Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
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524US2

Unit: $U94

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EASTERN ENTERPRISES v. APFEL

Opinion of Kennedy, J.

v. Central Eureka Mining Co., 357 U. S. 155 (1958). The
regulations in the cited cases were challenged as being so
excessive as to destroy, or take, a speciﬁc property interest.
The plurality’s opinion disregards this requirement and, by
removing this constant characteristic from takings analysis,
would expand an already difﬁcult and uncertain rule to a
vast category of cases not deemed, in our law, to implicate
the Takings Clause.

The difﬁculties in determining whether there is a taking
or a regulation even where a property right or interest is
identiﬁed ought to counsel against extending the regulatory
takings doctrine to cases lacking this speciﬁcity. The exist-
ence of at least this outer boundary for application of the
regulatory takings rule provides some necessary predictabil-
ity for governmental entities. Our deﬁnition of a taking,
after all, is binding on all of the States as well as the Federal
Government. The plurality opinion would throw one of the
most difﬁcult and litigated areas of the law into confusion,
subjecting States and municipalities to the potential of new
and unforeseen claims in vast amounts. The existing cate-
gory of cases involving speciﬁc property interests ought not
to be obliterated by extending regulatory takings analysis
to the amorphous class of cases embraced by the plurality’s
opinion today.

True, the burden imposed by the Coal Act may be just as
great if the Government had appropriated one of Eastern’s
plants, but the mechanism by which the Government injures
Eastern is so unlike the act of taking speciﬁc property that
it is incongruous to call the Coal Act a taking, even as that
concept has been expanded by the regulatory takings princi-
ple.
In the terminology of our regulatory takings analysis,
the character of the governmental action renders the Coal
Act not a taking of property. While the usual taking occurs
when the government physically acquires property for itself,
e. g., Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226 (1897),
our regulatory takings analysis recognizes a taking may
occur when property is not appropriated by the government