Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 568

524US2

Unit: $U94

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 498 (1998)

523

Opinion of O(cid:146)Connor, J.

economic regulation such as the Coal Act may nonetheless
effect a taking, see Security Industrial Bank, supra, at 78.
See also Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (opinion of
Chase, J.) (“It is against all reason and justice” to presume
that the legislature has been entrusted with the power to
enact “a law that takes property from A. and gives it to B”).
By operation of the Act, Eastern is “permanently deprived
of those assets necessary to satisfy its statutory obligation,
not to the Government, but to [the Combined Fund],” Con-
nolly, supra, at 222, and “a strong public desire to improve
the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the
desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying
for the change,” Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S.
393, 416 (1922).

Of course, a party challenging governmental action as an
unconstitutional taking bears a substantial burden. See
United States v. Sperry Corp., 493 U. S. 52, 60 (1989). Gov-
ernment regulation often “curtails some potential for the use
or economic exploitation of private property,” Andrus v. Al-
lard, 444 U. S. 51, 65 (1979), and “not every destruction or
injury to property by governmental action has been held to
be a ‘taking’ in the constitutional sense,” Armstrong, supra,
at 48.
In light of that understanding, the process for evalu-
ating a regulation’s constitutionality involves an examination
of the “justice and fairness” of the governmental action.
See Andrus, 444 U. S., at 65. That inquiry, by its nature,
does not lend itself to any set formula, see ibid., and the
determination whether “ ‘justice and fairness’ require that
economic injuries caused by public action [must] be compen-
sated by the government, rather than remain disproportion-
ately concentrated on a few persons,” is essentially ad hoc
and fact intensive, Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S.
164, 175 (1979) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have
identiﬁed several factors, however, that have particular sig-
niﬁcance: “[T]he economic impact of the regulation, its inter-
ference with reasonable investment backed expectations, and