YIMBY Law fights for Free Speech, and we win

At the very end of 2025, the day after Christmas, we got a strange email. Apparently, an attorney representing NIMBYs in Rancho Palos Verdes had reported YIMBY Law to the CA State Bar, complaining that we are engaging in the practice of law without a license. Their evidence is the letter we sent to RPV telling them they had to implement their housing element. We send hundreds of letters like this, all over California. For the past decade, it has been core to our strategy of enforcing state law. Here's coverage from Housing Wire, the SF Chronicle and our own substack blog, In Practice. 

Besides the danger to our ability to successfully advance our mission, this is a direct threat to anyone seeking government accountability. If the CA Bar succeeded here, it wouldn't stop with us - it could embolden cities and bad-faith actors everywhere to intimidate advocates into backing off.

So instead of pausing our enforcement while the investigation played out, we decided to fight this on First Amendment grounds and to continue our enforcement work. We teamed up with the Institute for Justice. We demanded the CA State Bar close the investigation, or else face a federal lawsuit. 

On Friday Feb 6, 2026 we received word that the CA State Bar responded to our pressure, ending the investigation and finding that "there is no evidence Sonja Trauss or YIMBY Law is engaged in the unauthorized practice of law." You can read their letter here.