Ronald A. Zumbrun has over 40 years of experience in government and public interest law. He is the Managing Attorney of The Zumbrun Law Firm, a private Sacramento-based public issues law firm. The firm’s focus is on public interest issues, litigation affecting government, and matters which advance individual and economic freedoms and concepts of free enterprise, private property rights and limited government.

In March of 2003, Mr. Zumbrun was honored by the California Lawyer magazine as an Attorney of the Year for his success in representing the Marine Forests Society against the California Coastal Commission. In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, upheld a decision of the Sacramento County Superior Court finding the Coastal Commission to be unconstitutionally structured in violation of the California Constitution’s separation of powers clause. As a result, the California Legislature met in special session and changed the law.

In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Mr. Zumbrun was named as a Northern California Super Lawyer by Super Lawyers, Law & Politics, and the publishers of San Francisco magazine. Super Lawyers are the top 5% of lawyers in Northern California named by their peers in their particular area of law.

Mr. Zumbrun also was selected by his peers to be included in the 2007 and 2008 editions of The Best Lawyers in America in the specialties of Land Use & Zoning Law and Eminent Domain & Condemnation Law. This honor was based on 1.8 million confidential evaluations by the top attorneys in the country.

In 1973, Mr. Zumbrun co-founded the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) and served as its President and Chief Executive Officer until January 1, 1995. PLF is particularly well known for its involvement in environment and land use litigation and has achieved significant victories before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the historic 1987 property rights decision Nollan v. California Coastal Commission.

Prior to founding PLF, Mr. Zumbrun was a senior trial attorney for the California State Department of Public Works. In 1969, he was officially commended by the California Legislature for his accomplishments in legislative representation and in the handling of major litigation for the state. Mr. Zumbrun served under Governor Ronald Reagan as Deputy Director-Legal Affairs for the California Department of Social Welfare and was responsible for the legal aspects of the highly successful welfare reform effort during the early 1970s. He was one of the principal architects of California’s Welfare Reform Act of 1971 and later served in Washington, D.C., as special counsel to the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

In 1989, he was appointed by Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court Malcolm Lucas to the California Judicial Council’s Advisory Committee on Private Judging and has been a certified arbitrator on the State of California’s Public Works Contract Arbitration Panel. He has served as Vice Chairman of the National Federalist Society’s Practice Group on Environmental Law and Property Rights and presently serves on the Executive Committee. He also previously served on the University of Southern California’s School of Public Administration Advisory Board and the Editorial Board of Comstock’s Magazine. He is a member of the Rotary Club of Sacramento.

He was co-author of the award-winning publication “No-Growth and Related Land Use Problems: An Overview” (ABA 1981). He also was one of the authors of Bringing Justice to the People: The Story of the Freedom-Based Public Interest Law Movement published by the Heritage Foundation in 2004.

Mr. Zumbrun received the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge’s George Washington Honor Medal, their highest award in the public address category, for his March 20, 1984 presentation to the Town Hall of California on the subject of individual and economic freedom. In 2003, he received the Heritage Foundation’s Spirit of Justice Award, one of only five who had been so honored. In 2004, he was awarded the Medallion of Freedom by the Claremont Institute, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

Mr. Zumbrun is a 1961 graduate of Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. He graduated from Pomona College in 1957 with a B.A. in economics and is a member of the California Bar Association, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, numerous federal Circuit and District Courts and the District of Columbia. He and his wife Ann reside in Sacramento, California, and have three adult children.