Source: http://volokh.com/category/property-rights/regulatory-takings/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 22:23:45+00:00

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The idea that the Court will enlist federal courts to duplicate the work of state courts in policing conditions on literally hundreds of thousands of land-use permits, as suggested by Justice Alito, seems laughable, because the feds lack the manpower and electoral legitimacy to pull off such an act of imperialism….
In a major Supreme Court victory for property rights, the Supreme Court ruled against the government in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District, an important Takings Clause case that I described here here. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion for a 5-4 Court split along ideological lines. This was an unexpected outcome because the oral argument went well for the government. Justice Scalia, who seemed supportive of the government’s position at argument, apparently changed his mind. As I speculated in this recent post, the fact that Alito ended up with the opinion was a positive sign for the property owner.
I will have more to say about this case once I have had a chance to study the opinion.
UPDATE: I should note that the case was remanded to the Florida Supreme Court for further proceedings. So technically the property owner did not win a complete victory; we don’t yet know what kind of compensation he will get. However, he did prevail on the big issue before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court decided in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District that mitigation requirements imposed on land-use permits are subject to the nexus and proportionality requirements of Nollan and Dolan. The decision was 5-4, and probably represents the most significant property rights decision in several years. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion. Justice Kagan dissented.
Most observers believed that the oral argument went badly for the property owner (see, e.g., here and here), and therefore expected a major win for the government. Such an outcome is still very possible. However, cases that are held until the very end of a term are usually closely divided and controversial. That suggests we might be in for a close 5-4 or 6-3 decision. Tim Mulvaney’s prediction that the case could be a close call, with a “highly fractured” Court, may turn out to be prescient. The property owner could even eke out an unexpected victory, though that is still less likely, in my view, than a close win for the government. In order for the property owners to prevail, Justice Scalia would likely have to step back from the position he seemed to take during the oral argument.
SCOTUSBlog’s Lyle Denniston reports that oral argument did not appear to go very well for the landowners in Koontz v. St. Johns River Management Authority.
Something really big, and potentially decisive, happened to a major new property rights case between the time the Supreme Court took it on, and Tuesday’s argument by lawyers before the Court. The very idea that an unconstitutional “taking” had occurred to an owner of a small plot of ground in Florida seemed near to vanishing, propelled toward oblivion by a spreading fear on the bench that maybe the entire regulatory apparatus of government might be at risk. Credit lawyers for a state agency and the federal government for deepening this anxiety. . . .
The owner’s claim that there had been a “taking” had been strenuously assailed by Justice Antonin Scalia, whose vote the landowner almost certainly had to have. That was probably the most menacing development for Koontz. But the worry that seemed to spread across the bench, that a victory for Koontz might well pull the government’s public works projects into constant constitutional court battles, spelled trouble, too.
Denniston is almost certainly correct that if the landowners have lost Justice Scalia, they won’t win the case. Here’s another report from Lawrence Hurley of Greenwire.
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a potentially important takings case, Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District. In this case, a landowner is challenging the state’s refusal to grant a permit to develop wetlands unless the landowner agreed to various conditions, including the performance of off-site mitigation. When the landowner refused, the agency refused to grant the permit and the landowner sued, claiming that the conditions the government sought to impose violated the rough proportionality requirement of Nollan and Dolan. Although he prevailed in the lower courts, the Florida Supreme Court reversed, concluding that (among other things) that the rough proportionality requirement did not apply to off-site mitigation requirements or to situations where a permit is never issued. Given the issues involved, Koontz could have a major effect on environmental mitigation requirements and land-use regulation at all levels of government.
Ilya previewed Koontz and Greenwire covered the case when the Court granted cert. For more on the case, here are comments by Richard Epstein and — from a quite different perspective — Richard Frank. One thing all would agree on, however, is that this could be a very important case — easily the most important property rights case heard by the Roberts Court to date.
Today, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Arkansas Game and Fish Commission v. United States. The case involved a claim by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission that the federal government’s repeated deliberate flooding of its property between 1993 and 2000 constituted a taking requiring compensation under the Fifth Amendment, which mandates that the government pay “just compensation” for takings. The flooding caused extensive damage to forest land owned by the Commission.
We rule today, simply and only, that government-induced flooding temporary in duration gains no automatic exemption from Takings Clause inspection. When regulation or temporary physical invasion by government interferes with private property, our decisions recognize, time is indeed a factor in determining the existence… of a compensable taking….
Also relevant to the takings inquiry is the degree to which the invasion is intended or is the foreseeable result of authorized government action…. So, too, are the character of the land at issue and the owner’s “reasonable investment-backed expectations” regarding the land’s use…. Severity of the interference figures in the calculus as well.
Nine years after he won his third Gold Glove as a Seattle Mariners first baseman, John Olerud has won a victory in a different venue.
The Clyde Hill Board of Adjustment ruled Wednesday night that Olerud’s neighbor to the west must remove two trees because they unreasonably obstruct Olerud’s view of Lake Washington and the Seattle skyline.
An appraiser hired by John and Kelly Olerud said their $4 million home would be worth $255,000 more if the rare Chinese pine and the Colorado spruce across the street were cut down and replaced with smaller plants. The Chinese pine’s value is estimated at more than $18,000.
Removing the trees would widen the west-facing view from his family room by 65 percent, Olerud told the Board of Adjustment, giving his house the same amazing view of Seattle’s skyline that’s visible from nearby Northeast 20th Street….
Coy A. Koontz wants to develop commercial land, most of which lies within a riparian habitat protection zone in Orange County, Florida. He applied for a dredge and fill permit with the St. Johns Water Management District. St. Johns agreed to grant the permit, but only on the condition that he place a conservation easement over his land, and perform mitigation off-site by replacing culverts and plugging certain drainage canals on other properties not owned by Koontz and miles away from the property. When Koontz refused to perform the off-site mitigation, St. Johns denied the permit.
Koontz filed an inverse condemnation suit in circuit court. Koontz argued that the off-site mitigation requirement violated Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. Tigard. The circuit court applied Nollan and Dolan, holding that the requirement bore no connection to the project’s alleged impacts on the riparian habitat protection zone. The court awarded Koontz compensation for a temporary taking.
The court of appeals affirmed, but the Florida Supreme Court reversed. The Supreme Court held that no taking under Nollan and Dolan had occurred, because (1) Nollan and Dolan apply only to forced dedications of interests in real property (not to mitigation work); and (2) Nollan and Dolan apply only when government approves and issues a permit with conditions (not when it denies a permit, and therefore nothing has been demanded of or taken from the landowner).
The transcript of today’s oral argument in the important Supreme Court takings case of Arkansas Game and Fish Commission v. United States is now available here. I discussed the issues in the case in this post.
A majority of Supreme Court justices appeared sympathetic today to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s argument that it is owed compensation by the Army Corps of Engineers for timber damage caused by flooding.
The commission claims it deserves compensation under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment for a loss of revenue in timber sales in the Black River Wildlife Management Area in the northeast part of the state.
The damage to the timber was caused by the Army Corps’ management of the Clearwater Dam upriver, the state maintains. Between 1993 and 2000, the Army Corps tinkered with the water flow from the dam, which the commission said led to flooding that eventually killed many mature oak trees at the Black River site….
The Supreme Court justices appeared hostile to the federal government’s position — espoused by Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler — that no landowners downstream of a government-operated dam can seek compensation in part because they should be aware of the inherent risks of owning land on a floodplain. The federal government would not “have got into the flood control business” if it was going to face litigation over its management of projects, Kneedler said….
Some of the justices appeared particularly concerned with Kneedler’s contention that landowners downstream could never make a claim even though a property owner with land next to a dam reservoir could potentially seek compensation if the water regularly floods his property.
Although it may be lost in the shuffle of more highly publicized cases, tomorrow the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in Arkansas Game and Fish Commission v. United States, the most important regulatory takings case in a long time. In this case, the US Army Corps of Engineers inflicted extensive damage on a 23,000 acre Wildlife Management Area owned by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission through a series of recurring floods caused by Corps dam operations. The trial court ruled that this was a “taking” of property requiring “just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment and awarded over $5 million in damages to the Game and Fish Commission. But the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, concluding it was not a taking because the flooding was only temporary and the Corps did not intend to inflict permanent flooding or damage.

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