Pacific Legal Foundation: mission, leadership and finances

What it does

Pacific Legal Foundation, or PLF, is a nonprofit legal organization. It litigates cases on property rights, economic liberty, the administrative state and equal treatment, and represents clients without charge.

Pacific Legal Foundation is listed here in the category "Legal". A listing on 4conservative.com describes an organization; it is not an endorsement of it or of its positions.

History

PLF was founded in 1973 in California and was an early conservative-libertarian public-interest firm. Its cases include Sackett v. EPA, decided by the Supreme Court in 2023 on the reach of the Clean Water Act.

Pacific Legal Foundation is a legal organization. It is headquartered in Sacramento, CA. Its IRS tax status is 501(c)(3). Like other organizations in this collection, it is described here from its own published material and from public records, and the facts on this page are limited to what those sources state.

Leadership and funding

PLF is funded by donations and files a Form 990, shown here.

The IRS figures on this page come from the latest Form 990 filing that ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer lists for the organization, for tax year 2024: total revenue of $47.9 million, total expenses of $27.0 million and total assets of $113.6 million at year end. ProPublica lists the filer as Pacific Legal Foundation. The figures describe a single tax year and can differ sharply from year to year; check the filing itself and the organization's own site for the current picture.

Where it stands

PLF argues for strong property rights, limits on regulatory power and color-blind equal protection.

These summaries reflect the organization's own stated mission and publicly known activities as of the date below; they are neutral descriptions, not evaluations. Related organizations on this site include Institute for Justice, Mountain States Legal Foundation, New Civil Liberties Alliance.