On the day we celebrate Constitution Day (or should we say Khaaaaan-stitution Day?) we have to admit that pretty much nothing beats One Named Kirk’s reading of the Preamble.
He might be from Iowa, but that guy who plays him is from north of the border, so our kudos to a Canadian for the best dramatic rendition of our founding document.
“This was not written for chiefs!”
Beam me down, Scotty!
After a short hiatus to allow Clint to set up at his new firm, the Eminent Domain Podcast is back.
Clint was kind enough to ask me to be his first second-time guest, and we had a wide-ranging discussion: everything from this semester’s teaching assignment at the William & Mary Law School, the will-they-or-won’t-they-overturn-Williamson-County case to be argued in early October Knick v. Township of Scott, to the upcoming Brigham-Kanner Conference, the ALI-CLE Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation Conference in Palm Springs, Elvis, and … Kevin Bacon (again).
Adhering to the same format, including the fun “lightning round” style Cross-Examination, the podcast is a great (and easy) way to keep up on the issues. And at just under an hour, its the perfect length for your commute, also.
We look forward to Clint’s lineup of interesting and insightful guests and topicsContinue Reading Clint Schumacher’s Eminent Domain Podcast Is Back – Six Degrees Of Williamson County Ripeness … And Elvis
Here’s the video of the oral arguments held earlier today in the Iowa Supreme Court in a high-profile pipeline case. In Puntenney v. Iowa Utilities Board, the court is considering a case at the intersection of the law of public utilities, and condemnation law. The basic question the court is trying to solve is whether a finding by the IUB that the pipeline serves a “public convenience and necessity” makes a determination of the public use supporting the resulting condemnations unnecessary?
Here’s a description of the issues from the court’s web site:
The district court denied petitions for judicial review of the Iowa Utilities Board’s (IUB) decision to grant a permit to Dakota Access, LLC, for the construction of a hazardous liquid pipeline pursuant to Iowa Code ch. 479B. On appeal, the petitioners argue the district court erred in affording the IUB the authority to define the term “public
Here’s the cert petition, filed yesterday, in a case we’ve been following closely. Here’s our short summary of the case, written up when it was ready for argument in the Hawaii Supreme Court. That court’s ruling against the property owner added to the the lower court split on the issue of whether the Takings Clause protects an owner’s use of property, or the value of property.
Here’s the Question Presented:
In 2000, Douglas Leone and Patricia Perkins-Leone bought beachfront property in Hawaii on which they planned to build a home for their family. The land was zoned for single-family residences, but the County of Maui decided it should be used as a public park. Instead of buying the land, however, the County wielded its regulatory authority to prevent the Leones from developing their property in any way.
The Leones challenged the County’s refusal to allow them to
The result in Roberts v. Bondi, No. 8:18-cv-1062 (Aug. 21, 2018) should not be terribly surprising, we suppose. After all, the plaintiff was asking the U.S. District Court to — among other things — conclude that a Florida statute banning a device which makes a semi-automatic rifle “somewhat mimic” fully-automatic fire, violated the plaintiff’s constitutional rights. [Note: you can do this with just about any semi-auto rifle even without the special stock, although it can be somewhat awkward.]
In these type of cases, courts are hard-pressed to do much but uphold the ban, even if the thing being banned was, as they say, “perfectly legal” prior to the prohibition. That the courts do so may or may not sit well with you (mostly depending upon your view of the Second Amendment) but it is, nevertheless. As Holmes famously remarked, “The life of the law has not been
Continue Reading Federal Court: Florida Statute Outlawing “Bump Stocks” Is Not A Taking
Before last week’s Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Brent Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, we wrote that the issue of property rights and eminent domain may come up during the hearing, even though Judge Kavanaugh’s actual judicial record on that topic is pretty thin.
We were busy during most of the hearings, and the portions we viewed did not focus on Kelo, but rather on a host of important other topics. But thanks to the efforts of our colleague Elaine Mittleman (the lawyer who argued and won the sole opinion in Judge Kavanaugh’s Public Use and Eminent Domain repertoire, Rumber v. District of Columbia, 487 F.2d 941 (D.C. Cir. 2007)), who sent us the video from the key portion of the hearings, we now have Judge Kavanaugh talking a bit about Kelo and property rights, and related (sort of) topics.
Senator
Continue Reading Your Kelo Moments From The Kavanaugh Hearings
A hot — but most often neglected — topic, getting hotter: relocation benefits.
In Osher v. City of St. Louis, No. 17-2402 (Sep. 6, 2018), the U.S. Court of Appeals joined the Fourth Circuit in its conclusion that the Uniform Relocation Act provisions are mere guidelines (insert our oft-repeated Pirate’s Code reference here), and not privately enforceable in court by the property owner the Act was designed to protect.
The facts are pretty straightforward. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, headquartered in St. Louis, was going to move. To sweeten the pot for the agency to remain, the City said “hey, we’ll get you a better site right here,” and the City’s redevelopment agency started a condemnation action in state court against Osher and others, for that better site.
Here’s the key phrase from the opinion: “While the state court action was pending, Osher brought suit in the district
Come on, let’s be candid here. When we pick up an opinion filled with statutory and regulatory jargon — replete with agency acronyms — our eyes see the words, but our brains process them like they are being spoken by the adults in the Peanuts cartoons.
But then we spot the words “eminent domain” and BAM! we’re all in.
So it is with the U.S. Court of Appeals’ opinion in Delaware Riverkeeper Network v. Secretary Pennsylvania Dep’t of Environmental Protection, No. 16-2211 (Sep. 4, 2018), which does not disappoint it the jargon department: PADEP, NGA, FERC, Water Quality Certification, EHB, &c. But this is a challenge to a pipeline and also involves eminent domain (if only peripherally), so yeah, we’re diving in despite the buzzing sound.
Short story: natural gas pipelines need Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permission before they can start taking property under the Natural Gas Act.
Continue Reading Third Circuit: Takings Challenge To Pipeline Belongs In FERC
In case you were on Mars yesterday, you are aware that putative frat boy Brett Kavanaugh is up for a seat at the most exclusive club in law land, Alpha Alpha Alpha, otherwise known as the U.S. Supreme Court.
We said pretty much all we’re going to say about what Judge Kavanaugh becoming Justice Kavanaugh might mean for the stuff we’re interested in in this post, “What Might A Justice Kavanaugh Mean For Takings, Land Use, And Other Issues?” We certainly can’t add much more to the deep, probing insights the confirmation hearing has provided so far.
But we also noticed that we haven’t actually gone back through the decade-plus of his opinions from the D.C. Circuit or our blog archives to see if any decision in which he participated provided a clue on how he might lean on the property-related question of the day. Especially the one
