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Public agencies that temporarily ban land development on private
property do not automatically owe compensation to the property
owners, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a decision that
backed government efforts to protect the environment and guide
land use.
By a 6-3 vote, the court upheld a temporary moratorium on
home building at the legendarily clear Lake Tahoe. The decision
was a rare defeat here for property-rights advocates, who
had been on a winning streak at the court in recent years.
The case arose from a 32-month building moratorium around
the lake that straddles the California-Nevada border and is
a magnet for sports enthusiasts, vacationers and retirees.
Landowners argued that any ban on development, even of a few
days, was a government "taking" of their property
that required compensation.
But Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court, affirmed
local officials' authority to temporarily halt development.
"A rule that required compensation for every delay in
the use of property would render routine government processes
prohibitively expensive or encourage hasty decision-making."
Environmentalists and public officials praised the ruling
for endorsing a cautious approach to land use. Property-rights
advocates said it will cause landowners to bear the costs
of planning that benefits the full public.
Stevens noted that freezes on building often are used by
agencies to preserve the status quo while they devise permanent
development strategies.
The case began in the early 1980s, when hundreds of owners
of single-family lots on the lake sued the Tahoe Regional
Planning Agency after it banned residential construction while
it developed a lake preservation plan. State and federal regulators
were worried at the time that Lake Tahoe's water quality was
deteriorating because of development in the area.
As the case spent nearly two decades in lower courts, some
of the owners died or otherwise dropped out. About 400 owners
were involved in the case when it came before the court. The
key question was whether a temporary freeze on development
represented a "taking" that required "just
compensation" under the Fifth Amendment.
Stevens emphasized that a difference exists between a physical
taking, such as condemning land for public use, and a regulatory
taking, in which a landowner is blocked from taking advantage
of the property's value. He said the latter category, which
is less of a threat to property rights, cannot be subject
to rigid rules. Stevens said a temporary freeze on development
is just one element that should be considered by judges weighing
whether a taking has occurred, along with the motives of government
planners, landowners' expectations and the impact of the moratorium
on property values.
He was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy,
David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Dissenting were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices
Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They wrote that the Tahoe
building prohibition actually lasted six years, rather than
the three years the majority focused on, and said that such
a ban cannot be considered a "traditional land-use planning
device."
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