In United States constitutional law, a regulatory taking is a situation in which a government regulation limits the uses of private property to such a degree that the regulation effectively deprives the property owners of economically reasonable use or value of their property to such an extent that it deprives them of utility or value of that property, even though the regulation does not formally divest them of title to it.
Stephen Fain Williams is a Senior United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Inverse condemnation is a term used in the law to describe a situation in which the government takes private property but fails to pay the compensation required by the 5th Amendment of the Constitution, so the property's owner has to sue to obtain the required just compensation. In some states the term also includes damaging of property as well as its taking. In inverse condemnation cases the owner is the plaintiff and that is why the action is called inverse – the order of parties is reversed, as compared to the usual procedure in direct condemnation where the government is the plaintiff who sues a defendant-owner to take his or her property.
Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a state could use eminent domain to take land that was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of private landowners and redistribute it to the wider population of private residents.
Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302 (2002), is one of the United States Supreme Court's more recent interpretations of the Takings Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The case dealt with the question of whether a moratorium on construction of individual homes imposed by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency fell under the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution and whether the landowners therefore should receive just compensation as required by that clause. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was represented by future Chief Justice John Roberts. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion of the Court, finding that the moratorium did not constitute a taking. It reasoned that there was an inherent difference between the acquisition of property for public use and the regulation of property from private use. The majority concluded that the moratorium at issue in this case should be classified as a regulation of property from private use and therefore no compensation was required.
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that whether a regulatory act constitutes a taking requiring compensation depends on the extent of diminution in the value of the property.
Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States established the "total takings" test for evaluating whether a particular regulatory action constitutes a regulatory taking that requires compensation.
Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass'n v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470 (1987), is an important United States Supreme Court case interpreting the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause. In this case, the court upheld a Pennsylvania statute which limited coal mining causing damage to buildings, dwellings, and cemeteries through subsidence.
Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that limited access to federal court for plaintiffs alleging uncompensated takings of private property under the Fifth Amendment. In June, 2019, the holding of this case was overruled by the Court's decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania.
First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. Los Angeles County, 482 U.S. 304 (1987), was a 6-3 decision of the United States Supreme Court. The Court held that the complete destruction of the value of property constituted a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment even if that taking was temporary and the property was later restored.
In Nollan v. California Coastal Commission, 483 U.S. 825 (1987), the United States Supreme Court reviewed a regulation under which the California Coastal Commission required that an offer to dedicate a lateral public easement along the Nollans' beachfront lot be recorded on the chain of title to the property as a condition of approval of a permit to demolish an existing bungalow and replace it with a three-bedroom house. The Coastal Commission had asserted that the public-easement condition was imposed to promote the legitimate state interest of diminishing the "blockage of the view of the ocean" caused by construction of the larger house. The Court held that in evaluating such claims, it must be determined whether an "essential nexus" exists between a legitimate state interest and the permit condition.
Commonwealth v. Alger, 61 Mass. 53, was decided by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1851. The majority opinion was written by Justice Lemuel Shaw.
Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498 (1998), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act constituted an unconstitutional regulatory taking of property which required the Act to be invalidated. The import of this decision is that it was made in the context of a purely economic regulation. The plurality examines the statute and its resultant harm as an ad hoc factual inquiry based on factors delineated in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, such as the economic impact of the regulation, its interference with reasonable investment backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action. The decision thereby moved beyond the traditional notions of equal protection which had been applied to economic regulation since the time of Lochner v. New York, requiring extreme deference to Congress, and applied a regulatory takings analysis to the problem resulting in a much less deferential result. While the plurality recognizes that this is not a traditional takings case where the government appropriates private property for public use, they also state this is the type of case where the "Armstrong Principle" of preventing the government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole. However, while the plurality seems to invalidate this particular law on takings grounds, the concurrences and the dissents warn of such an analysis as this should actually be examined under substantive due process or ex post facto theories.
Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the test for determining whether a zoning ordinance or governmental regulation will be considered a taking is whether such action “substantially advances” a legitimate state interest.
Public use is a legal requirement under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that owners of property seized by eminent domain for "public use" be paid "just compensation."
Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 560 U.S. 702 (2010), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Florida Supreme Court did not effect an unconstitutional taking of littoral property owners' rights to future accretions and to contact the water by upholding Florida's beach renourishment program.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago, 166 U.S. 226 (1897), incorporated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by requiring states to provide just compensation for seizing private property. It was the first Supreme Court case that incorporated part of the United States Bill of Rights and applied it to a state or local government. Until then, the entire Bill of Rights was considered by the Supreme Court to apply only to the federal government, not state governments.
United States v. Riverside Bayview, 474 U.S. 121 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the scope of federal regulatory powers over waterways as pertaining to the definition of "waters of the United States" as written in the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Court ruled unanimously that the government does have the power to control intrastate wetlands as waters of the United States. This ruling was effectively revised in Rapanos v. United States (2006), in which the Court adopted a very narrow interpretation of "navigable waters."
Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, 570 U.S. 595 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that land-use agencies imposing conditions on the issuance of development permits must comply with the "nexus" and "rough proportionality" standards of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, even if the condition consists of a requirement to pay money, and even if the permit is denied for failure to agree to the condition. It was the first case in which monetary exactions were found to be unconstitutional conditions.
Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 569 U.S. 513 (2013); 576 U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 2419 (2015), were a pair of United States Supreme Court cases in which the Court established that the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to personal property. The cases arose out of a dispute involving the National Raisin Reserve, when a farmer challenged a rule that required farmers to keep a portion of their crops off the market. In Horne I the Court held that the plaintiff had standing to sue for violation of the United States Constitution’s takings clause. In Horne II the Court held that the National Raisin Reserve was an unconstitutional violation of the takings clause.
