According to this story (“Scott Walker signs bill inspired by western Wisconsin cabin-owners’ court fight“), Wisconsin’s governor has signed into law a new bill which remedies the problem the Murr family faced after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Murr v. Wisconsin, 137 S. Ct. 1933 (2017).
In that case, as you recall, the Court’s majority concluded that the Murrs’ two adjacent parcels had — for the purposes of evaluating their regulatory takings claim — been effectively merged into a single parcel. Thus, both parcels together were the “denominator” against which the regulation’s economic impact was measured. The parcels were not actually or formally merged, and the Court’s ruling only meant that Wisconsin’s regulations which prohibited the Murrs from separately developing their second lot, or selling it to an unrelated party, was not a taking.
The new law would allow the Murrs to sell their undeveloped, “substandard” lot (Lot E, for those of you who know the details of the case), which the family planned to sell in order to fund improvements to their existing cabin on Lot F.
A democratic system working as it should, and a good ending for the Murrs.
But for property owners outside of Wisconsin, who cannot benefit from this new legislation directly, we’re stuck with the Murr majority’s ruling. Unless, (as we suggested in this draft article), state courts view state law as providing a more understandable approach to the “denominator” or “larger parcel” issue than did the Murr majority under the Fifth Amendment.