Land use law

In this order, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois temporarily enjoined enforcement of Chicago suburb Glen Ellyn‘s prohibition on renting property for less than 30 days.

Blakelick owns a five-bedroom single family home that when purchased was not located in Glen Ellyn. Since 2022, it has been offering the

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It was on this day in 1928 when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its second most famous decision about zoning, Nectow v. City of Cambridge., 277 U.S. 183 (1928). 

We say “second” because everyone knows that the first is the Court’s decision issued just two years earlier which generally upheld comprehensive use, height, and

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Check out the new report by our Pacific Legal Foundation colleagues Kyle Sweetland and Brian Hodges, “How to Protect Property Rights from Improperly Assessed Exactions” (Apr. 2025).

This research in brief shows how exactions grew and increased home construction costs over a 16-year period. It provides a history of exactions, showing how

We’ve had this one in our queue for a bit, but it seems now is a good time to lay out the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in McIntosh v. Madisonville, No. 24-5383 (Jan. 21, 2025). After all, the Due Process Clause seems to be in the news a lot

The key quote from the Illinois Appellate Court’s recent opinion in Robinson v. City of Chicago, No. 1-23-2174 (Mar. 24, 2025), in which a property owner challenged the inclusion of his property in a new Chicago historic preservation district? This seemingly innocuous sentence setting out the standard of review:

The plaintiff acknowledges that his

These days, when we have cases where there’s tinkering with the terms of rental agreements, we most often see local governments using their police power to force property owners to rent their properties on a long-term (more than 30 days) basis.

But in Bigelow Arizona TX-344, LP v. Town of Addison, No. 05-23-00642-CV (Apr.

Today we have a guest post by New York colleague Jennifer Polovetsky, who writes about an exactions case that is headed for the New York Court of Appeals. Disclosure: our firm represents the property owners in that court. 

Thanks to Jennifer (and to the New York Law Journal) for allowing us to republish her

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Registration is open and underway for this year’s edition of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute in Denver, March 5-7, 2025. Location: University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

This conference is more what we’ll call “land usey” than ALI-CLE’s Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference (as the respective titles suggest), but there’s a

Check this out, a recent Fourth Branch pod featuring lawprof Donald Kochan and our law firm colleague Jeremy Talcott, “Explainer Episode 85 – Rebuilding California: Lessons from the Pacific Palisades Fire.”

Here’s the description:

The 2025 Pacific Palisades Fire has underscored the challenges of building in California’s complex regulatory landscape. In response