Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following.

After a loss at the Eighth Circuit, the property owners have filed this cert petition.

This is the case where court concluded that the city’s issuance of a closure order to reVamped after the business ended up on the city’s “blighted list” was not a regulatory taking. The city had issued citations for various code violations, sent compliance orders, and was apparently reacting to a fire on the premises.

The Eighth Circuit rejected the owner’s takings claim, holding that the resultant closing of the owner’s business was a valid exercise of the police power, and that “temporary closure of the Inn did not amount to a regulatory taking proscribed by the Fifth Amendment. A lawful exercise of a state’s police power to regulate in the interest of public health and safety is generally not a taking.”

Here are the Questions Presented:

1. When a government’s appeal process is illusory or non-existent to allow a party to challenge a government’s total closure of a business resulting in the loss or taking of property, and the government further impedes the process, implicating a Takings Clause claim, whether the illusory appeal process is a per se violation of procedural due process under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 requiring no need to exhaust state remedies before the claim becomes ripe for federal adjudication under this Court’s legal principle as explained in Knick v. Twp. of Scott, 588 U.S. 180, 185 (2019) and Patsy v. Board of Regents of State of Fla., 457 U.S. 496 (1982).

2. There is a Circuit split regarding the existence of categorical “police power” exceptions in the context of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits hold that there are categorical police-power exceptions to the Takings Clause. The Fourth, Sixth and Federal Circuit have held that Supreme Court’s jurisprudence recognizes that Government actions taken pursuant to the police power are not per se exempt from the Takings Clause. The question presented is:

Whether the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment contains a categorical “police power” exception immunizing the government from providing just compensation.

As we’ve said before, the fact that a government is exercising the police power isn’t the be-all-end-all analysis in takings (where the court must accept the notion that the government is lawfully exercising its power). The takings inquiry isn’t focused on what the government did, or especially why, but on the effects of the otherwise-valid action has on the owner’s property rights. We wish courts would stop taking the shortcut and do the takings work.

We shall follow along with the petition’s progress here, or you can follow on the Court’s docket. Stay tuned.

Petition for Writ of Ceritorari, reVamped LLC v. City of Pipestone, No. 25-1177 (U.S. Apr. 14, 2026)