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The Supreme Court said landowners aren't entitled to compensation
when government regulation temporarily blocks their right
to build on their property.
The court ruled in a long running dispute involving land
around Lake Tahoe. Suspensions of property owners' building
rights, the justices said, are a common part of government's
role in evaluating such things as the economic and environmental
impacts of development. But it said that such actions aren't
necessarily an unconstitutional taking of private property
without proper compensation.
The court's three most conservative members, including Chief
Justice William Rehnquist, disagreed.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court's 6 3 majority,
said: "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."
He added that such hasty actions could foster "inefficient
and ill conceived growth."
Justice Stevens distinguished between a government body
actually acquiring property for a public purpose and regulating
property in a way that limits its use. When the government
acquires property, he said, the Constitution "in plain
language requires the payment of compensation." But,
he added, "the Constitution contains no comparable reference
to regulations that prohibit a property owner from making
certain uses of her private property."
He added that rules on land use "are ubiquitous and
most of them impact property values in some tangential way.
. . . Treating them all as per se takings would transform
government regulation into a luxury few governments could
afford."
The case involves a two decade legal struggle between owners
of some 400 residential lots around Lake Tahoe, which straddles
California and Nevada, and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
As a result of two moratoriums imposed by the agency, from
Aug. 24, 1981, to Aug. 26, 1983, and from Aug. 27, 1983, to
April 25, 1984, virtually all land development was halted
on the parcels while the impact of building on scenic Lake
Tahoe was studied.
The landowners filed suit in 1984, saying they weren't contesting
the agency's right to regulate, but were challenging the "constitutional
legitimacy" of its "attempt to preclude all productive
use without compensation." The Constitution's Fifth Amendment
says that private property shall not be taken for public use
without fair compensation.
Since the lawsuit was filed, 55 of the plaintiffs have died,
and others have dropped out due to exhaustion, leaving 449
of the original 700 who joined the suit, according to their
filing to the Supreme Court.
Writing in dissent, Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justices
Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said that the majority's
decision "turns entirely on the initial label given a
regulation. . . . There is every incentive for government
to label any prohibition on development 'temporary,' or to
fix a set number of years."
(Tahoe Sierra Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional
Planning Agency)
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