Opinion ID: 118239
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The final Clause of the Fifth Amendment states:

Text: [N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. U. S. Const., Amdt. 5. The provision is known as the Takings Clause. The concept of a taking under the Clause has become a term of art, and my discussion begins here. Our cases do not support the plurality's conclusion that the Coal Act takes property. The Coal Act imposes a staggering financial burden on the petitioner, Eastern Enterprises, but it regulates the former mine owner without regard to property. It does not operate upon or alter an identified property interest, and it is not applicable to or measured by a property interest. The Coal Act does not appropriate, transfer, or encumber an estate in land ( e. g., a lien on a particular piece of property), a valuable interest in an intangible ( e. g., intellectual property), or even a bank account or accrued interest. The law simply imposes an obligation to perform an act, the payment of benefits. The statute is indifferent as to how the regulated entity elects to comply or the property it uses to do so. To the extent it affects property interests, it does so in a manner similar to many laws; but until today, none were thought to constitute takings. To call this sort of governmental action a taking as a matter of constitutional interpretation is both imprecise and, with all due respect, unwise. As the role of Government expanded, our experience taught that a strict line between a taking and a regulation is difficult to discern or to maintain. This led the Court in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393 (1922), to try to span the two concepts when specific property was subjected to what the owner alleged to be excessive regulation. The general rule at least is, that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking. Id., at 415. The quoted sentence is, of course, the genesis of the so-called regulatory takings doctrine. See Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, 1014 (1992) (Prior to Justice Holmes's exposition in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon , it was generally thought that the Takings Clause reached only a `direct appropriation' of property or the functional equivalent of a `practical ouster of [the owner's] possession'  (citations omitted)). Without denigrating the importance the regulatory takings concept has assumed in our law, it is fair to say it has proved difficult to explain in theory and to implement in practice. Cases attempting to decide when a regulation becomes a taking are among the most litigated and perplexing in current law. See Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 123 (1978) (The question of what constitutes a `taking' for purposes of the Fifth Amendment has proved to be a problem of considerable difficulty); Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164, 175 (1979) (the regulatory taking question requires an essentially ad hoc, factual inquir[y]). Until today, however, one constant limitation has been that in all of the cases where the regulatory taking analysis has been employed, a specific property right or interest has been at stake. After the decision in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, supra , we confronted cases where specific and identified properties or property rights were alleged to come within the regulatory takings prohibition: air rights for high-rise buildings, Penn Central, supra ; zoning on parcels of real property, e. g., MacDonald, Sommer & Frates v. Yolo County, 477 U. S. 340 (1986); Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U. S. 255 (1980); trade secrets, Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U. S. 986 (1984); right of access to property, e. g., PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980); Kaiser Aetna, supra ; right to affix on structures, Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419 (1982); right to transfer property by devise or intestacy, e. g., Hodel v. Irving, 481 U. S. 704 (1987); creation of an easement, Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U. S. 374 (1994); Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U. S. 825 (1987); right to build or improve, Lucas, supra ; liens on real property, Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40 (1960); right to mine coal, Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470 (1987); right to sell personal property, Andrus v. Allard, 444 U. S. 51 (1979); and the right to extract mineral deposits, Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U. S. 590 (1962); United States 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 existence of at least this outer boundary for application of the regulatory takings rule provides some necessary predictability 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 category 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 principle. 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 or is transferred to other private parties. See, e. g., United States v. Security Industrial Bank, 459 U. S. 70, 78 (1982) ([O]ur cases show that takings analysis is not necessarily limited to outright acquisitions by the government for itself); Loretto, supra (transfer of physical space from landlords to cable companies). As the range of governmental conduct subjected to takings analysis has expanded, however, we have been careful not to lose sight of the importance of identifying the property allegedly taken, lest all governmental action be subjected to examination under the constitutional prohibition against taking without just compensation, with the attendant potential for money damages. We have asked how the challenged governmental action is implemented with particular emphasis on the extent to which a specific property right is affected. See id., at 432 (physical invasion is a government action of such a unique character that it is a taking without regard to other factors); Hodel, supra, at 715-716 (declaring a law, which otherwise would not be a taking because of its insignificant economic impact, a taking because the character of the governmental action destroyed the right to pass property to one's heirs, a right which has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since feudal times); Penn Central, supra, at 124 (A `taking' may more readily be found when the interference with property can be characterized as a physical invasion by government, than when interference arises from some public program adjusting the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good (citation omitted)). The Coal Act neither targets a specific property interest nor depends upon any particular property for the operation of its statutory mechanisms. The liability imposed on Eastern no doubt will reduce its net worth and its total value, but this can be said of any law which has an adverse economic effect. The circumstance that the statute does not take money for the Government but instead makes it payable to third persons is not a factor I rely upon to show the lack of a taking. While there are instances where the Government's selfenrichment may make it all the more evident a taking has occurred, e. g., Webb's Fabulous Pharmacies, Inc. v. Beckwith, 449 U. S. 155 (1980); United States v. Causby, 328 U. S. 256 (1946), the Government ought not to have the capacity to give itself immunity from a takings claim by the device of requiring the transfer of property from one private owner directly to another. Cf. Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U. S. 229 (1984). At the same time, the Government's imposition of an obligation between private parties, or destruction of an existing obligation, must relate to a specific property interest to implicate the Takings Clause. For example, in United States v. Security Industrial Bank , we confronted a statute which was alleged to destroy an existing creditor's lien in certain chattels to the benefit of the debtor. We acknowledged that, given the nature of the property interest at stake, which resembled a contractual obligation, the takings challenge fits but awkwardly into the analytic framework of our regulatory takings analysis. 459 U. S., at 75. We decided the analysis could apply because the property interest was a traditional property interes[t], though in the end the statute was found inapplicable to the lien at issue. In so holding, we relied on Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555 (1935), which invalidated the Frazier-Lemke Farm-Mortgage Act, because it interfered with mortgages on farms and thus worked a `taking of substantive rights in specific property acquired by the Bank prior to'  the Act. 459 U. S., at 77 (quoting Radford, supra, at 590, 601). Unlike the statutes at issue in Security Industrial Bank and Radford, the Coal Act does not affect an obligation relating to a specific property interest. If the plurality is adopting its novel and expansive concept of a taking in order to avoid making a normative judgment about the Coal Act, it fails in the attempt; for it must make the normative judgment in all events. See, e. g., ante, at 537 ([T]he governmental action implicates fundamental principles of fairness). The imprecision of our regulatory takings doctrine does open the door to normative considerations about the wisdom of government decisions. See, e. g., Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U. S., at 260 (zoning constitutes a taking if it does not substantially advance legitimate state interests). This sort of analysis is in uneasy tension with our basic understanding of the Takings Clause, which has not been understood to be a substantive or absolute limit on the government's power to act. The Clause operates as a conditional limitation, permitting the government to do what it wants so long as it pays the charge. The Clause presupposes what the government intends to do is otherwise constitutional: As its language indicates, and as the Court has frequently noted, [the Takings Clause] does not prohibit the taking of private property, but instead places a condition on the exercise of that power. This basic understanding of the Amendment makes clear that it is designed not to limit the governmental interference with property rights per se, but rather to secure compensation in the event of otherwise proper interference amounting to a taking. First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304, 314-315 (1987) (emphasis and citations omitted). Given that the constitutionality of the Coal Act appears to turn on the legitimacy of Congress' judgment rather than on the availability of compensation, see ante, at 521 ([I]n a case such as this one, it cannot be said that monetary relief against the Government is an available remedy), the more appropriate constitutional analysis arises under general due process principles rather than under the Takings Clause. It should be acknowledged that there are passages in some of our cases on the imposition of retroactive liability for an employer's withdrawal from a pension plan which might give some support to the plurality's discussion of the Takings Clause. See Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corpo- ration, 475 U. S. 211, 223 (1986); Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal., Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern Cal., 508 U. S. 602, 641 (1993). In Connolly, the Court said the definition of a taking was not controlled by any set formula, but was dependent on ad hoc, factual inquiries into the circumstances of each particular case. 475 U. S., at 224. The Court then applied the three-factor regulatory takings analysis set forth in Penn Central, which examines the economic impact of the regulation, the extent to which it interferes with investment-backed expectations, and the character of the governmental action. 475 U. S., at 225. This analysis did not result in a finding of a taking. The Court, moreover, prefaced the entire takings discussion with the admonition it would be surprising to discover that there had been a taking in the instance where a due process attack had been rejected. See id., at 223; see also Concrete Pipe, supra, at 641 (Given that [the] due process arguments are unavailing, `it would be surprising indeed to discover' the challenged statute nonetheless violating the Takings Clause) (quoting Connolly, supra, at 223). At best, Connolly is equivocal on the question whether we should apply the regulatory takings analysis to instances like the one now before us. My reading of Connolly, and Concrete Pipe, is that we should proceed first to general due process principles, reserving takings analysis for cases where the governmental action is otherwise permissible. See Connolly, supra, at 224 ([H]ere, the United States has taken nothing for its own use, and only has nullified a contractual provision limiting liability by imposing an additional obligation that is otherwise within the power of Congress to impose); see also Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 94, n. 39 (1978) (upholding on due process grounds the Price-Anderson Act, 42 U. S. C. § 2210 (1970 ed., Supp. V), which placed a cap on civil liability for nuclear accidents, but declining to address petitioner's request that the Act be declared a taking because compensation would be available under the Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1491(a)(1) (1976 ed.)). These authorities confirm my view that the case is controlled not by the Takings Clause but by well-settled due process principles respecting retroactive laws. Given my view that the takings analysis is inapplicable in this case, it is unnecessary to comment upon the plurality's effort to resolve a jurisdictional question despite little briefing by the parties on a point which has divided the Courts of Appeals.