Supreme Court Rules Against Expansion of 'Takings' Claims - April 29, 2002 Vol. 3 No. 9

April 29, 2002 Vol. 3 No. 9:

Published: 04/29/2002

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Supreme Court Rules Against Expansion of 'Takings' Claims

In a major victory for the environment, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that governments are not required by the Constitution to pay compensation to landowners in cases where development is temporarily prohibited, as reported in the April 23 Washington Post.

"Land-use regulations are ubiquitous and most of them impact property values in some tangential way -- often in completely unanticipated ways," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in rejecting the plaintiffs' argument that government freezes on development amount to "takings" of private property, which under the Fifth Amendment requires just compensation. "Treating them all as . . . takings would transform government regulation into a luxury few governments could afford."

The case grew out of a dispute between hundreds of people who bought land around Lake Tahoe during the 1970s and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), which sought to postpone building on the land while it planned for likely runoff from development that could damage the pristine lake. In 1981, TRPA ordered the first of two moratoriums on development, and after becoming entangled in litigation, the moratorium has never been lifted.

Property-rights advocates hoped to use this case to further press their broad interpretation of the Constitution's takings amendment; recently, the Supreme Court has ruled that certain land-use regulations may constitute a takings, requiring just compensation. Yet the plaintiffs argument that any moratorium on development, regardless of duration, required compensation went much further than the Court was willing to go.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas dissented in the decision.