Formation | 1977 |
---|---|
Type | 501(c)(3) nonprofit public interest law firm |
Purpose | Public interest litigation |
Headquarters | Lakewood, Colorado |
Region served | United States |
President and CEO | Cristen Wohlgemuth |
Staff | 15 (2019) [1] |
Website |
Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit [2] conservative free market public interest law firm based in Lakewood, Colorado. [3] [4] [5] Its lawyers argue cases on property rights and federal land management in the American West, [5] as well as gun rights [6] and other constitutional law cases.
Past attorneys for MSLF include James G. Watt and Gale Norton, who became U.S. secretaries of the interior in the Reagan administration and George W. Bush administration, respectively; William Perry Pendley, acting director of the Bureau of Land Management in the first Trump administration; and John Kyl, former U.S. senator from Arizona. [7] [8]
MSLF was incorporated in Denver, Colorado, in 1976 with funding from the National Legal Center for the Public Interest and Joseph Coors. [9] MSLF's first president was James G. Watt. MSLF filed amicus briefs opposing an affirmative action program at the University of Colorado Law School, opposing business inspections, and opposing Idaho's ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. [9]
MSLF is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, which also approves all legal actions taken by MSLF, and assisted in the selection of its litigation by a volunteer Board of Litigation. [10] [11] MSLF employs a full-time staff, which includes attorneys who conduct all of the litigation in which MSLF engages. The organization reports its annual budget to be over $2 million. [12]
MSLF's office is in Lakewood, Colorado, near Denver. MSLF publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Litigator, which addresses topical legal issues.
Since its creation, MSLF has argued cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and numerous federal courts of appeals.[ citation needed ] In 1995, its president, William Perry Pendley, argued before the Supreme Court in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, the case in which the justices ruled that preferential treatment based on race is almost always unconstitutional. [13] [14] MSLF has continued its litigation regarding affirmative action, reverse discrimination, and racial quotas and preferences, and also has litigated regarding the Voting Rights Act.[ citation needed ]
In addition, MSLF has litigated regarding property rights. Its lawsuits have involved the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, (especially regarding wetlands), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Forest Management Act, the Antiquities Act, the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act, and the General Mining Law and bars on and restrictions regarding the ability to develop natural resources such as energy and minerals and forest and agricultural products. In a case dismissed in 2002, MSLF sued George W. Bush for failing to overturn a designation of national monuments action by Bill Clinton. [15]
MSLF's sources of funding have included Texaco, U.S. Steel Phillips Petroleum and ExxonMobil corporations and Castle Rock Foundation. [16]
Notable past employees include: [17] [7] [18] [8]
The Coors Brewing Company is an American brewery and beer company based in Golden, Colorado, that was founded in 1873. In 2005, Adolph Coors Company, the holding company that owned Coors Brewing, merged with Molson, Inc. to become Molson Coors. The first Coors brewery location in Golden, Colorado is the largest single brewing facility operating in the world.
Gale Ann Norton is an American politician and attorney who served as the 48th United States Secretary of the Interior under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 35th Attorney General of Colorado from 1991 to 1999. Norton was the first woman to hold each of those posts.
Jon Llewellyn Kyl is an American politician and lobbyist who served as a United States Senator for Arizona from 1995 to 2013. Following the death of John McCain in 2018, Kyl briefly returned to the Senate; his resignation led to the appointment of Martha McSally in 2019. A Republican, he held both of Arizona's Senate seats at different times, serving alongside McCain during his first stint. Kyl was Senate Minority Whip from 2007 until 2013. He first joined the lobbying firm Covington & Burling after retiring in 2013, then rejoined in 2019.
The Institute for Justice (IJ) is a non-profit public interest law firm in the United States. It has litigated twelve cases before the United States Supreme Court dealing with eminent domain, interstate commerce, public financing for elections, school vouchers, tax credits for private school tuition, civil asset forfeiture, and residency requirements for liquor license. The organization was founded on September 3, 1991. As of 2023, it employed a staff of 157 full-time staff members in Arlington, Virginia, and seven offices across the United States.
Clint Bolick is a justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. Previously, he served as Vice President of Litigation at the conservative/libertarian Goldwater Institute. He co-founded the libertarian Institute for Justice, where he was the Vice President and Director of Litigation from 1991 until 2004. He led two cases that went before the Supreme Court of the United States. He has also defended state-based school choice programs in the Supreme Courts of Wisconsin and Ohio.
Charles J. "Chuck" Cooper is an appellate attorney and litigator in Washington, D.C., where he is a founding member and chairman of the law firm Cooper & Kirk, PLLC. He was named by The National Law Journal as one of the 10 best civil litigators in Washington. The New York Times described him as "one of Washington’s best-known lawyers." He has represented prominent American political figures, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in response to the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections; Attorney General John Ashcroft; and former National Security Adviser and United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.
Philip Jonathan Perry is an American attorney and was a political appointee during the George W. Bush administration, where he was acting associate attorney general at the Department of Justice, general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, and general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security.
Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States extensively refined the abstention doctrine to prevent duplicative litigation between state and federal courts.
Thomas Lee Strickland is an American lawyer who was formerly chief of staff to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in the Interior Department. Strickland served as United States Attorney for Colorado and was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate for Colorado in 1996 and 2002. He joined WilmerHale as a partner in September, 2011.
Norma V. Cantú is an American civil rights lawyer and educator. From 2021 to 2023, she served as chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the first Latina to hold the position.
The United States Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) is one of seven litigating components of the U.S. Department of Justice. ENRD's mandate is to enforce civil and criminal environmental laws and programs protecting the health and environment of the United States, and to defend suits challenging those laws and programs.
The Landmark Legal Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit conservative legal advocacy group. The President as of 2018 is Richard P. Hutchison. Through litigation and direct interfacing with government agencies, Landmark Legal advances a conservative platform of limited government, a key concept in the history of liberalism, protecting individual rights, defending free enterprise, and exposing teachers' union fraud. It has litigated a number of cases up to and before the US Supreme Court.
Joseph Coors, Sr., was the grandson of brewer Adolph Coors and president of Coors Brewing Company.
William H. "Chip" Mellor was an American lawyer who co-founded the Institute for Justice (IJ). Mellor served as IJ's founding president and general counsel and later as chairman of the organization's board of directors. During his career at IJ, Mellor pursued constitutional litigation in four areas: economic liberty, property rights, school choice, and free speech.
The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) is an American nonprofit public interest law firm established for the purpose of defending and promoting individual freedom. PLF attorneys provide pro bono legal representation, file amicus curiae briefs, and hold administrative proceedings with the stated goal of supporting property rights, equality and opportunity, and the separation of powers. The organization is the first and oldest libertarian public interest law firm, having been founded in 1973.
James M. Lyons is an attorney at law in Denver, Colorado.
The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is a non-profit organization, based in Boulder, Colorado, that uses existing laws and treaties to ensure that U.S. state governments and the U.S. federal government live up to their legal obligations. NARF also "provides legal representation and technical assistance to Indian tribes, organizations and individuals nationwide."
William B. Rubenstein is an American legal scholar and the Bruce Bromley Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Professionally, he specializes in complex litigation and civil rights advocacy. He has advocated widely for the rights of gay, lesbian, and HIV-positive individuals. He teaches civil procedure and complex litigation classes.
David Longly Bernhardt is an American lawyer who served as the 53rd United States Secretary of the Interior from 2019 to 2021 in the administration of Donald Trump. He previously was a shareholder at the Colorado law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where he was an oil and energy industry lobbyist and natural resources attorney. He began working for the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) in 2001, and served as the department's solicitor from 2006 to 2009 and deputy secretary from 2017 to 2019.
William Perry Pendley is an American attorney, conservative activist, political commentator, and government official who served as the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management from 2019 to 2021.
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