Court Opinion

ID: 9604872
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:27:37.764789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:24.760652
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Justice,
concurring specially:
Governmental regulation or limitation of access to public streets is only one form of police power regulation which impinges on property rights, thereby implicating the provisions of the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution and art. 1, § 13, of the Idaho Constitution, which prohibit government from taking property without due process and payment of just compensation. There are several other ways in which government can exercise its police power which results in the limitation on use of real and personal property. Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51, 100 S.Ct. 318, 62 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979) (regulation by the Secretary of Interior prohibiting sale of Indian feathers and artifacts held by private parties which destroyed practically all monetary value not a taking); Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass’n v. De*151Benedictis, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 1232, 94 L.Ed.2d 472 (1987) (state regulation prohibiting the removal of coal to prevent subsidence of surface, held not a taking); Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255, 100 S.Ct. 2138, 65 L.Ed.2d 106 (1980) (zoning regulation severely restricting use of property, thereby destroying most of the market value, held not a taking).
The Supreme Court of the United States has been struggling, to date unsuccessfully, to come up with a meaningful standard for evaluating how far government can go pursuant to the police power before restrictions and limitations on the use of property constitutes a taking under the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution. Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass’n v. DeBenedictis, supra at 1247 (“ ‘ “this court has generally ‘been unable to develop any “set formula” for determining when “justice and fairness” require that economic injuries caused by public action be compensated by the government, rather than remain disproportionately concentrated on a few persons.’ ” ’ ”) Without a meaningful standard from the United States Supreme Court, the state courts have been groping also. Compare Rueth v. State, 100 Idaho 203, 596 P.2d 75 (1979), with Barton v. State, 104 Idaho 338, 659 P.2d 92 (1983). Nevertheless, today’s decision in this case brings the law relating to the regulation and limitation of access to public streets more in line with the cases dealing with zoning and other types of police power regulation and limitation of the use of property.