thought at the time that was passed, or since well, at least until Biden got into office, that it meant that you could have a wholesale forgiveness of 10 to $20,000 in student loans. I mean, even Nancy Pelosi the you know, the great conservative from San Francisco, right? She said that the President had no authority to do that. Well, that was before he said he had authority to do that. Then she just clammed up and didn't say much after that. But we would people went to the Supreme Court saying the President can't do this. The President doesn't have authority. And as you know, the Supreme Court said, Yeah, you're right. The President doesn't have authority. When the Congress talked about waiving or modifying the conditions of a loan. It wasn't talking about this kind of waiver, if it meant to do anything this big of a deal. Under a doctrine we call the major questions doctrine, which means if it's a really big deal, Congress has to say so and you just can't draw it out of the woodwork or be a figure that will if Congress had thought about it, they would have done it this way and would have given is the power or no, the Supreme Court said, if Congress doesn't give you the Express power, if it doesn't say so in the law, it doesn't exist, especially for something this big is is not filling in the details and minor details of, you know, are the loans going to be repaid? Or a Tuesday or a Thursday? Or are we going to charge the loans for maybe an extended period of time, 11 years instead of nine years, or whatever it was, didn't involve just forgiving billions and billions of dollars in loans. So it was a great victory, to have the Supreme Court say, hey, the Constitution means what it says separation of powers means something and President can't do it just because he thinks it's a good idea for the country or his reelection.

Brian Nichols  
Now, Jim, do you think that that will help set precedents for any other questions that will be coming before the court that could lead to more, I guess, pro Liberty lens?

Jim Burling  
Oh, absolutely. Because this is a second case in two years time where the Supreme Court has relied on the major questions doctrine. The first one was a year ago, a case involving EPA, where EPA had passed these clean power regulations, we're just essentially going to shut down the coal and a lot of coal burning plants, electric plants in the United States, cause 10s of 1000s of jobs 10s of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact in certain areas. And the court said, You can't do that without express congressional authorization. Now, the court is used the same language a second time, you can't do this without congressional authorization, express authorization. And so I think that this is going to be something that we and a lot of other people are going to start to rely on. When the Congress when the president or the administrative agencies set to do something really big deal. We're going to start looking at the books a little more carefully and say, Is this a major kind of thing that you have to have Express authority from Congress? And if not, we're going to challenge it. I love it good stuff.

Brian Nichols  
Well, let's go talk about some other wins. And the other one I want to talk about was the Supreme Court limiting the Clean Water Act abuse in victory for property owners, we're talking about Sackett V, the EPA, Jim, give us the framework here for this case, and the actual outcome before the Supreme Court.

Jim Burling  
So the Sacketts bought a small third of an acre lot in a town called Prease, Lake, Idaho, and they wanted to build a home on it. In 2008, they started to build the home, they started to prepare the land, and EPA official drove by and she told the Sacketts, this has wetland on it, you have to stop, you have to stop, you have to remove all your Phil, you have to plant wetland vegetation, you have to fence it off, you have to wait three years, then you have to get an after the fact permit for permission to do it. You already did. And if we grant you that permit, then we're not going to find you. Otherwise, we can find you up to $75,000 per day that that Phil is bid on the property. And the second part is no wetland. And they said we weren't a challenge in court. There is no wetland and the EPA said no, you take our word for it. And the Ninth Circuit eventually said no, you take the EPA word for it. And in 2012, we got a Supreme Court unanimous decision saying that the Sacketts could go in challenge whether it was a wetland determination, great victory, not yet. Because after 2012, EPA said, we know we don't quite have enough information to prove that's a wetland, we want to go back onto the property and dig some holes and do some sampling to make sure we can actually prove it's a wetland. Three years later, they finished their work. And they said, Yep, it's a wetland. And they went to court trial court sat on it for three years and eventually said, Yeah, whatever. EPA says good enough for us, went to the ninth circuit and the Ninth Circuit said yeah, whatever EPA says it's it. We've had to go back to the Supreme Court. And the bottom line. question was, Is this a wetland subject of federal jurisdiction, because he was a residential property, a road of road houses on one side, a paved road on the other. Now a wetland was the other side of the property from the paved road. But so what or would have had to go under the road wetland water up north, through a ditch down the ditch down south, the priest Lake about a quarter mile away? So this was a very remote relationship to a navigable waterway, as you remember from civics. Congress and the Federal Government only have the power to do things that the court either excuse me that the that the Constitution says they have. Constitution says federal government can regulate commerce, therefore, it can regulate navigable waters. But what does this have to do with navigable waterway? It was so attenuated and our argument all the way along has been that you can regulate a wetland that's right next to a navigable waterway, but something that's not connected in any manner, shape or form. That's beyond the power of the EPA and the Corps of Engineers to regulate. And the Supreme Court agreed with this unanimously. This is not a liberal conservative split, it was not the anti environmentalists versus the environmentalists is just common sense. There was no connection to a navigable waterway. And the Supreme Court agreed it said the Sacketts do not have to go to the Corps of Engineers to get permits, they don't have to face 10s of 1000s of dollars of fines a day for not getting a permit, and they can develop their property. And that is really cool. Because that's something that the Sacketts have been trying to get permission to build on their property now for 17 years. And it's taken this long, clearly there's something wrong with the definitions. If it takes 17 years to figure it out. We'll finally we figured it out. And this should help people on 10s of millions of other acres, some of the environmental groups are going crazy. So this is going to destroy 100 million acres of the planet Earth. And that's just sheer nonsense. It is going to help property owners all across the country to make it much easier for them to determine when their property has a wetland subject to federal rules or not.

Brian Nichols  
Jim tell us the story about Larry Wilkins and his battle with the Forest Foundation are that the National was a better route National Forest.

Jim Burling  
Absolutely up in Montana. So Larry Wilkins is a retired from the army. He had post traumatic stress syndrome for whatever happened over there. And he thought he would find a place it was really far out and he could practice his craft, which was artistic metalworking, he is really an artist at heart. Some of the work that he's done with metal, for buildings and restaurants and hotels is just amazing stuff. But this was a place way out in the middle of nowhere and Bitterroot National Forest private property that he owned, that he thought he could work is peace and quiet. Now there's a road leading from the first public road up to his land. And the Forest Service kind of wanted to be able to use that road is for a long time to first timber clearing operations. And the predecessor owner of this property gave the Forest Service permission to use the road for timber management purposes. But the Forest Service decided we know what we really need here is more public roads and public access. And we're going to turn this private easement that we have across his private property into a public road. Not only that, we're going to put up a sign that says public access, go for it public. Now, Larry Wilkins wasn't happy about that, because now he had people going up and down by his private property, to hunt, to fish to shoot, and especially to shoot they love shooting the guns around which is guy with his history. He wasn't keen, keen about, especially when they shot and injured Mr. Kitty is cat and he wasn't happy about that either.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, every animal lover just had a heart attack, Jim, jeez, yeah,

Jim Burling  
so these trespassers just came up and dead. Well, the cat survived. But he just he decided that he, you know, he went to the forester and said, Look, you got to stop these trespassers. And the Forest Service said, we're working on an access management plan. Don't worry about it, don't worry about it. We're working on it. He'd go back to them and said, What have you done? Don't worry about it. We're working on it. Don't worry about it working, finally said, Hey, we've decided we're gonna keep it open for the public. And Larry said, but what about these promises you made that we've worked it out? Well tell you what, if you don't like us, sue us. So Larry Wilkins sued them. Larry Wilkins went to court and said that you are basically taking my property this is this is my property, and you have a limited easement. And you're really destroying the use of my property. I want you to stop and the forester and said, Well, you know, maybe or maybe not we were violating your rights doesn't matter, because you sued too late. You sued past a 12 year statute of limitation. So it's too bad. You're out of here. And he lost that case of drug court. He lost it at the court of appeals. We finally got up the Supreme Court, where we were arguing that the statute of limitations should still allow him to put in evidence that he was being strung along for all these years. This was a string along strategy of the United States Forest Service in the Department of Justice and the supreme The court said, yeah, there's a statute limitations here, but it's not that draconian. And then another nine to nothing decision. This one written by all people, Justice Sotomayor, was unanimous in favor of Larry Wilkins, saying that he can sue the Forest Service. He's not sought stopped by the statute limitations. And so now he's case is going to go back and he's going to try to protect his property rights and protect him and Mr. Kitty from the gunfire.

Brian Nichols  
That's what you'd like to hear. Now, just a kind of an aside, how often do you see like nine oh, decisions? Because that just means that I mean, it must be pretty damning evidence in the site, in this case on your guys's side. So what what does that usually look like? And it doesn't happen often.

Jim Burling  
It happens, you know, few dozen times a year in the typical term. Not usually when the Department of Justice is the one defending a particular position as it was the Foreign Service here, the government doesn't usually lose its cases, nine to nothing. But it just shows sometimes how arrogant people in the government have gotten thinking that they can do no wrong or if they do no role if they do wrong, they can't be caught up on it, because well, they're the government and we always win because we're more powerful than anybody else. So getting a couple of nine to nothing decisions on the Supreme Court is is very sweet. And we're quite happy. Now. I should say I'm, you know, I misspoke myself. There were a couple of justices who did not agree with this. This was not nine nothing. I apologize for saying that. This was seven to two. But it was still a very sweet victory nonetheless.

Brian Nichols  
All right, Jim. Now we are going to go toward the tail end of our episode with an update and some good news because for the first time you were here on the show, we asked the very question what happens when the government takes your home and this is the story of Geraldine Tyler victory supreme court declares home equity theft unconstitutional. Jim, go ahead give us an update on Miss Tyler situation and the victory that we had here before the Supreme Court.

Jim Burling  
All right, Miss Tyler is a 94 year old widow lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was getting upset about the rising crime in her neighborhood. And she and her children made her move their children basically at her move out of their condominium that she purchased years before and to a adult living community nearby in a suburb, but she wasn't able to afford the taxes, she fell behind her taxes to a total of $2,300. When you added fines interest in fees in five years time, that amount had gone up to $15,000, the county foreclosed on her property. And they sorted that option for $40,000 to satisfy her $15,000 debt. Now, normally, you would think that they would have returned the remaining $25,000 to her, but they did not they kept every penny of it. And in fact, this has been happening quite a lot in about a dozen states where governments have made millions of dollars on tax debts millions of dollars in profits above and beyond what the taxes and penalties and fees owed were. Here's a case where the Supreme Court did rule nine did nothing in Ms. Tyler's favor, finding that this was basically theft of her equity in her property, she had equity to the tune of $40,000, less than $15,000 that she owed and fees and taxes, which was plenty high enough. And she was entitled to the remainder of the $25,000. And the court at oral argument, as I mentioned earlier was having none of the government's defenses in this case, would have been embarrassing to be the government attorney to be arguing you take the last $25,000 is elderly widow owned. And the and we won that case nine did nothing in a great decision by Justice Brian Roberts, he ruled that just governments can't do this. It's against the law of the Constitution that says you can't take property without paying just compensation. And here they took $25,000 for property. And that just wasn't right.

Brian Nichols  
Jim, you guys are doing great work truly like and we'll go towards final thoughts here I'll kick things off like this is the if we're gonna go towards the the white pill, the red pill, the blue pill, this is the white pill, right, this is the good feeling, knowing that there are in fact wins on the board that we can look to. And while so often it feels like you know, just that the world is on fire. It is, I guess, refreshing. But also reaffirming to know that we are making success where it really counts in this case in the courts. And we're setting precedents now going forward in a pro Liberty direction. And frankly, that's thanks to organizations like you over the Pacific Pacific legal foundation. So obviously if folks want to go ahead and support the organization, it's Pacific legal.org forward slash donate. That's how we stand stand up to these bullying bureaucrats. That's so that's my final thoughts. Jim, what do you have for us on your end?

Jim Burling  
So I think that the Constitution is great. And I think one of the things that I enjoy that I've done for the last 39 years are defend constitutional rights of Pacific Legal Foundation. And this year to get three Supreme Court victories out of a total of 60 cases that the Supreme Court had, that means we had 5% of the cases before the court. It's been a great, great year. And we hope to have more great years in the future, because there are still government agencies that are trampling on our constitutional rights. So do go look at our website, we have lots and lots of cool cases, Pacific legal.org, and you can learn about our cases. And a lot of them are almost as much fun as these cases that we've learned the Supreme Court. So do check out our website. And remember, as has been said many times, our generation is only as free as it fights to be and if we want future generations, our children and our grandchildren to have the same liberties that we are enjoying. We have to defend them and fight for them every day.

Brian Nichols  
Here here, Jim Burling from the Pacific Legal Foundation, follow them on Twitter and on Facebook, Facebook Pacific Legal Foundation, on Twitter, you can follow them at Pacific legal link in the show notes. And if you're joining us here on today's episode on YouTube, well, hey, thanks for stopping by hit that subscribe button, and little notification bell and while you're at it, hit the like button as well. Also, do not click off his video because as we wrap up today, you should be seeing a pop up right about here. That's going to be my conversation with Jim last time where we really dug into the details of the Geraldine Tyler case. So I'll make sure that is coming up next for you here. But if you're joining us on alternative media like rumble or Ben Swann sovereign s o v r en. Well, thanks for watching us again, hit that subscribe button and like the video as well. But if you're joining us on sovereign congratulations today you are getting a sovereign exclusive which means you're seeing today's episode before anybody else that's my gift to you for supporting us over on sovereign and by the way we this is a podcast as well. So wherever it is, you listen to your podcasts, whether it's Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music or something else out there, I like these podcasts adic do me a favor, hit that subscribe button and also if you want to help the show out, but also help yourself out. We have 740 other episodes here of The Brian Nichols Show hit download all and start from episode one. Listen as we have literally hundreds of guests here in the program who leave you what educated, enlightened and informed but with that being said, Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for gym at Berlin from the Pacific legal foundation. We'll see you next time.

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