Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency
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''Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency'', 535 U.S. 302 (2002), is one of the United States Supreme Court's more recent interpretations of the Takings Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The case dealt with the question of whether a moratorium on construction of individual homes imposed by the
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) was formed in 1969 through a bi-state compact between California and Nevada which was ratified by the U.S. Congress. The agency is mandated to protect the environment of the Lake Tahoe basin through land ...
fell under the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution and whether the landowners therefore should receive just compensation as required by that clause. The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency was represented by future Chief Justice
John Roberts John Glover Roberts Jr. (born January 27, 1955) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as the 17th chief justice of the United States since 2005. Roberts has authored the majority opinion in several landmark cases, including '' Nat ...
. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion of the Court, finding that the moratorium did not constitute a taking. It reasoned that there was an inherent difference between the acquisition of
property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
for public use and the regulation of property from private use. The majority concluded that the moratorium at issue in this case should be classified as a regulation of property from private use and therefore no compensation was required..


Facts of the case

Lake Tahoe Basin falls within both
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
and
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
. Those two states created the
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) was formed in 1969 through a bi-state compact between California and Nevada which was ratified by the U.S. Congress. The agency is mandated to protect the environment of the Lake Tahoe basin through land ...
(TRPA) to plan the development of the basin. Between 1981-1984 the TRPA issued two moratoriums on virtually all residential development within the basin. The first moratorium lasted roughly 24 months and the second lasted about 8 months until the TRPA had adopted its comprehensive land-use plan. The
plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of t ...
s in the case were a group of persons who owned individual home sites within the jurisdiction of the TRPA and were therefore subject to the moratoria. The plaintiffs were challenging the law on the grounds that by denying the use of their land, the moratoria issued by the TRPA were in fact takings as described by the Takings Clause of the US Constitution in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and that therefore they should receive just compensation.


Procedural history

The District Court found that: (1) Even though the land retained some value during the period of the moratoria the landowners were, for a time, completely deprived of any economic use of their land. (2) Therefore the two moratoria did in fact constitute a taking as described by the
Takings Clause The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution addresses criminal procedure and other aspects of the Constitution. It was ratified, along with nine other articles, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amen ...
of the U.S. Constitution. The case was appealed to the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...
. The Circuit Court found that since the moratoria had only temporary impact on the landowners property no taking occurred and no compensation was required.


Issue before the Court

Whether a moratorium on development imposed during the process of devising a comprehensive land-use plan constitutes a per se taking of property requiring compensation.


Decision of the Court


Majority opinion

The majority opinion written by Justice Stevens dealt with several issues that were raised by the petitioners seeking compensation. First Justice Stevens discarded the petitioners’ assertion that the enactment of the moratorium deprived the plaintiffs of all economic use of the property and therefore required compensation. Justice Stevens held the case law does not support and in fact rejects the idea that a temporary moratorium invokes the Just Compensation clause. The text of the Fifth Amendment itself, he argued, creates a distinction between physical takings and regulatory takings specifying that only physical takings of private property for public purposes require just compensation. Justice Stevens closed this section of his argument predicting that if all takings, physical and regulatory, were to require just compensation then the whole notion of government takings would be, “a luxury few governments could afford.”535 U.S. at 324. Next Justice Stevens dealt with petitioners urging to examine the Court’s case law dealing with regulatory takings especially '' Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council'' (1992). Stevens however dismissed the precedent of ''Lucas'' saying that logically the property at issue in the present case cannot be considered to have lost all economic value since as soon as the moratorium is lifted it will recover all economic value. Fluctuations in property value cannot be considered constitutional takings. Lastly Justice Stevens moved on to more functional concerns. If governments are required to compensate landowners every time a moratorium is put into place in order to plan the development of an area, then officials will either rush through the planning process or skip it altogether fostering growth in the community that is either ill-conceived or inefficient.


See also

*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 535 This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 535 of the ''United States Reports The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, ...
*
List of United States Supreme Court cases This page serves as an index of lists of United States Supreme Court cases. The United States Supreme Court is the highest federal court of the United States. By Chief Justice Court historians and other legal scholars consider each Chief J ...
*'' Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City'' (1978)
''Suitum v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency,'' 520 U.S. 725 (1997)
holding a federal court should not consider a claim against an agency before the government has reached a “final” decision. ''See also,'
''Pakdel v. City and County of San Francisco,'' 594 U.S. ___ (2021)


References


Further reading

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External links

* * {{US5thAmendment, takings United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court Takings Clause case law United States land use case law Lake Tahoe 2002 in United States case law 2002 in the environment