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Tomorrow, November 22, 2025 is the 99th anniversary of the day in 1926 when the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark opinion in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (Nov. 22, 1926).

You know this one (and can you call yourself a dirt lawyer if you don’t?). It’s the one in which the Supreme Court first upheld — against a facial due process challenge — the validity of this thing we now call “Euclidean zoning.”

In the intervening century, zoning has become a catch-all term for all sorts of regulatory restrictions on the uses of real property, land users know that “zoning” — ackshually — refers only to the regulation and separation of uses, restrictions on density, and height regulation. At least that’s how it began. The Euclid court concluded this was mostly nuisance prevention, so no worries. But we’d…

Continue Reading You Don’t Look A Day Over 98, Euclid

To all those who attended today’s sessions on Practical Guide to Land Use and Zoning, thank you. 

Here is the upcoming attorney’s fee case in the US Supreme Court that I mentioned, the Hawaii fee-shifting statute in cases of “development” without a permit in environmental matters, and California’s Ehrlich v. City of Culver City case, where the court held that the Nollan/Dolan standards apply to non-property exactions, as well as governmental demands for property:

As we explain, we conclude that the tests formulated by the high court in its Dolan and Nollan opinions for determining whether a compensable regulatory taking has occurred under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the federal Constitution apply, under the circumstances of this case, to the monetary exaction imposed by Culver City as a condition of approving plaintiff’s request that the real property in suit be rezoned to permit the…

Continue Reading ▪ Land Use and Zoning Seminar