Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 1035.0

529ORD Unit: $PT1

[10-09-01 14:49:26] PGT: ORD1PP (Prelim. Print)

1046

OCTOBER TERM, 1999

Scalia, J., dissenting

529 U. S.

Pursuant to the HCO, the city obtained two appraisals of the
replacement costs for the units petitioners wished to convert.
See 67 Cal. Rptr. 2d 562, 570 (1997) (Strankman, P. J., dissenting).
The ﬁrst appraisal was $488,584 and the second was $612,887; the
city settled on $600,000. See ibid. Petitioners, however, offered
only $100,000. See ibid. After the Planning Commission denied
the permit application, petitioners brought the present suit.
They contended that the replacement fee is unconstitutional under
this Court’s decisions in Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n,
483 U. S. 825 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U. S. 374
(1994), which held that a burden imposed as a condition of permit
approval must be related to the public harm that would justify
denying the permit, and must be roughly proportional to what is
needed to eliminate that harm. The California Court of Appeal
It held
afﬁrmed the trial court’s rejection of petitioners’ claim.
that the HCO played no part in the commission’s decision, and
therefore “San Francisco did not demand anything from [petition-
ers] as a condition of a use permit.”
67 Cal. Rptr. 2d, at 569.
Instead, the court maintained, the commission relied solely on the
Planning Code and, basing its decision upon such traditional zon-
ing concerns as compatibility with surrounding development, ef-
fect on trafﬁc patterns, and availability of housing stock, “simply
denied the permit outright.”
Ibid. Because, the court contin-
ued, “neither a property right nor money was in fact taken from
[petitioners], there [was] no reason to determine if a taking would
have occurred had [petitioners] been required to pay $600,000 as
a condition of a use permit, and thus there [was] nothing requiring
review under” Nollan and Dolan.

67 Cal. Rptr. 2d, at 569.

The record belies the Court of Appeal’s claim that the commis-
sion ignored petitioners’ refusal to meet its demand for a $600,000
payment. After acknowledging petitioners’ offer of $100,000, the
commission compared this ﬁgure with the amounts offered by two
other hotels that had successfully requested similar conversions.
1 Appellants’ App. in No. A076116 (Cal. Ct. App.), pp. 100, 102.
It noted that in those two applications, the fee amounted to
$10,000 and $15,000 per room, respectively. See id., at 102.
(The
fee in petitioners’ case, by contrast, amounted to only $3,226 per
room. See 67 Cal. Rptr. 2d, at 571.) The commission then found
that petitioners’ application was “not comparable to those pre-
viously granted . . . ,” because petitioners “failed to demonstrate
that the amount offered” was “sufﬁcient to mitigate the loss of