Court Opinion

ID: 9431134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:23.720727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:26.918796
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom
Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
Appellants in this case sought to construct a new dwelling on their beach lot that would both diminish visual access to the beach and move private development closer to the public tidelands. The Commission reasonably concluded that such “buildout,” both individually and cumulatively, threatens public access to the shore. It sought to offset this encroachment by obtaining assurance that the public may walk along the shoreline in order to gain access to the ocean. The Court finds this an illegitimate exercise of the police power, because it maintains that there is no reasonable relationship between the effect of the development and the condition imposed.
The first problem with this conclusion is that the Court imposes a standard of precision for the exercise of a State’s police power that has been discredited for the better part of this century. Furthermore, even under the Court’s cramped standard, the permit condition imposed in this case directly responds to the specific type of burden on access created by appellants’ development. Finally, a review of those factors deemed most significant in takings analysis makes clear that the Commission’s action implicates none of the concerns underlying the Takings Clause. The Court has thus struck down the Commission’s reasonable effort to respond to intensified development along the California coast, on behalf of landowners who can make no claim that their reasonable expectations have been disrupted. The Court has, in short, given appellants a windfall at the expense of the public.
I
The Court’s conclusion that the permit condition imposed on appellants is unreasonable cannot withstand analysis. First, the Court demands a degree of exactitude that is in*843consistent with our standard for reviewing the rationality of a State’s exercise of its police power for the welfare of its citizens. Second, even if the nature of the public-access condition imposed must be identical to the precise burden on access created by appellants, this requirement is plainly satisfied.
A
There can be no dispute that the police power of the States encompasses the authority to impose conditions on private development. See, e. g., Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U. S. 255 (1980); Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104 (1978); Gorieb v. Fox, 274 U. S. 603 (1927). It is also by now commonplace that this Court’s review of the rationality of a State’s exercise of its police power demands only that the State “could rationally have decided” that the measure adopted might achieve the State’s objective. Minnesota v. Clover Leaf Creamery Co., 449 U. S. 456, 466 (1981) (emphasis in original).1 In this case, California has *844employed its police power in order to condition development upon preservation of public access to the ocean and tidelands. The Coastal Commission, if it had so chosen, could have de*845nied the Nollans’ request for a development permit, since the property would have remained economically viable without the requested new development.2 Instead, the State sought to accommodate the Nollans’ desire for new development, on the condition that the development not diminish the overall amount of public access to the coastline. Appellants’ proposed development would reduce public access by restricting visual access to the beach, by contributing to an increased need for community facilities, and by moving private development closer to public beach property. The Commission sought to offset this diminution in access, and thereby preserve the overall balance of access, by requesting a deed restriction that would ensure “lateral” access: the right of the public to pass and repass along the dry sand parallel to the shoreline in order to reach the tidelands and the ocean. In the expert opinion of the Coastal Commission, development conditioned on such a restriction would fairly attend to both public and private interests.
The Court finds fault with this measure because it regards the condition as insufficiently tailored to address the precise *846type of reduction in access produced by the new development. The Nollans’ development blocks visual access, the Court tells us, while the Commission seeks to preserve lateral access along the coastline. Thus, it concludes, the State acted irrationally. Such a narrow conception of rationality, however, has long since been discredited as a judicial arrogation of legislative authority. “To make scientific precision a criterion of constitutional power would be to subject the State to an intolerable supervision hostile to the basic principles of our Government.” Sproles v. Binford, 286 U. S. 374, 388 (1932). Cf. Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470, 491, n. 21 (1987) (“The Takings Clause has never been read to require the States or the courts to calculate whether a specific individual has suffered burdens ... in excess of the benefits received”). As this Court long ago declared with regard to various forms of restriction on the use of property:
“Each interferes in the same way, if not to the same extent, with the owner’s general right of dominion over his property. All rest for their justification upon the same reasons which have arisen in recent times as a result of the great increase and concentration of population in urban communities and the vast changes in the extent and complexity of the problems of modern city life. State legislatures and city councils, who deal with the situation from a practical standpoint, are better qualified than the courts to determine the necessity, character, and degree of regulation which these new and perplexing conditions require; and their conclusions should not be disturbed by the courts unless clearly arbitrary and unreasonable.” Gorieb, 274 U. S., at 608 (citations omitted).
The Commission is charged by both the State Constitution and legislature to preserve overall public access to the California coastline. Furthermore, by virtue of its participation in the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) program, the *847State must “exercise effectively [its] responsibilities in the coastal zone through the development and implementation of management programs to achieve wise use of the land and water resources of the coastal zone,” 16 U. S. C. § 1452(2), so as to provide for, inter alia, “public access to the coas[t] for recreation purposes.” § 1452(2)(D). The Commission has sought to discharge its responsibilities in a flexible manner. It has sought to balance private and public interests and to accept tradeoffs: to permit development that reduces access in some ways as long as other means of access are enhanced. In this case, it has determined that the Nollans’ burden on access would be offset by a deed restriction that formalizes the public’s right to pass along the shore. In its informed judgment, such a tradeoff would preserve the net amount of public access to the coastline. The Court’s insistence on a precise fit between the forms of burden and condition on each individual parcel along the California coast would penalize the Commission for its flexibility, hampering the ability to fulfill its public trust mandate.
The Court’s demand for this precise fit is based on the assumption that private landowners in this case possess a reasonable expectation regarding the use of their land that the public has attempted to disrupt. In fact, the situation is precisely the reverse: it is private landowners who are the interlopers. The public’s expectation of access considerably antedates any private development on the coast. Article X, § 4, of the California Constitution, adopted in 1879, declares:
“No individual, partnership, or corporation, claiming or possessing the frontage or tidal lands of a harbor, bay, inlet, estuary, or other navigable water in this State, shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water whenever it is required for any public purpose, nor to destroy or obstruct the free navigation of such water; and the Legislature shall enact such laws as will give the most liberal construction to this provision, so *848that access to the navigable waters of this State shall always be attainable for the people thereof.”
It is therefore private landowners who threaten the disruption of settled public expectations. Where a private landowner has had a reasonable expectation that his or her property will be used for exclusively private purposes, the disruption of this expectation dictates that the government pay if it wishes the property to be used for a public purpose. In this case, however, the State has sought to protect public expectations of access from disruption by private land use. The State’s exercise of its police power for this purpose deserves no less deference than any other measure designed to further the welfare of state citizens.
Congress expressly stated in passing the CZMA that “[i]n light of competing demands and the urgent need to protect and to give high priority to natural systems in the coastal zone, present state and local institutional arrangements for planning and regulating land and water uses in such areas are inadequate.” 16 U. S. C. § 1451(h). It is thus puzzling that the Court characterizes as a “non-land-use justification,” ante, at 841, the exercise of the police power to “‘provide continuous public access along Faria Beach as the lots undergo development or redevelopment.’” Ibid, (quoting App. 68). The Commission’s determination that certain types of development jeopardize public access to the ocean, and that such development should be conditioned on preservation of access, is the essence of responsible land-use planning. The Court’s use of an unreasonably demanding standard for determining the rationality of state regulation in this area thus could hamper innovative efforts to preserve an increasingly fragile national resource.3
*849B
Even if we accept the Court’s unusual demand for a precise match between the condition imposed and the specific type of burden on access created by the appellants, the State’s action easily satisfies this requirement. First, the lateral access condition serves to dissipate the impression that the beach that lies behind the wall of homes along the shore is for private use only.. It requires no exceptional imaginative powers to find plausible the Commission’s point that the average person passing along the road in front of a phalanx of imposing permanent residences, including the appellants’ new home, is likely to conclude that this particular portion of the shore is not open to the public. If, however, that person can see that numerous people are passing and repassing along the dry sand, this conveys the message that the beach is in fact open for use by the public. Furthermore, those persons who go down to the public beach a quarter-mile away will be able to look down the coastline and see that persons have continuous access to the tidelands, and will observe signs that proclaim the public’s right of access over the dry sand. The burden produced by the diminution in visual access — the impression that the beach is not open to the public — is thus directly alleviated by the provision for public access over the dry sand. The Court therefore has an *850unrealistically limited conception of what measures could reasonably be chosen to mitigate the burden produced by a diminution of visual access.
The second flaw in the Court’s analysis of the fit between burden and exaction is more fundamental. The Court assumes that the only burden with which the Coastal Commission was concerned was blockage of visual access to the beach. This is incorrect.4 The Commission specifically stated in its report in support of the permit condition that “[t]he Commission finds that the applicants’ proposed development would present an increase in view blockage, an increase in private use of the shorefront, and that this impact would burden the public’s ability to traverse to and along the shorefront.” App. 65-66 (emphasis added). It declared that the possibility that “the public may get the impression that the beachfront is no longer available for public use” would be “due to the encroaching nature of private use immediately adjacent to the public use, as well as the visual ‘block’ of increased residential build-out impacting the visual quality of the beachfront.” Id., at 59 (emphasis added).
The record prepared by the Commission is replete with references to the threat to public access along the coastline resulting from the seaward encroachment of private development along a beach whose mean high-tide line is constantly shifting. As the Commission observed in its report: “The Faria Beach shoreline fluctuates during the year depending on the seasons and accompanying storms, and the public is not always able to traverse the shoreline below the mean *851high tide line.” Id., at 67. As a result, the boundary between publicly owned tidelands and privately owned beach is not a stable one, and “[t]he existing seawall is located very near to the mean high water line.” Id., at 61. When the beach is at its largest, the seawall is about 10 feet from the mean high-tide mark; “[d]uring the period of the year when the beach suffers erosion, the mean high water line appears to be located either on or beyond the existing seawall.” Ibid. Expansion of private development on appellants’ lot toward the seawall would thus “increase private use immediately adjacent to public tidelands, which has the potential of causing adverse impacts on the public’s ability to traverse the shoreline.” .Id., at 62. As the Commission explained:
“The placement of more private use adjacent to public tidelands has the potential of creating use conflicts between the applicants and the public. The results of new private use encroachment into boundary/buffer areas between private and public property can create situations in which landowners intimidate the public and seek to prevent them from using public tidelands because of disputes between the two parties over where the exact boundary between private and public ownership is located. If the applicants’ project would result in further seaward encroachment of private use into an area of clouded title, new private use in the subject encroachment area could result in use conflict between private and public entities on the subject shorefront.” Id., at 61-62.
The deed restriction on which permit approval was conditioned would directly address this threat to the public’s access to the tidelands. It would provide a formal declaration of the public’s right of access, thereby ensuring that the shifting character of the tidelands, and the presence of private development immediately adjacent to it, would not jeop*852ardize enjoyment of that right.5 The imposition of the permit condition was therefore directly related to the fact that appellants’ development would be “located along a unique stretch of coast where lateral public access is inadequate due to the construction of private residential structures and shoreline protective devices along a fluctuating shoreline.” Id., at 68. The deed restriction was crafted to deal with the particular character of the beach along which appellants sought to build, and with the specific problems created by expansion of development toward the public tidelands. In imposing the restriction, the State sought to ensure that such development would not disrupt the historical expectation of the public regarding access to the sea.6
*853The Court is therefore simply wrong that there is no reasonable relationship between the permit condition and the specific type of burden on public access created by the appellants’ proposed development. Even were the Court desirous of assuming the added responsibility of closely monitoring the regulation of development along the California coast, this record reveals rational public action by any conceivable standard.
II
The fact that the Commission’s action is a legitimate exercise of the police power does not, of course, insulate it from a takings challenge, for when “regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.” Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393, 415 (1922). Conventional takings analysis underscores the implausibility of the Court’s holding, for it demonstrates that this exercise of California’s police power implicates none of the concerns that underlie our takings jurisprudence.
In reviewing a Takings Clause claim, we have regarded as particularly significant the nature of the governmental action and the economic impact of regulation, especially the extent to which regulation interferes with investment-backed expectations. Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124. The character of the government action in this case is the imposition of a condition on permit approval, which allows the public to continue to have access to the coast. The physical intrusion permitted by the deed restriction is minimal. The public is permitted the right to pass and repass along the coast in an area from the seawall to the mean high-tide mark. App. 46. This area is at its widest 10 feet, id., at 61, which means that even without the permit condition, the public’s right of access permits it to pass on average within a few feet of the seawall. Passage closer to the 8-foot-high rocky seawall will make the *854appellants even less visible to the public than passage along the high-tide area farther out on the beach. The intrusiveness of such passage is even less than the intrusion resulting from the required dedication of a sidewalk in front of private residences, exactions which are commonplace conditions on approval of development.7 Furthermore, the high-tide line shifts throughout the year, moving up to and beyond the seawall, so that public passage for a portion of the year would either be impossible or would not occur on appellant’s property. Finally, although the Commission had the authority to provide for either passive or active recreational use of the property, it chose the least intrusive alternative: a mere right to pass and repass. Id., at 370.8 As this Court made *855clear in PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U. S. 74, 83 (1980), physical access to private property in itself creates no takings problem if it does not “unreasonably impair the value or use of [the] property.” Appellants can make no tenable claim that either their enjoyment of their property or its value is diminished by the public’s ability merely to pass and repass a few feet closer to the seawall beyond which appellants’ house is located.
PruneYard is also relevant in that we acknowledged in that case that public access rested upon a “state constitutional . . . provision that had been construed to create rights to the use of private property by strangers.” Id., at 81. In this case, of course, the State is also acting to protect a state constitutional right. See supra, at 847-848 (quoting Art. X, § 4, of California Constitution). The constitutional provision guaranteeing public access to the ocean states that “the Legislature shall enact such laws as will give the most liberal construction to this provision so that access to the navigable waters of this State shall be always attainable for the people thereof.” Cal. Const., Art. X, §4 (emphasis added). This provision is the explicit basis for the statutory directive to provide for public access along the coast in new development projects, Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. § 30212 (West 1986), and has been construed by the state judiciary to permit passage over private land where necessary to gain access to the tidelands. Grupe v. California Coastal Comm’n, 166 Cal. App. 3d 148, 171-172, 212 Cal. Rptr. 578, 592-593 (1985). The physical access to the perimeter of appellants’ property at issue in this case thus results directly from the State’s enforcement of the State Constitution.
Finally, the character of the regulation in this case is not unilateral government action, but a condition on approval of a development request submitted by appellants. The State has not sought to interfere with any pre-existing property interest, but has responded to appellants’ proposal to intensify development on the coast. Appellants themselves chose to *856submit a new development application, and could claim no property interest in its approval. They were aware that approval of such development would be conditioned on preservation of adequate public access to the ocean. The State has initiated no action against appellants’ property; had the Nollans’ not proposed more intensive development in the coastal zone, they would never have been subject to the provision that they challenge.
Examination of the economic impact of the Commission’s action reinforces the conclusion that no taking has occurred. Allowing appellants to intensify development along the coast in exchange for ensuring public access to the ocean is a classic instance of government action that produces a “reciprocity of advantage.” Pennsylvania Coal, 260 U. S., at 415. Appellants have been allowed to replace a one-story, 521-square-foot beach home with a two-story, 1,674-square-foot residence and an attached two-car garage, resulting in development covering 2,464 square feet of the lot. Such development obviously significantly increases the value of appellants’ property; appellants make no contention that this increase is offset by any diminution in value resulting from the deed restriction, much less that the restriction made the property less valuable than it would have been without the new construction. Furthermore, appellants gain an additional benefit from the Commission’s permit condition program. They are able to walk along the beach beyond the confines of their own property only because the Commission has required deed restrictions as a condition of approving other new beach developments.9 Thus, appellants benefit both as private landowners and as members of the public from the fact that new development permit requests are conditioned on preservation of public access.
*857Ultimately, appellants’ claim of economic injury is flawed because it rests on the assumption of entitlement to the full value of their new development. Appellants submitted a proposal for more intensive development of the coast, which the Commission was under no obligation to approve, and now argue that a regulation designed to ameliorate the impact of that development deprives them of the full value of their improvements. Even if this novel claim were somehow cognizable, it is not significant. “[T]he interest in anticipated gains has traditionally been viewed as less compelling than other property-related interests.” Andrus v. Allard, 444 U. S. 51, 66 (1979).
With respect to appellants’ investment-backed expectations, appellants can make no reasonable claim to any expectation of being able to exclude members of the public from crossing the edge of their property to gain access to the ocean. It is axiomatic, of course, that state law is the source of those strands that constitute a property owner’s bundle of property rights. “[A]s a general proposition^] the law of real property is, under our Constitution, left to the individual States to develop and.administer.” Hughes v. Washington, 389 U. S. 290, 295 (1967) (Stewart, J., concurring). See also Borax Consolidated, Ltd. v. Los Angeles, 296 U. S. 10, 22 (1935) (“Rights and interests in the tideland, which is subject to the sovereignty of the State, are matters of local law”). In this case, the State Constitution explicitly states that no one possessing the “frontage” of any “navigable water in this State, shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water whenever it is required for any public purpose.” Cal. Const., Art. X, § 4. The state Code expressly provides that, save for exceptions not relevant here, “[p]ublic access from the nearest public roadway to the shoreline and along the coast shall be provided in new development projects.” Cal. Pub. Res. Code Ann. § 30212 (West 1986). The Coastal Commission Interpretative Guidelines make clear that fulfillment of the Commission’s constitutional and statutory duty *858requires that approval of new coastline development be conditioned upon provisions ensuring lateral public access to the ocean. App. 362. At the time of appellants’ permit request, the Commission had conditioned all 43 of the proposals for coastal new development in the Faria Family Beach Tract on the provision of deed restrictions ensuring lateral access along the shore. Id., at 48. Finally, the Faria family had leased the beach property since the early part of this century, and “the Faria family and their lessees [including the Nollans] had not interfered with public use of the beachfront within the Tract, so long as public use was limited to pass and repass lateral access along the shore.” Ibid. California therefore has clearly established that the power of exclusion for which appellants seek compensation simply is not a strand in the bundle of appellants’ property rights, and appellants have never acted as if it were. Given this state of affairs, appellants cannot claim that the deed restriction has deprived them of a reasonable expectation to exclude from their property persons desiring to gain access to the sea.
Even were we somehow to concede a pre-existing expectation of a right to exclude, appellants were clearly on notice when requesting a new development permit that a condition of approval would be a provision ensuring public lateral access to the shore. Thus, they surely could have had no expectation that they could obtain approval of their new development and exercise any right of exclusion afterward. In this respect, this case is quite similar to Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U. S. 986 (1984). In Monsanto, the respondent had submitted trade data to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the purpose of obtaining registration of certain pesticides. The company claimed that the agency’s disclosure of certain data in accordance with the relevant regulatory statute constituted a taking. The Court conceded that the data in question constituted property under state law. It also found, however, that certain of the data had been submitted to the agency after Congress had *859made clear that only limited confidentiality would be given data submitted for registration purposes. The Court observed that the statute served to inform Monsanto of the various conditions under which data might be released, and stated:
“If, despite the data-consideration and data-disclosure provisions in the statute, Monsanto chose to submit the requisite data in order to receive a registration, it can hardly argue that its reasonable investment-backed expectations are disturbed when EPA acts to use or disclose the data in a manner that was authorized by law at the time of the submission.” Id., at 1006-1007.
The Court rejected respondent’s argument that the requirement that it relinquish some confidentiality imposed an unconstitutional condition on receipt of a Government benefit:
“[A]s long as Monsanto is aware of the conditions under which the data are submitted, and the conditions are rationally related to a legitimate Government interest, a voluntary submission of data by an applicant in exchange for the economic advantages of a registration can hardly be called a taking.” Id., at 1007.
The similarity of this case to Monsanto is obvious. Appellants were aware that stringent regulation of development along the California coast had been in place at least since 1976. The specific deed restriction to which the Commission sought to subject them had been imposed since 1979 on all 43 shoreline new development projects in the Faria Family Beach Tract. App. 48. Such regulation to ensure public access to the ocean had been directly authorized by California citizens in 1972, and reflected their judgment that restrictions on coastal development represented “‘the advantage of living and doing business in a civilized community.’” Andrus v. Allard, supra, at 67, quoting Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S., at 422 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). The deed restriction was “authorized by law at the *860time of [appellants’ permit] submission,” Monsanto, supra, at 1007, and, as earlier analysis demonstrates, supra, at 849-853, was reasonably related to the objective of ensuring public access. Appellants thus were on notice that new developments would be approved only if provisions were made for lateral beach access. In requesting a new development permit from the Commission, they could have no reasonable expectation of, and had no entitlement to, approval of their permit application without any deed restriction ensuring public access to the ocean. As a result, analysis of appellants’ investment-backed expectations reveals that “the force of this factor is so overwhelming . . . that it disposes of the taking question.” Monsanto, supra, at 1005.10
Standard Takings Clause analysis thus indicates that the Court employs its unduly restrictive standard of police power rationality to find a taking where neither the character of governmental action nor the nature of the private interest affected raise any takings concern. The result is that the Court invalidates regulation that represents a reasonable ad*861justment of the burdens and benefits of development along the California coast.
Ill
The foregoing analysis makes clear that, the State has taken no property from appellants. Imposition of the permit condition in this case represents the State’s reasonable exercise of its police power. The Coastal Commission has drawn on its expertise to preserve the balance between private development and public access, by requiring that any project that intensifies development on the. increasingly crowded California coast must be offset by gains in public access. Under the normal standard for review of the police power, this provision is eminently reasonable. Even accepting the Court’s novel insistence on a precise quid pro quo of burdens and benefits, there is a reasonable relationship between the public benefit and the burden created by appellants’ development. The movement of development closer to the ocean creates the prospect of encroachment on public tidelands, because of fluctuation in the mean high-tide line. The deed restriction ensures that disputes about the boundary between private and public property will not deter the public from exercising its right to have access to the sea.
Furthermore, consideration of the Commission’s action under traditional takings analysis underscores the absence of any viable takings claim. The deed restriction permits the public only to pass and repass along a narrow strip of beach, a few feet closer to a seawall at the periphery of appellants’ property. Appellants almost surely have enjoyed an increase in the value of their property even with the restriction, because they have been allowed to build a significantly larger new home with garage on their lot. Finally, appellants can claim the disruption of no expectation interest, both because they have no right to exclude the public under state law, and because, even if they did, they had full advance notice that new development along the coast is conditioned on provisions for continued public access to the ocean.
*862Fortunately, the Court’s decision regarding this application of the Commission’s permit program will probably have little ultimate impact either on this parcel in particular or the Commission program in general. A preliminary study by a Senior Lands Agent in the State Attorney General’s Office indicates that the portion of the beach at issue in this case likely belongs to the public. App. 85.11 Since a full study had not been completed at the time of appellants’ permit application, the deed restriction was requested “without regard to the possibility that the applicant is proposing development on public land.” Id., at 45. Furthermore, analysis by the same Lands Agent also indicated that the public had obtained a prescriptive right to the use of Faria Beach from the seawall to the ocean. Id., at 86.12 The Superior Court explicitly stated in its ruling against the Commission on the permit condition issue that “no part of this opinion i& intended to foreclose the public’s opportunity to adjudicate the possibility that public rights in [appellants’] beach have been acquired through prescriptive use.” Id., at 420.
With respect to the permit condition program in general, the Commission should have little difficulty in the future in utilizing its expertise to demonstrate a specific connection between provisions for access and burdens on access produced by new development. Neither the Commission in its report nor the State in its briefs and at argument highlighted the particular threat to lateral access created by appellants’ *863development project. In defending its action, the State emphasized the general point that overall access to the beach had been preserved, since the diminution of access created by the project had been offset by the gain in lateral access. This approach is understandable, given that the State relied on the reasonable assumption that its action was justified under the normal standard of review for determining legitimate exercises of a State’s police power. In the future, alerted to the Court’s apparently more demanding requirement, it need only make clear that a provision for public access directly responds to a particular type of burden on access created by a new development. Even if I did not believe that the record in this case satisfies this requirement, I would have to acknowledge that the record’s documentation of the impact of coastal development indicates that the Commission should have little problem presenting its findings in a way that avoids a takings problem.
Nonetheless it is important to point out that the Court’s insistence on a precise accounting system in this case is insensitive to the fact that increasing intensity of development in many areas calls for farsighted, comprehensive planning that takes into account both the interdependence of land uses and the cumulative impact of development.13 As one scholar has noted:
“Property does not exist in isolation. Particular parcels are tied to one another in complex ways, and property is *864more accurately described as being inextricably part of a network of relationships that is neither limited to, nor usefully defined by, the property boundaries with which the legal system is accustomed to dealing. Frequently, use of any given parcel of property is at the same time effectively a use of, or a demand upon, property beyond the border of the user.” Sax, Takings, Private Property, and Public Rights, 81 Yale L. J. 149, 152 (1971) (footnote omitted).
As Congress has declared: “The key to more effective protection and use of the land and water resources of the coastal zone [is for the states to] develo[p] land and water use programs for the coastal zone, including unified policies, criteria, standards, methods, and processes for dealing with land and water use decisions of more than local significance.” 16 U. S. C. § 1451(i). This is clearly a call for a focus on the overall impact of development on coastal areas. State agencies therefore require considerable flexibility in responding to private desires for development in a way that guarantees the preservation of public access to the coast. They should be encouraged to regulate development in the context of the overall balance of competing uses of the shoreline. The Court today does precisely the opposite, overruling an eminently reasonable exercise of an expert state agency’s judgment, substituting its own narrow view of how this balance should be struck. Its reasoning is hardly suited to the complex reality of natural resource protection in the 20th century. I can only hope that today’s decision is an aberration, and that a broader vision ultimately prevails.14
I dissent.

 See also Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc., 348 U. S. 483, 487-488 (1955) (“[T]he law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it”); Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U. S. 421, 423 (1952) (“Our recent decisions make it plain that we do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses offends the public welfare.. . . [S]tate legislatures have constitutional authority to experiment with new techniques; they are entitled to their own standard of the public welfare”).
Nothwithstanding the suggestion otherwise, ante, at 834-835, n. 3, our standard for reviewing the threshold question whether an exercise of the police power is legitimate is a uniform one. As we stated over 25 years ago in addressing a takings challenge to government regulation:
“The term ‘police power’ connotes the time-tested eoneeptional limit of public encroachment upon private interests. Except for the substitution of the familiar standard of ‘reasonableness,’ this Court has generally refrained from announcing any specific criteria. The classic statement of the rule in Lawton v. Steele, 152 U. S. 133, 137 (1894), is still valid today:. . . ‘[I]t must appear, first, that the interests of the public. . . require [govern*844ment] interference; and, second, that the means are reasonably necessary for the accomplishment of the purpose, and not unduly oppressive upon individuals.’ Even this rule is not applied with strict precision, for this Court has often said that ‘debatable questions as to reasonableness are not for the courts but for the legislature . . . .’ E. g., Sproles v. Binford, 286 U. S. 374, 388 (1932).” Goldblatt v. Hempstead, 369 U. S. 590, 594-595 (1962).
See also id., at 596 (upholding regulation from takings challenge with citation to, inter alia, United States v. Carotene Products Co., 304 U. S. 144, 154 (1938), for proposition that exercise of police power will be upheld if “any state of facts either known or which could be reasonably assumed affords support for it”). In Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 475 U. S. 211 (1986), for instance, we reviewed a takings challenge to statutory provisions that had been held to be a legitimate exercise of the police power under due process analysis in Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation v. R. A. Gray & Co., 467 U. S. 717 (1984). Gray, in turn, had relied on Usery v. Turner Elkhom Mining Co., 428 U. S. 1 (1976). In rejecting the takings argument that the provisions were not within Congress’ regulatory power, the Court in Connolly stated: “Although both Gray and Turner Elkhom were due process cases, it would be surprising indeed to discover now that in both eases Congress unconstitutionally had taken the assets of the employers there involved.” 475 U. S., at 223. Our phraseology may differ slightly from case to case — e. g., regulation must “substantially advance,” Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U. S. 255, 260 (1980), or be “reasonably necessary to,” Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 127 (1978), the government’s end. These minor differences cannot, however, obscure the fact that the inquiry in each case is the same.
Of course, government action may be a valid exercise of the police power and still violate specific provisions of the Constitution. Justice Scalia is certainly correct in observing that challenges founded upon these provisions are reviewed under different standards. Ante, at 834-835, n. 3. Our consideration of factors such as those identified in Penn Central, supra, for instance, provides an analytical framework for protecting the values underlying the Takings Clause, and other distinctive approaches are utilized to give effect to other constitutional provisions. This is far different, however, from the use of different standards of review to address the threshold issue of the rationality of government action.

 As this Court declared in United States v. Riverside Bay view Homes, Inc., 474 U. S. 121, 127 (1985):
“A requirement that a person obtain a permit before engaging in a certain use of his or her property does not itself ‘take’ the property in any sense: after ail, the very existence of a permit system implies that permission may be granted, leaving the landowner free to use the property as desired. Moreover, even if the permit is denied, there may be other viable uses available to the owner. Only when a permit is denied and the effect of the denial is to prevent ‘economically viable’ use of the land in question can it be said that a taking has occurred.”
We also stated in Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164, 179 (1979), with respect to dredging to create a private marina:
‘We have not the slightest doubt that the Government could have refused to allow such dredging on the ground that it would have impaired navigation in the bay, or could have conditioned its approval of the dredging on petitioners’ agreement to comply with various measures that it deemed appropriate for the promotion of navigation.”

 The list of cases cited by the Court as support for its approach, ante, at 839-840, includes no instance in which the State sought to vindicate preexisting rights of access to navigable water, and consists principally of cases involving a requirement of the dedication of land as a condition of subdivision- approval. Dedication, of course, requires the surrender of *849ownership of property rather than, as in this ease, a mere restriction on its use. The only case pertaining to beach access among those cited by the Court is MacKall v. White, 85 App. Div. 2d 696, 445 N. Y. S. 2d 486 (1981). In that ease, the court found that a subdivision application could not be conditioned upon a declaration that the landowner would not hinder the public from using a trail that had been used to gain access to a bay. The trail had been used despite posted warnings prohibiting passage, and despite the owner’s resistance to such use. - In that case, unlike this one, neither the State Constitution, state statute, administrative practice, nor the conduct of the landowner operated to create any reasonable expectation of a right of public access.

 This may be because the State in its briefs and at argument contended merely that the permit condition would serve to preserve overall public access, by offsetting the diminution in access resulting from the project, such as, inter alia, blocking the public’s view of the beach. The State’s position no doubt reflected the reasonable assumption that the Court would evaluate the rationality of its exercise of the police power in accordance with the traditional standard of review, and that the Court would not attempt to substitute its judgment about the best way to preserve overall public access to the ocean at the Faria Family Beach Tract.

 As the Commission’s Public Access (Shoreline) Interpretative Guidelines state:
“[T]he provision of lateral access recognizes the potential for conflicts between public and private use and creates a type of access that allows the public to move freely along all the tidelands in an area that can be clearly delineated and distinguished from private use areas. . . . Thus the ‘need’ determination set forth in P[ublic] Resources] C[ode] 30212(a)(2) should be measured in terms of providing access that buffers public access to the tidelands from the burdens generated'on access by private development.” App. 358-359.

 The Court suggests that the risk of boundary disputes “is inherent in the right to exclude others from one’s property,” and thus cannot serve as a purpose to support the permit condition. Ante, at 839, n. 6. The Commission sought the deed restriction, however, not to address a generalized problem inherent in any system of property, but to address the particular problem created by the shifting high-tide line along Faria Beach. Unlike the typical area in which a boundary is delineated reasonably clearly, the very problem on Faria Beach is that the boundary is not constant. The area open to public use therefore is frequently in question, and, as the discussion, supra, demonstrates, the Commission clearly tailored its permit condition precisely to address this specific problem.
The Court acknowledges that the Nollans’ seawall could provide “a clear demarcation of the public easement,” and thus avoid merely shifting “the location of the boundary dispute further on to the private owner’s land.” Ibid. It nonetheless faults the Commission because every property subject to regulation may not have this feature. This case, however, is a chai*853lenge to the permit condition as applied to the Nollans’ property, so the presence or absence of seawalls on other property is irrelevant.

 See, e. g., Bellefontaine Neighbors v. J. J. Kelley Realty & Bldg. Co., 460 S. W. 2d 298 (Mo. Ct. App. 1970); Allen v. Stockwell, 210 Mich. 488, 178 N. W. 27 (1920). See generally Shultz & Kelley, Subdivision Improvement Requirements and Guarantees: A Primer, 28 Wash. U. J. Urban and Contemp. L. 3 (1985).

 The Commission acted in accordance with its Guidelines both in determining the width of the area of passage, and in prohibiting any recreational use of the property. The Guidelines state that it may be necessary on occasion to provide for less than the normal 25-foot-wide accessway along the dry sand when this may be necessary to “protect the privacy rights of adjacent property owners.” App. 363. They also provide this advice in selecting the type of public use that may be permitted:
“Pass and Repass. Where topographic constraints of the site make use of the beach dangerous, where habitat values of the shoreline would be adversely impacted by public use of the shoreline or where the accessway may encroach closer than 20 feet to a residential structure, the accessway may be limited to the right of the public to pass and repass along the access area. For the purposes of these guidelines, pass and repass is defined as the right to walk and run along the shoreline. This would provide for public access along the shoreline but would not allow for any additional use of the accessway. Because this severely limits the public’s ability to enjoy the adjacent state owned tidelands by restricting the potential use of the access areas, this form of access dedication should be used only where necessary to protect the habitat values of the site, where topographic constraints warrant the restriction, or where it is necessary to protect the privacy of the landowner.” Id., at 370.

 At the time of the Nollans’ permit application, 43 of the permit requests for development along the Faria Beach had been conditioned on deed restrictions ensuring lateral public access along the shoreline. App. 48.

 The Court suggests that Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto is distinguishable, because government regulation of property in that case was a condition on receipt of a “government benefit,” while here regulation takes the form of a restriction on “the right to build on one’s own property,” which “cannot remotely be described as a ‘government benefit.’” Ante, at 834, n. 2. This proffered distinction is not persuasive. Both Monsanto and the Nollans hold property whose use is subject to regulation; Monsanto may not sell its property without obtaining government approval and the Nollans may not build new development on their property without government approval. Obtaining such approval is as much a “government benefit” for the Nollans as it is for Monsanto. If the Court is somehow suggesting that “the right to build on one’s own property” has some privileged natural rights status, the argument is a curious one. By any traditional labor theory of value justification for property rights, for instance, see, e. g., J. Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government 15-26 (E. Gough, ed. 1947), Monsanto would have a superior claim, for "the chemical formulae which constitute its property only came into being by virtue of Monsanto’s efforts.

 The Senior Lands Agent’s report to the Commission states that “based on my observations, presently, most, if not all of Faria Beach waterward of the existing, seawalls [lies] below the Mean High Tide Level, and would fall in public domain or sovereign category of ownership.” App. 85 (emphasis added).

 The Senior Lands Agent’s report stated:
“Based on my past experience and my investigation to date of this property it is my opinion that the area seaward of the revetment at 3822 Pacific Coast Highway, Faria Beach, as well as all the area seaward of the revetments built to protect the Faria Beach community, if not public owned, has been impliedly dedicated to the public for passive recreational use.” Id., at 86.

 As the California Court of Appeal noted in 1985: “Since 1972, permission has been granted to construct more than 42,000 building units within the land jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission. In addition, pressure for development along the coast is expected to increase since approximately 85% of California’s population lives within 30 miles of the coast.” Grupe v. California Coastal Comm’n, 166 Cal. App. 3d 148, 167, n. 12, 212 Cal. Rptr. 578, 589, n. 12. See also Coastal Zone Management Act, 16 U. S. C. § 1451(c) (increasing demands on coastal zones “have resulted in the loss of living marine resources, wildlife, nutrient-rich areas, permanent and adverse changes to ecological systems, decreasing open space for public use, and shoreline erosion”).

 I believe that States should be afforded considerable latitude in regulating private development, without fear that their regulatory efforts will often be found to constitute a taking. “If. . . regulation denies the private property owner the use and enjoyment of his land and is found to effect a ‘taking,’ ” however, I believe that compensation is the appropriate remedy for this constitutional violation. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. v. San *865Diego, 450 U. S. 621, 656 (1981) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). I therefore see my dissent here as completely consistent with my position in First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. Los Angeles County, 482 U. S. 304 (1987).