Formation | 1977 |
---|---|
Type | Non-profit corporation |
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 conservative free market public interest law firm based in Lakewood, Colorado. [2] [3] [4] Its lawyers argue cases on property rights and federal land management in the American West, [4] as well as gun rights [5] 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 Trump administration; and John Kyl, former U.S. senator from Arizona. [6] [7]
MSLF was incorporated in Denver, Colorado, in 1976 with funding from the National Legal Center for the Public Interest and Joseph Coors. [8] 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. [8]
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. [9] [10] 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. [11]
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. [12] [13] 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. [14]
MSLF's sources of funding have included Texaco, U.S. Steel Phillips Petroleum and ExxonMobil corporations and Castle Rock Foundation. [15]
Notable past employees include: [16] [6] [17] [7]
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 and again in 2018. A Republican, he held both of Arizona's Senate seats at different times, serving alongside John 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.
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.
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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 in the administration of George W. Bush. 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. He is a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C. He has handled matters before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and U.S. District Courts across the country. He is known both for his pioneering work litigating biotechnology issues and his work on constitutional and federal regulatory matters. Perry was named a "Litigation Trailblazer" by The National Law Journal in 2018 for his "remarkable successes" in litigation, and has seen continued success in 2019, winning cases in both federal appellate and trial courts. He is the husband of Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the son-in-law of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
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. Since 2021, she has 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 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 and 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 is the chairman of the board of directors for the Institute for Justice and its former founder, President, and General Counsel. During his career as the Institute's General Counsel, Mellor pursued constitutional litigation in four areas: economic liberty, property rights, school choice, and free speech.
James M. Lyons is an attorney at law in Denver, Colorado. He is a commercial trial lawyer with extensive public service.
Grant & Eisenhofer P.A. is an American law firm that specializes in complex litigation and arbitration, particularly in the areas of securities, antitrust, and shareholder rights. The firm was founded in 1996 by Jay Eisenhofer and Stuart Grant and has offices in Wilmington, Delaware and New York City. Grant & Eisenhofer has represented clients in a number of high-profile cases, including the Enron shareholder litigation and the WorldCom shareholder litigation.
David Longly Bernhardt is an American lawyer who served as the 53rd United States Secretary of the Interior from 2019 to 2021 during the Trump administration. 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.
Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell LLP is a national law firm headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with additional offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston. It was established in 2003 by a group of attorneys. The firm focuses on solving problems that involve environmental, land use, public and private lands, infrastructure, and transportation law.
Climate change litigation, also known as climate litigation, is an emerging body of environmental law using legal practice to set case law precedent to further climate change mitigation efforts from public institutions, such as governments and companies. In the face of slow politics of climate change delaying climate change mitigation, activists and lawyers have increased efforts to use national and international judiciary systems to advance the effort. Climate litigation typically engages in one of five types of legal claims: Constitutional law, administrative law, private law (challenging corporations or other organizations for negligence, nuisance, etc., fraud or consumer protection, or human rights.
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.