Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 

Supreme Court of the United States

1992

Chapter

30-31

Title

Power to Regulate Land Use

Page

626

Topic

5th Amendment:  nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

Quick Notes

Lucas bought two residential lots on a South Carolina barrier island, intending to build single-family homes such as those on the immediately adjacent parcels. At that time, Lucas's lots were not subject to the State's coastal zone building permit requirements. Then the state legislature enacted the Beachfront Management Act, which barred Lucas from erecting any permanent habitable structures on his parcels.

Lucas Argument

o         Even though the Act may have been a lawful exercise of the State's police power, the ban on construction deprived him of all "economically viable use" of his property and therefore effected a "taking" under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that required the payment of just compensation.

South Carolinas Argument

o         The uses Lucas desires are inconsistent with the public interest.

o         The regulation is designed to prevent "harmful or noxious uses" of property akin to public nuisances, no compensation is owed under the Takings Clause regardless of the regulation's effect on the property's value.

Two Categories requiring Compensation

1.     The first encompasses regulations that compel the property owner to suffer a physical "invasion" of his property.

Rule

o    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.

Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp.

o    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 1 1/2 cubic feet of the landlords' property.

United States v. Causby

o    Physical invasions of airspace

Kaiser Aetna v. United States

o    Imposition of navigational servitude upon private marina.

2.     The second situation in which we have found categorical treatment appropriate is where regulation denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land.

Book Name

Fundamentals of Modern Property Law: Rabin; Kwall, Kwall.  ISBN:  978-1-59941-053-1.

Issue

o         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?   Yes, it was a taking and required just compensation.

o         Whether the Act barring the erection of permanent structures rendered property useless and therefore compensable under the Taking Clause?  Yes.

Procedure

Bench Trial

o         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

South Caroline

o         The court ruled that when a regulation respecting the use of property is designed "to prevent serious public harm," no compensation is ow[ed] under the Takings Clause regardless of the regulation's effect on the property's value.

Supreme

o         Reversed and Remanded

Facts/Cases

Discussion

Reasoning/Key Phrase

Rules/Laws

Pl - Lucas

Df - South Carolina Coastal Council

Beachfront Management Act

o         South Carolina enacted the Beachfront Management Act that required owners of coastal zones land that qualified as critical area to obtain a permit from the newly created South Caroline Coastal Council prior to committing land to another use other.

Bought Land

o         Lucas bought two parcel of land 300 feet from the beach, which qualified as critical area.

o         He wanted to build a house.

No legally obliged

o         At the time he was not legally obliged to obtain a permit from the Council in advanced.

Prohibited Construction

o         The Beachfront act prohibited construction of occupied improvements. 

o         The act contained no exceptions.

Justice Scalia

Lucas filed suit

o         Contending that the Beachfront Management Act's construction bar effected a taking of his property without just compensation.

o         Contending 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.

Bench Trial The Court Agreed

Zoned as single family residence

o         The court found that "at the time Lucas purchased the two lots,  both were zoned for single-family residential construction and . . . there were no restrictions imposed upon such use of the property by either the State of South Carolina, the County of Charleston, or the Town of the Isle of Palms."

Valueless

o         The trial court further found that  this prohibition "deprived Lucas of any reasonable economic use of the lots, eliminated the unrestricted right of use, and rendered them valueless."

Was Taken

o         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.

Supreme Court of South Carolina - reversed

o         The court ruled that when a regulation respecting the use of property is designed "to prevent serious public harm," no compensation is ow[ed] under the Takings Clause regardless of the regulation's effect on the property's value.

Supreme Court of the United States

Two Categories requiring Compensation

1.     The first encompasses regulations that compel the property owner to suffer a physical "invasion" of his property.

Rule

o    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.

Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp.

o    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 1 1/2 cubic feet of the landlords' property.

United States v. Causby

o    Physical invasions of airspace

Kaiser Aetna v. United States

o    Imposition of navigational servitude upon private marina.

2.     The second situation in which we have found categorical treatment appropriate is where regulation denies all economically beneficial or productive use of land.

Regulations that press private property into a public service

o         Heightened risk.

Rule Takings

o         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.

South Carolinas Arg

o         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.

Harm-preventing vs. Benefit-conferring

o         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.

o         Difficult, if not impossible to discern.

Court - Noxious-Use Justification Not Enough

o         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.

Court It would Nullify Mahon limit on police power

o         The South Carolina Supreme Court's approach would essentially nullify Mahon's affirmation of limits to the noncompensable exercise of the police power.

Court Harmful use Logic

o         Our cases provide no support for this:

o         None of the [cases] 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.

Court Rule - To resist compensation

o         It may resist compensation ONLY IF the logically antecedent [preceding] inquiry into the nature of the owner's estate shows that the proscribed use interests were not part of his title to begin with.

Court Rule Permanent Physical Occupation

Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp.

o         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, though we assuredly would permit the government to assert a permanent easement that was a pre-existing limitation upon the landowner's title.

Court Must have compensation

o         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.

Court What is allowed?

o         Prohibited a lake bed owner from filling in the land and flooding neighbors.

o         Requiring a Nuclear plant to remove its facility because its located on a fault zone.

Eliminates economic use, Does not condemn permissible use under law

o         Such regulatory action may well have the effect of eliminating the land's only economically productive use, but it does not proscribe [condemn] a productive use that was previously permissible under relevant property and nuisance principles.

Court Rule - When regulation declares off-limits

o         When 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.

Takings Analysis

1.     The degree of harm to public lands and resources, or adjacent private property, posed by the claimant's proposed activities

2.     The social value of the claimant's activities and their suitability to the locality in question

3.     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

Rule Takings

o         A State may not transform private property into public property without compensation.

For South Carolina to Win (Spectrum)

o         It 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.

Reversed and Remand

DISSENT Justice Blackmun

o         The court launches a missile to kill a mouse.

o         If the state legislature is correct that the setback line prevents serious harm, then the Act is constitutional.

o         The court has decided that the State Legislature has the burden to convince the court.

DISSENT Justice Stevens

o         The courts new rule is wholly arbitrary.

o         The ruling will greatly hamper the efforts of local officials and planners who have to deal with complex environment problems.

Rules

Rule Takings

o         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.

Class Notes