Source: http://ininet.org/lucas-v-south-carolina-coastal-council.html
Timestamp: 2019-01-21 02:15:39
Document Index: 189405492

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 48', '§ 48', '§ 48', '§ 1', '§ 826', '§ 828', '§ 827', '§ 827', '§ 48', '§ 48', '§ 48', '§ 48', '§ 3801', '§ 1451']

Scalia, J. In 1986, petitioner David H. Lucas paid $975,000 for two residential lots on the Isle of Palms in Charleston County, South Carolina, on which he intended to build single-family homes. In 1988, however, the South Carolina Legislature enacted the Beachfront Management Act, S.C. Code § 48–39–250 et seq. (Supp. 1990) (Act), which had the direct effect of barring petitioner from erecting any permanent habitable structures on his two parcels. See § 48–39–290(A). A state trial court found that this prohibition rendered Lucas’s parcels “valueless.” … This case requires us to decide whether the Act’s dramatic effect on the economic value of Lucas’s lots accomplished a taking of private property under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments requiring the payment of “just compensation.” …
South Carolina’s expressed interest in intensively managing development activities in the so-called “coastal zone” dates from 1977 when, in the aftermath of Congress’s passage of the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 … , the legislature enacted a Coastal Zone Management Act of its own. See S.C. Code § 48–39–10 et seq. (1987). In its original form, the South Carolina Act required owners of coastal zone land that qualified as a “critical area” … to obtain a permit from the newly created South Carolina Coastal Council (respondent here) prior to committing the land to a “use other than the use the critical area was devoted to on [September 28, 1977].” [Citation omitted.]
In the late 1970’s, Lucas and others began extensive residential development of the Isle of Palms, a barrier island situated eastward of the City of Charleston. Toward the close of the development cycle for one residential subdivision known as “Beachwood East,” Lucas in 1986 purchased the two lots at issue in this litigation for his own account. No portion of the lots, which were located approximately 300 feet from the beach, qualified as a “critical area” under the 1977 Act; accordingly, at the time Lucas acquired these parcels, he was not legally obliged to obtain a permit from the Council in advance of any development activity. His intention with respect to the lots was to do what the owners of the immediately adjacent parcels had already done: erect single-family residences. He commissioned architectural drawings for this purpose.
The Beachfront Management Act brought Lucas’s plans to an abrupt end. Under that 1988 legislation, the Council was directed to establish a “baseline” connecting the landward-most “point[s] of erosion … during the past forty years” in the region of the Isle of Palms that includes Lucas’s lots. [Citation omitted.] In action not challenged here, the Council fixed this baseline landward of Lucas’s parcels. That was significant, for under the Act construction of occupable improvements was flatly prohibited seaward of a line drawn 20 feet landward of, and parallel to, the baseline [citation omitted]. The Act provided no exceptions. …
Lucas promptly filed suit in the South Carolina Court of Common Pleas, contending that the Beachfront Management Act’s construction bar effected a taking of his property without just compensation. Lucas did not take issue with the validity of the Act as a lawful exercise of South Carolina’s police power, but contended that the Act’s complete extinguishment of his property’s value entitled him to compensation regardless of whether the legislature had acted in furtherance of legitimate police power objectives. Following a bench trial, the court agreed. … The trial court … found that the Beachfront Management Act decreed a permanent ban on construction insofar as Lucas’s lots were concerned, and that this prohibition “deprive[d] Lucas of any reasonable economic use of the lots … , eliminated the unrestricted right of use, and render[ed] them valueless.” … The court thus concluded that Lucas’s properties had been “taken” by operation of the Act, and it ordered respondent to pay “just compensation” in the amount of $1,232,387.50. …
The Supreme Court of South Carolina reversed. It found dispositive what it described as Lucas’s concession “that the Beachfront Management Act [was] properly and validly designed to preserve … South Carolina’s beaches.” [Citation omitted.] Failing an attack on the validity of the statute as such, the court believed itself bound to accept the “uncontested … findings” of the South Carolina legislature that new construction in the coastal zone—such as petitioner intended—threatened this public resource. [Citation omitted.] The Court ruled that when a regulation respecting the use of property is designed “to prevent serious public harm” … , no compensation is owing under the Takings Clause regardless of the regulation’s effect on the property’s value. …
As a threshold matter, we must briefly address the Council’s suggestion that this case is inappropriate for plenary review. After briefing and argument before the South Carolina Supreme Court, but prior to issuance of that court’s opinion, the Beachfront Management Act was amended to authorize the Council, in certain circumstances, to issue “special permits” for the construction or reconstruction of habitable structures seaward of the baseline. [Citation omitted.] According to the Council, this amendment renders Lucas’s claim of a permanent deprivation unripe, as Lucas may yet be able to secure permission to build on his property. “[The Court’s] cases,” we are reminded, “uniformly reflect an insistence on knowing the nature and extent of permitted development before adjudicating the constitutionality of the regulations that purport to limit it.” MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. County of Yolo, 477 U.S. 340, 351 (1986). [Further citation omitted.] Because petitioner “has not yet obtained a final decision regarding how [he] will be allowed to develop [his] property,” Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n of Johnson City v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 190 (1985), the Council argues that he is not yet entitled to definitive adjudication of his takings claim in this Court.
We think these considerations would preclude review had the South Carolina Supreme Court rested its judgment on ripeness grounds, as it was (essentially) invited to do by the Council … . The South Carolina Supreme Court shrugged off the possibility of further administrative and trial proceedings, however, preferring to dispose of Lucas’s takings claim on the merits. [Citation omitted.] This unusual disposition does not preclude Lucas from applying for a permit under the 1990 amendment for future construction, and challenging, on takings grounds, any denial. But it does preclude, both practically and legally, any takings claim with respect to Lucas’s past deprivation, i.e., for his having been denied construction rights during the period before the 1990 amendment. See generally First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304 (1987) (holding that temporary deprivations of use are compensable under the Takings Clause). Without even so much as commenting upon the consequences of the South Carolina Supreme Court’s judgment in this respect, the Council insists that permitting Lucas to press his claim of a past deprivation on this appeal would be improper, since “the issues of whether and to what extent [Lucas] has incurred a temporary taking … have simply never been addressed.” … Yet Lucas had no reason to proceed on a “temporary taking” theory at trial, or even to seek remand for that purpose prior to submission of the case to the South Carolina Supreme Court, since as the Act then read, the taking was unconditional and permanent. Moreover, given the breadth of the South Carolina Supreme Court’s holding and judgment, Lucas would plainly be unable (absent our intervention now) to obtain further state-court adjudication with respect to the 1988–1990 period.
In these circumstances, we think it would not accord with sound process to insist that Lucas pursue the late-created “special permit” procedure before his takings claim can be considered ripe. Lucas has properly alleged Article III injury-in-fact in this case, with respect to both the pre-1990 and post-1990 constraints placed on the use of his parcels by the Beachfront Management Act.1 That there is a discretionary “special permit” procedure by which he may regain—for the future, at least—beneficial use of his land goes only to the prudential “ripeness” of Lucas’s challenge, and for the reasons discussed we do not think it prudent to apply that prudential requirement here. [Citation omitted.] We leave for decision on remand, of course, the questions left unaddressed by the South Carolina Supreme Court as a consequence of its categorical disposition.2 …
Prior to Justice Holmes’ exposition in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), it was generally thought that the Takings Clause reached only a “direct appropriation” of property [citation omitted], or the functional equivalent of a “practical ouster of [the owner’s] possession.” [Citations omitted.] Justice Holmes recognized in Mahon, however, that if the protection against physical appropriations of private property was to be meaningfully enforced, the government’s power to redefine the range of interests included in the ownership of property was necessarily constrained by constitutional limits. 260 U.S., at 414–415. If, instead, the uses of private property were subject to unbridled, uncompensated qualification under the police power, “the natural tendency of human nature [would be] to extend the qualification more and more until at last private property disappear[ed].” Id., at 415. These considerations gave birth in that case to the oft-cited maxim that, “while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.” Ibid.
Nevertheless, our decision in Mahon offered little insight into when, and under what circumstances, a given regulation would be seen as going “too far” for purposes of the Fifth Amendment. In 70–odd years of succeeding “regulatory takings” jurisprudence, we have generally eschewed any “‘set formula’” for determining how far is too far, preferring to “engag[e] in … essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries,” Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 124 (1978) (quoting Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U.S. 590, 594 (1962)). See Epstein, Takings: Descent and Resurrection, 1987 Sup. Ct. Rev. 1, 4. We have, however, described at least two discrete categories of regulatory action as compensable without case-specific inquiry into the public interest advanced in support of the restraint. The first encompasses regulations that compel the property owner to suffer a physical “invasion” of his property. In general (at least with regard to permanent invasions), no matter how minute the intrusion, and no matter how weighty the public purpose behind it, we have required compensation. For example, in Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419 (1982), we determined that New York’s law requiring landlords to allow television cable companies to emplace cable facilities in their apartment buildings constituted a taking … , even though the facilities occupied at most only 1½ cubic feet of the landlords’ property … .
The second situation in which we have found categorical treatment appropriate is where regulation denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land. See Agins, 447 U.S., at 260; see also Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U.S. 825, 834 (1987); Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 495 (1987); Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc., 452 U.S. 264, 295–296 (1981).3 As we have said on numerous occasions, the Fifth Amendment is violated when land-use regulation “does not substantially advance legitimate state interests or denies an owner economically viable use of his land.” Agins, supra, at 260 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).4
We have never set forth the justification for this rule. Perhaps it is simply, as Justice Brennan suggested, that total deprivation of beneficial use is, from the landowner’s point of view, the equivalent of a physical appropriation. See San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. San Diego, 450 U.S., at 652 (Brennan, J., dissenting). “[F]or what is the land but the profits thereof [?]” 1 E. Coke, Institutes ch. 1, § 1 (1st Am. ed. 1812). Surely, at least, in the extraordinary circumstance when no productive or economically beneficial use of land is permitted, it is less realistic to indulge our usual assumption that the legislature is simply “adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life,” Penn Central Transportation Co., 438 U.S., at 124, in a manner that secures an “average reciprocity of advantage” to everyone concerned. Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S., at 415. And the functional basis for permitting the government, by regulation, to affect property values without compensation—that “Government hardly could go on if to some extent values incident to property could not be diminished without paying for every such change in the general law,” id., at 413—does not apply to the relatively rare situations where the government has deprived a landowner of all economically beneficial uses.
On the other side of the balance, affirmatively supporting a compensation requirement, is the fact that regulations that leave the owner of land without economically beneficial or productive options for its use—typically, as here, by requiring land to be left substantially in its natural state—carry with them a heightened risk that private property is being pressed into some form of public service under the guise of mitigating serious public harm. … As Justice Brennan explained: “From the government’s point of view, the benefits flowing to the public from preservation of open space through regulation may be equally great as from creating a wildlife refuge through formal condemnation or increasing electricity production through a dam project that floods private property.” San Diego Gas & Elec. Co., supra, at 652 (Brennan, J., dissenting). The many statutes on the books, both state and federal, that provide for the use of eminent domain to impose servitudes on private scenic lands preventing developmental uses, or to acquire such lands altogether, suggest the practical equivalence in this setting of negative regulation and appropriation. [Citations omitted.] We think, in short, that there are good reasons for our frequently expressed belief that when the owner of real property has been called upon to sacrifice all economically beneficial uses in the name of the common good, that is, to leave his property economically idle, he has suffered a taking.5 …
The trial court found Lucas’s two beachfront lots to have been rendered valueless by respondent’s enforcement of the coastal-zone construction ban.6 Under Lucas’s theory of the case, which rested upon our “no economically viable use” statements, that finding entitled him to compensation. Lucas believed it unnecessary to take issue with either the purposes behind the Beachfront Management Act, or the means chosen by the South Carolina Legislature to effectuate those purposes. The South Carolina Supreme Court, however, thought otherwise. In its view, the Beachfront Management Act was no ordinary enactment, but involved an exercise of South Carolina’s “police powers” to mitigate the harm to the public interest that petitioner’s use of his land might occasion. [Citation omitted.] By neglecting to dispute the findings enumerated in the Act or otherwise to challenge the legislature’s purposes, petitioner “concede[d] that the beach/dune area of South Carolina’s shores is an extremely valuable public resource; that the erection of new construction, inter alia, contributes to the erosion and destruction of this public resource; and that discouraging new construction in close proximity to the beach/dune area is necessary to prevent a great public harm.” [Citation omitted.] In the court’s view, these concessions brought petitioner’s challenge within a long line of this Court’s cases sustaining against Due Process and Takings Clause challenges the State’s use of its “police powers” to enjoin a property owner from activities akin to public nuisances. See Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887) (law prohibiting manufacture of alcoholic beverages); Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S. 394 (1915) (law barring operation of brick mill in residential area); Miller v. Schoene, 276 U.S. 272 (1928) (order to destroy diseased cedar trees to prevent infection of nearby orchards); Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U.S. 590 (1962) (law effectively preventing continued operation of quarry in residential area).
It is correct that many of our prior opinions have suggested that “harmful or noxious uses” of property may be proscribed by government regulation without the requirement of compensation. For a number of reasons, however, we think the South Carolina Supreme Court was too quick to conclude that that principle decides the present case. The “harmful or noxious uses” principle was the Court’s early attempt to describe in theoretical terms why government may, consistent with the Takings Clause, affect property values by regulation without incurring an obligation to compensate—a reality we nowadays acknowledge explicitly with respect to the full scope of the State’s police power. … We made this very point in Penn Central Transportation Co., where, in the course of sustaining New York City’s landmarks preservation program against a takings challenge, we rejected the petitioner’s suggestion that Mugler and the cases following it were premised on, and thus limited by, some objective conception of “noxiousness” … . “Harmful or noxious use” analysis was, in other words, simply the progenitor of our more contemporary statements that “land-use regulation does not effect a taking if it ‘substantially advance[s] legitimate state interests’ … .” Nollan, supra, at 834 (quoting Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U.S., at 260); see also Penn Central Transportation Co., supra, at 127; Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 387–388 (1926).
The transition from our early focus on control of “noxious” uses to our contemporary understanding of the broad realm within which government may regulate without compensation was an easy one, since the distinction between “harm-preventing” and “benefit-conferring” regulation is often in the eye of the beholder. It is quite possible, for example, to describe in either fashion the ecological, economic, and aesthetic concerns that inspired the South Carolina legislature in the present case. One could say that imposing a servitude on Lucas’s land is necessary in order to prevent his use of it from “harming” South Carolina’s ecological resources; or, instead, in order to achieve the “benefits” of an ecological preserve.7 [Citations omitted.] Whether one or the other of the competing characterizations will come to one’s lips in a particular case depends primarily upon one’s evaluation of the worth of competing uses of real estate. … A given restraint will be seen as mitigating “harm” to the adjacent parcels or securing a “benefit” for them, depending upon the observer’s evaluation of the relative importance of the use that the restraint favors. … Whether Lucas’s construction of single-family residences on his parcels should be described as bringing “harm” to South Carolina’s adjacent ecological resources thus depends principally upon whether the describer believes that the State’s use interest in nurturing those resources is so important that any competing adjacent use must yield.8
When it is understood that “prevention of harmful use” was merely our early formulation of the police power justification necessary to sustain (without compensation) any regulatory diminution in value; and that the distinction between regulation that “prevents harmful use” and that which “confers benefits” is difficult, if not impossible, to discern on an objective, value-free basis; it becomes self-evident that noxious-use logic cannot serve as a touchstone to distinguish regulatory “takings”—which require compensation—from regulatory deprivations that do not require compensation. A fortiori the legislature’s recitation of a noxious-use justification cannot be the basis for departing from our categorical rule that total regulatory takings must be compensated. If it were, departure would virtually always be allowed. The South Carolina Supreme Court’s approach would essentially nullify Mahon’s affirmation of limits to the noncompensable exercise of the police power. Our cases provide no support for this: None of them that employed the logic of “harmful use” prevention to sustain a regulation involved an allegation that the regulation wholly eliminated the value of the claimant’s land. See Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn., 480 U.S., at 513–514 (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting).9
Where the State seeks to sustain regulation that deprives land of all economically beneficial use, we think it may resist compensation only if the logically antecedent inquiry into the nature of the owner’s estate shows that the proscribed use interests were not part of his title to begin with.10 This accords, we think, with our “takings” jurisprudence, which has traditionally been guided by the understandings of our citizens regarding the content of, and the State’s power over, the “bundle of rights” that they acquire when they obtain title to property. It seems to us that the property owner necessarily expects the uses of his property to be restricted, from time to time, by various measures newly enacted by the State in legitimate exercise of its police powers; “[a]s long recognized, some values are enjoyed under an implied limitation and must yield to the police power.” Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S., at 413. And in the case of personal property, by reason of the State’s traditionally high degree of control over commercial dealings, he ought to be aware of the possibility that new regulation might even render his property economically worthless (at least if the property’s only economically productive use is sale or manufacture for sale), see Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51, 66–67 (1979) (prohibition on sale of eagle feathers). In the case of land, however, we think the notion pressed by the Council that title is somehow held subject to the “implied limitation” that the State may subsequently eliminate all economically valuable use is inconsistent with the historical compact recorded in the Takings Clause that has become part of our constitutional culture.11
Where “permanent physical occupation” of land is concerned, we have refused to allow the government to decree it anew (without compensation), no matter how weighty the asserted “public interests” involved, Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S., at 426—though we assuredly would permit the government to assert a permanent easement that was a pre-existing limitation upon the landowner’s title. Compare Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U.S. 141, 163 (1900) (interests of “riparian owner in the submerged lands … bordering on a public navigable water” held subject to Government’s navigational servitude), with Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S., at 178–180 (imposition of navigational servitude on marina created and rendered navigable at private expense held to constitute a taking). We believe similar treatment must be accorded confiscatory regulations, i.e., regulations that prohibit all economically beneficial use of land: Any limitation so severe cannot be newly legislated or decreed (without compensation), but must inhere in the title itself, in the restrictions that background principles of the State’s law of property and nuisance already place upon land ownership. A law or decree with such an effect must, in other words, do no more than duplicate the result that could have been achieved in the courts—by adjacent landowners (or other uniquely affected persons) under the State’s law of private nuisance, or by the State under its complementary power to abate nuisances that affect the public generally, or otherwise.12
On this analysis, the owner of a lake bed, for example, would not be entitled to compensation when he is denied the requisite permit to engage in a landfilling operation that would have the effect of flooding others’ land. Nor the corporate owner of a nuclear generating plant, when it is directed to remove all improvements from its land upon discovery that the plant sits astride an earthquake fault. Such regulatory action may well have the effect of eliminating the land’s only economically productive use, but it does not proscribe a productive use that was previously permissible under relevant property and nuisance principles. The use of these properties for what are now expressly prohibited purposes was always unlawful, and (subject to other constitutional limitations) it was open to the State at any point to make the implication of those background principles of nuisance and property law explicit. … In light of our traditional resort to “existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law” to define the range of interests that qualify for protection as “property” under the Fifth (and Fourteenth) amendments, Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577 (1972); see, e.g., Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986, 1011–1012 (1984); [further citation omitted], this recognition that the Takings Clause does not require compensation when an owner is barred from putting land to a use that is proscribed by those “existing rules or understandings” is surely unexceptional. When, however, a regulation that declares “off-limits” all economically productive or beneficial uses of land goes beyond what the relevant background principles would dictate, compensation must be paid to sustain it.
The “total taking” inquiry we require today will ordinarily entail (as the application of state nuisance law ordinarily entails) analysis of, among other things, the degree of harm to public lands and resources, or adjacent private property, posed by the claimant’s proposed activities, see, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 826, 827, the social value of the claimant’s activities and their suitability to the locality in question, see, e.g., id., §§ 828(a) and (b), 831, and the relative ease with which the alleged harm can be avoided through measures taken by the claimant and the government (or adjacent private landowners) alike, see, e.g., id., §§ 827(e), 828(c), 830. The fact that a particular use has long been engaged in by similarly situated owners ordinarily imports a lack of any common-law prohibition (though changed circumstances or new knowledge may make what was previously permissible no longer so, see Restatement (Second) of Torts, supra, § 827, comment g. So also does the fact that other landowners, similarly situated, are permitted to continue the use denied to the claimant.
It seems unlikely that common-law principles would have prevented the erection of any habitable or productive improvements on petitioner’s land; they rarely support prohibition of the “essential use” of land [citation omitted]. The question, however, is one of state law to be dealt with on remand. We emphasize that to win its case South Carolina must do more than proffer the legislature’s declaration that the uses Lucas desires are inconsistent with the public interest, or the conclusory assertion that they violate a common-law maxim such as sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. As we have said, a “State, by ipse dixit, may not transform private property into public property without compensation … .” [Citation omitted.] Instead, as it would be required to do if it sought to restrain Lucas in a common-law action for public nuisance, South Carolina must identify background principles of nuisance and property law that prohibit the uses he now intends in the circumstances in which the property is presently found. Only on this showing can the State fairly claim that, in proscribing all such beneficial uses, the Beachfront Management Act is taking nothing.13
Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment. …
The South Carolina Court of Common Pleas found that petitioner’s real property has been rendered valueless by the State’s regulation. … The finding appears to presume that the property has no significant market value or resale potential. This is a curious finding, and I share the reservations of some of my colleagues about a finding that a beach front lot loses all value because of a development restriction. … While the Supreme Court of South Carolina on remand need not consider the case subject to this constraint, we must accept the finding as entered below. See Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 816 (1985). Accepting the finding as entered, it follows that petitioner is entitled to invoke the line of cases discussing regulations that deprive real property of all economic value. See Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255, 260 (1980).
The finding of no value must be considered under the Takings Clause by reference to the owner’s reasonable, investment-backed expectations. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 175 (1979); Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 124 (1978); [futher citation omitted]. The Takings Clause, while conferring substantial protection on property owners, does not eliminate the police power of the State to enact limitations on the use of their property. Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 669 (1887). The rights conferred by the Takings Clause and the police power of the State may coexist without conflict. Property is bought and sold, investments are made, subject to the State’s power to regulate. Where a taking is alleged from regulations which deprive the property of all value, the test must be whether the deprivation is contrary to reasonable, investment-backed expectations.
There is an inherent tendency towards circularity in this synthesis, of course; for if the owner’s reasonable expectations are shaped by what courts allow as a proper exercise of governmental authority, property tends to become what courts say it is. Some circularity must be tolerated in these matters, however, as it is in other spheres. E.g., Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) (Fourth Amendment protections defined by reasonable expectations of privacy). The definition, moreover, is not circular in its entirety. The expectations protected by the Constitution are based on objective rules and customs that can be understood as reasonable by all parties involved.
The Supreme Court of South Carolina erred, in my view, by reciting the general purposes for which the state regulations were enacted without a determination that they were in accord with the owner’s reasonable expectations and therefore sufficient to support a severe restriction on specific parcels of property. [Citation omitted.] The promotion of tourism, for instance, ought not to suffice to deprive specific property of all value without a corresponding duty to compensate. Furthermore, the means as well as the ends of regulation must accord with the owner’s reasonable expectations. Here, the State did not act until after the property had been zoned for individual lot development and most other parcels had been improved, throwing the whole burden of the regulation on the remaining lots. This too must be measured in the balance. See Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 416 (1922).
Blackmun, J., dissenting. Today the Court launches a missile to kill a mouse. …
[Justice Blackmun adds the following to the Court’s recital of the facts and legislative background of the case:]
Petitioner Lucas is a contractor, manager, and part owner of the Wild Dune development on the Isle of Palms. He has lived there since 1978. In December 1986, he purchased two of the last four pieces of vacant property in the development.14 The area is notoriously unstable. In roughly half of the last 40 years, all or part of petitioner’s property was part of the beach or flooded twice daily by the ebb and flow of the tide. … Between 1957 and 1963, petitioner’s property was under water. … Between 1963 and 1973 the shoreline was 100 to 150 feet onto petitioner’s property. … In 1973 the first line of stable vegetation was about halfway through the property. … Between 1981 and 1983, the Isle of Palms issued 12 emergency orders for sandbagging to protect property in the Wild Dune development. … Determining that local habitable structures were in imminent danger of collapse, the Council issued permits for two rock revetments to protect condominium developments near petitioner’s property from erosion; one of the revetments extends more than halfway onto one of his lots. …
The South Carolina Supreme Court found that the Beach Management Act did not take petitioner’s property without compensation. The decision rested on two premises that until today were unassailable—that the State has the power to prevent any use of property it finds to be harmful to its citizens, and that a state statute is entitled to a presumption of constitutionality.
The Beachfront Management Act includes a finding by the South Carolina General Assembly that the beach/dune system serves the purpose of “protect[ing] life and property by serving as a storm barrier which dissipates wave energy and contributes to shoreline stability in an economical and effective manner.” § 48–39–250(1)(a). The General Assembly also found that “development unwisely has been sited too close to the [beach/dune] system. This type of development has jeopardized the stability of the beach/dune system, accelerated erosion, and endangered adjacent property.” § 48–39–250(4); see also § 48–39–250(6) (discussing the need to “afford the beach/dune system space to accrete and erode”).
If the state legislature is correct that the prohibition on building in front of the setback line prevents serious harm, then, under this Court’s prior cases, the Act is constitutional. “Long ago it was recognized that all property in this country is held under the implied obligation that the owner’s use of it shall not be injurious to the community, and the Takings Clause did not transform that principle to one that requires compensation whenever the State asserts its power to enforce it.” Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 491–492 (1987) … . The Court consistently has upheld regulations imposed to arrest a significant threat to the common welfare, whatever their economic effect on the owner. See e.g., Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U.S. 590, 592–593 (1962); Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926); Gorieb v. Fox, 274 U.S. 603, 608 (1927); Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887). …
My disagreement with the Court begins with its decision to review this case. This Court has held consistently that a land-use challenge is not ripe for review until there is a final decision about what uses of the property will be permitted. The ripeness requirement is not simply a gesture of good-will to land-use planners. In the absence of “a final and authoritative determination of the type and intensity of development legally permitted on the subject property,” MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. Yolo County, 477 U.S. 340, 348 (1986), and the utilization of state procedures for just compensation, there is no final judgment, and in the absence of a final judgment there is no jurisdiction. See San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. San Diego, 450 U.S. 621, 633 (1981); Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255, 260 (1980).
This rule is “compelled by the very nature of the inquiry required by the Just Compensation Clause,” because the factors applied in deciding a takings claim “simply cannot be evaluated until the administrative agency has arrived at a final, definitive position regarding how it will apply the regulations at issue to the particular land in question.” Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172, 190, 191 (1985). See also MacDonald, Sommer & Frates, 477 U.S., at 348 (“A court cannot determine whether a regulation has gone ‘too far’ unless it knows how far the regulation goes”) (citation omitted).
The Court admits that the 1990 amendments to the Beachfront Management Act allowing special permits preclude Lucas from asserting that his property has been permanently taken. … The Court agrees that such a claim would not be ripe because there has been no final decision by respondent on what uses will be permitted. The Court, however, will not be denied: it determines that petitioner’s “temporary takings” claim for the period from July 1, 1988, to June 25, 1990, is ripe. But this claim also is not justiciable. …
Under the Beachfront Management Act, petitioner was entitled to challenge the setback line or the baseline or erosion rate applied to his property in formal administrative, followed by judicial, proceedings. S.C. Code § 48–39–280(E) (Supp 1991). Because Lucas failed to pursue this administrative remedy, the Council never finally decided whether Lucas’ particular piece of property was correctly categorized as a critical area in which building would not be permitted. This is all the more crucial because Lucas argued strenuously in the trial court that his land was perfectly safe to build on, and that his company had studies to prove it. … If he was correct, the Council’s final decision would have been to alter the setback line, eliminating the construction ban on Lucas’ property.
That petitioner’s property fell within the critical area as initially interpreted by the Council does not excuse petitioner’s failure to challenge the Act’s application to his property in the administrative process. The claim is not ripe until petitioner seeks a variance from that status. “[W]e have made it quite clear that the mere assertion of regulatory jurisdiction by a governmental body does not constitute a regulatory taking.” United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., 474 U.S. 121, 126 (1985). See also Williamson County, 473 U.S., at 188 (claim not ripe because respondent did not seek variances that would have allowed it to develop the property, notwithstanding the Commission’s finding that the plan did not comply with the zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations).15
Even if I agreed with the Court that there were no jurisdictional barriers to deciding this case, I still would not try to decide it. The Court creates its new taking jurisprudence based on the trial court’s finding that the property had lost all economic value. This finding is almost certainly erroneous. Petitioner still can enjoy other attributes of ownership, such as the right to exclude others, “one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property.” Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 176 (1979). Petitioner can picnic, swim, camp in a tent, or live on the property in a movable trailer. State courts frequently have recognized that land has economic value where the only residual economic uses are recreation or camping. [Citations omitted.] Petitioner also retains the right to alienate the land, which would have value for neighbors and for those prepared to enjoy proximity to the ocean without a house.
Yet the trial court, apparently believing that “less value” and “valueless” could be used interchangeably, found the property “valueless.” The court accepted no evidence from the State on the property’s value without a home, and petitioner’s appraiser testified that he never had considered what the value would be absent a residence. … The appraiser’s value was based on the fact that the “highest and best use of these lots … [is] luxury single family detached dwellings.” … The trial court appeared to believe that the property could be considered “valueless” if it was not available for its most profitable use. Absent that erroneous assumption, see Goldblatt, 369 U.S., at 592, I find no evidence in the record supporting the trial court’s conclusion that the damage to the lots by virtue of the restrictions was “total.” … I agree with the Court … that it has the power to decide a case that turns on an erroneous finding, but I question the wisdom of deciding an issue based on a factual premise that does not exist in this case, and in the judgment of the Court will exist in the future only in “extraordinary circumstance[s].” …
Clearly, the Court was eager to decide this case.16 But eagerness, in the absence of proper jurisdiction, must—and in this case should have been—met with restraint. …
The South Carolina Supreme Court’s decision to defer to legislative judgments in the absence of a challenge from petitioner comports with one of this Court’s oldest maxims: “the existence of facts supporting the legislative judgment is to be presumed.” United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 (1938). …
The Court does not reject the South Carolina Supreme Court’s decision simply on the basis of its disbelief and distrust of the legislature’s findings. It also takes the opportunity to create a new scheme for regulations that eliminate all economic value. From now on, there is a categorical rule finding these regulations to be a taking unless the use they prohibit is a background common-law nuisance or property principle. …
This Court repeatedly has recognized the ability of government, in certain circumstances, to regulate property without compensation no matter how adverse the financial effect on the owner may be. More than a century ago, the Court explicitly upheld the right of States to prohibit uses of property injurious to public health, safety, or welfare without paying compensation: “A prohibition simply upon the use of property for purposes that are declared, by valid legislation, to be injurious to the health, morals, or safety of the community, cannot, in any just sense, be deemed a taking or an appropriation of property.” Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 668–669 (1887). On this basis, the Court upheld an ordinance effectively prohibiting operation of a previously lawful brewery, although the “establishments will become of no value as property.” [Citation omitted.]
Mugler was only the beginning in a long line of cases. … In Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S. 394 (1915), the Court upheld an ordinance prohibiting a brickyard, although the owner had made excavations on the land that prevented it from being utilized for any purpose but a brickyard. Id., at 405. In Miller v. Schoene, 276 U.S. 272 (1928), the Court held that the Fifth Amendment did not require Virginia to pay compensation to the owner of cedar trees ordered destroyed to prevent a disease from spreading to nearby apple orchards. The “preferment of [the public interest] over the property interest of the individual, to the extent even of its destruction, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of every exercise of the police power which affects property.” Id., at 280. …
More recently, in Goldblatt, the Court upheld a town regulation that barred continued operation of an existing sand and gravel operation in order to protect public safety. 369 U.S., at 596. “Although a comparison of values before and after is relevant,” the Court stated, “it is by no means conclusive.”17 Id., at 594. In 1978, the Court declared that “in instances in which a state tribunal reasonably concluded that ‘the health, safety, morals, or general welfare’ would be promoted by prohibiting particular contemplated uses of land, this Court has upheld land-use regulation that destroyed … recognized real property interests.” Penn Central Transp. Co., 438 U.S., at 125. In First Lutheran Church v. Los Angeles County, 482 U.S. 304 (1987), the owner alleged that a floodplain ordinance had deprived it of “all use” of the property. Id., at 312. The Court remanded the case for consideration whether, even if the ordinance denied the owner all use, it could be justified as a safety measure.18 Id., at 313. And in Keystone Bituminous Coal, the Court summarized over 100 years of precedent: “the Court has repeatedly upheld regulations that destroy or adversely affect real property interests.”19 480 U.S., at 489, n. 18. …
These cases rest on the principle that the State has full power to prohibit an owner’s use of property if it is harmful to the public. “[S]ince no individual has a right to use his property so as to create a nuisance or otherwise harm others, the State has not ‘taken’ anything when it asserts its power to enjoin the nuisance-like activity.” Keystone Bituminous Coal, 480 U.S., at 491, n. 20. It would make no sense under this theory to suggest that an owner has a constitutionally protected right to harm others, if only he makes the proper showing of economic loss. See Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 418 (1922) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (“Restriction upon [harmful] use does not become inappropriate as a means, merely because it deprives the owner of the only use to which the property can then be profitably put”). …
Ultimately even the Court cannot embrace the full implications of its per se rule: it eventually agrees that there cannot be a categorical rule for a taking based on economic value that wholly disregards the public need asserted. Instead, the Court decides that it will permit a State to regulate all economic value only if the State prohibits uses that would not be permitted under “background principles of nuisance and property law.” …
Until today, the Court explicitly had rejected the contention that the government’s power to act without paying compensation turns on whether the prohibited activity is a common-law nuisance. The brewery closed in Mugler itself was not a common-law nuisance, and the Court specifically stated that it was the role of the legislature to determine what measures would be appropriate for the protection of public health and safety. See 123 U.S., at 661. In upholding the state action in Miller, the Court found it unnecessary to “weigh with nicety the question whether the infected cedars constitute a nuisance according to common law; or whether they may be so declared by statute.” 276 U.S., at 280. See also Goldblatt, 369 U.S., at 593; Hadacheck, 239 U.S., at 411. Instead the Court has relied in the past, as the South Carolina Court has done here, on legislative judgments of what constitutes a harm.
The Court rejects the notion that the State always can prohibit uses it deems a harm to the public without granting compensation because “the distinction between ‘harm-preventing’ and ‘benefit-conferring’ regulation is often in the eye of the beholder.” … Since the characterization will depend “primarily upon one’s evaluation of the worth of competing uses of real estate” … , the Court decides a legislative judgment of this kind no longer can provide the desired “objective, value-free basis” for upholding a regulation. … The Court, however, fails to explain how its proposed common law alternative escapes the same trap.
The threshold inquiry for imposition of the Court’s new rule, “deprivation of all economically valuable use,” itself cannot be determined objectively. As the Court admits, whether the owner has been deprived of all economic value of his property will depend on how “property” is defined. The “composition of the denominator in our ‘deprivation’ fraction” … is the dispositive inquiry. Yet there is no “objective” way to define what that denominator should be. “We have long understood that any land-use regulation can be characterized as the ‘total’ deprivation of an aptly defined entitlement. … Alternatively, the same regulation can always be characterized as a mere ‘partial’ withdrawal from full, unencumbered ownership of the landholding affected by the regulation. … “ Michelman, Takings, 1987, 88 Colum. L. Rev. 1600, 1614 (1988). …
Even more perplexing, however, is the Court’s reliance on common-law principles of nuisance in its quest for a value-free taking jurisprudence. In determining what is a nuisance at common law, state courts make exactly the decision that the Court finds so troubling when made by the South Carolina General Assembly today: they determine whether the use is harmful. Common-law public and private nuisance law is simply a determination whether a particular use causes harm. … There is nothing magical in the reasoning of judges long dead. They determined a harm in the same way as state judges and legislatures do today. If judges in the 18th and 19th centuries can distinguish a harm from a benefit, why not judges in the 20th century, and if judges can, why not legislators? There simply is no reason to believe that new interpretations of the hoary common law nuisance doctrine will be particularly “objective” or “value-free.” Once one abandons the level of generality of sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas … , one searches in vain, I think, for anything resembling a principle in the common law of nuisance. …
Finally, the Court justifies its new rule that the legislature may not deprive a property owner of the only economically valuable use of his land, even if the legislature finds it to be a harmful use, because such action is not part of the “long recognized” “understandings of our citizens.” … These “understandings” permit such regulation only if the use is a nuisance under the common law. Any other course is “inconsistent with the historical compact recorded in the Takings Clause.” … It is not clear from the Court’s opinion where our “historical compact” or “citizens’ understanding” comes from, but it does not appear to be history.
“The colonists … inherited … a concept of property which permitted extensive regulation of the use of that property for the public benefit—regulation that could even go so far as to deny all productive use of the property to the owner if, as Coke himself stated, the regulation ‘extends to the public benefit … for this is for the public, and every one hath benefit by it.’”
F. Bosselman, D. Callies & J. Banta, The Taking Issue 80–81 (1973) … .
Even into the 19th century, state governments often felt free to take property for roads and other public projects without paying compensation to the owners. … [Further historical discussion omitted.] …
In short, I find no clear and accepted “historical compact” or “understanding of our citizens” justifying the Court’s new taking doctrine. Instead, the Court seems to treat history as a grab-bag of principles, to be adopted where they support the Court’s theory, and ignored where they do not. If the Court decided that the early common law provides the background principles for interpreting the Taking Clause, then regulation, as opposed to physical confiscation, would not be compensable. If the Court decided that the law of a later period provides the background principles, then regulation might be compensable, but the Court would have to confront the fact that legislatures regularly determined which uses were prohibited, independent of the common law, and independent of whether the uses were lawful when the owner purchased. What makes the Court’s analysis unworkable is its attempt to package the law of two incompatible eras and peddle it as historical fact.20 …
The Court makes sweeping and, in my view, misguided and unsupported changes in our taking doctrine. While it limits these changes to the most narrow subset of government regulation—those that eliminate all economic value from land—these changes go far beyond what is necessary to secure petitioner Lucas’ private benefit. One hopes they do not go beyond the narrow confines the Court assigns them to today.
Stevens, J., dissenting. …
In addition to lacking support in past decisions, the Court’s new [“categorical”] rule is wholly arbitrary. A landowner whose property is diminished in value 95% recovers nothing, while an owner whose property is diminished 100% recovers the land’s full value. …
Moreover, because of the elastic nature of property rights, the Court’s new rule will also prove unsound in practice. In response to the rule, courts may define “property” broadly and only rarely find regulations to effect total takings. …
On the other hand, developers and investors may market specialized estates to take advantage of the Court’s new rule. The smaller the estate, the more likely that a regulatory change will effect a total taking. Thus, an investor may, for example, purchase the right to build a multi-family home on a specific lot, with the result that a zoning regulation that allows only single-family homes would render the investor’s property interest “valueless.”21 In short, the categorical rule will likely have one of two effects: Either courts will alter the definition of the “denominator” in the takings “fraction,” rendering the Court’s categorical rule meaningless, or investors will manipulate the relevant property interests, giving the Court’s rule sweeping effect. To my mind, neither of these results is desirable or appropriate, and both are distortions of our takings jurisprudence. …
Like many bright-line rules, the categorical rule established in this case is only “categorical” for a page or two in the U.S. Reports. No sooner does the Court state that “total regulatory takings must be compensated” … than it quickly establishes an exception to that rule.
The exception provides that a regulation that renders property valueless is not a taking if it prohibits uses of property that were not “previously permissible under relevant property and nuisance principles.” … The Court thus rejects the basic holding in Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887). There we held that a state-wide statute that prohibited the owner of a brewery from making alcoholic beverages did not effect a taking, even though the use of the property had been perfectly lawful and caused no public harm before the statute was enacted. …
Under our reasoning in Mugler, a state’s decision to prohibit or to regulate certain uses of property is not a compensable taking just because the particular uses were previously lawful. Under the Court’s opinion today, however, if a state should decide to prohibit the manufacture of asbestos, cigarettes, or concealable firearms, for example, it must be prepared to pay for the adverse economic consequences of its decision. One must wonder if Government will be able to “go on” effectively if it must risk compensation “for every such change in the general law.” Mahon, 260 U.S., at 413.
The Court’s holding today effectively freezes the State’s common law, denying the legislature much of its traditional power to revise the law governing the rights and uses of property. …
Arresting the development of the common law is not only a departure from our prior decisions; it is also profoundly unwise. The human condition is one of constant learning and evolution—both moral and practical. Legislatures implement that new learning; in doing so they must often revise the definition of property and the rights of property owners. Thus, when the Nation came to understand that slavery was morally wrong and mandated the emancipation of all slaves, it, in effect, redefined “property.” On a lesser scale, our ongoing self-education produces similar changes in the rights of property owners: New appreciation of the significance of endangered species, see, e.g., Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51 (1979); the importance of wetlands, see, e.g., 16 U.S.C. § 3801 et seq.; and the vulnerability of coastal lands, see, e.g., 16 U.S.C. § 1451 et seq., shapes our evolving understandings of property rights.
Of course, some legislative redefinitions of property will effect a taking and must be compensated—but it certainly cannot be the case that every movement away from common law does so. There is no reason, and less sense, in such an absolute rule. We live in a world in which changes in the economy and the environment occur with increasing frequency and importance. If it was wise a century ago to allow Government “‘the largest legislative discretion’” to deal with “‘the special exigencies of the moment,’” Mugler, 123 U.S., at 669, it is imperative to do so today. The rule that should govern a decision in a case of this kind should focus on the future, not the past.22…
Souter, J. (statement). I would dismiss the writ of certiorari in this case as having been granted improvidently. After briefing and argument it is abundantly clear that an unreviewable assumption on which this case comes to us is both questionable as a conclusion of Fifth Amendment law and sufficient to frustrate the Court’s ability to render certain the legal premises on which its holding rests.
The petition for review was granted on the assumption that the state by regulation had deprived the owner of his entire economic interest in the subject property. Such was the state trial court’s conclusion, which the state supreme court did not review. It is apparent now that in light of our prior cases, see, e.g., Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 493–502 (1987); Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51, 65–66 (1979); Penn Central Transportation Corp. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 130–131 (1978), the trial court’s conclusion is highly questionable. While the respondent now wishes to contest the point … , the Court is certainly right to refuse to take up the issue, which is not fairly included within the question presented, and has received only the most superficial and one-sided treatment before us.
Because the questionable conclusion of total deprivation cannot be reviewed, the Court is precluded from attempting to clarify the concept of total (and, in the Court’s view, categorically compensable) taking on which it rests, a concept which the Court describes … as so uncertain under existing law as to have fostered inconsistent pronouncements by the Court itself. Because that concept is left uncertain, so is the significance of the exceptions to the compensation requirement that the Court proceeds to recognize. This alone is enough to show that there is little utility in attempting to deal with this case on the merits.
The imprudence of proceeding to the merits in spite of these unpromising circumstances is underscored by the fact that, in doing so, the Court cannot help but assume something about the scope of the uncertain concept of total deprivation, even when it is barred from explicating total deprivation directly. Thus, when the Court concludes that the application of nuisance law provides an exception to the general rule that complete denial of economically beneficial use of property amounts to a compensable taking, the Court will be understood to suggest (if it does not assume) that there are in fact circumstances in which state-law nuisance abatement may amount to a denial of all beneficial land use as that concept is to be employed in our takings jurisprudence under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The nature of nuisance law, however, indicates that application of a regulation defensible on grounds of nuisance prevention or abatement will quite probably not amount to a complete deprivation in fact. The nuisance enquiry focuses on conduct, not on the character of the property on which that conduct is performed [citations omitted], and the remedies for such conduct usually leave the property owner with other reasonable uses of his property [citations omitted]. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine property that can be used only to create a nuisance, such that its sole economic value must presuppose the right to occupy it for such seriously noxious activity.
The upshot is that the issue of what constitutes a total deprivation is being addressed by indirection, and with uncertain results, in the Court’s treatment of defenses to compensation claims. While the issue of what constitutes total deprivation deserves the Court’s attention, as does the relationship between nuisance abatement and such total deprivation, the Court should confront these matters directly. Because it can neither do so in this case, nor skip over those preliminary issues and deal independently with defenses to the Court’s categorical compensation rule, the Court should dismiss the instant writ and await an opportunity to face the total deprivation question squarely. Under these circumstances, I believe it proper for me to vote to dismiss the writ, despite the Court’s contrary preference. [Citations omitted.]