property rights

Be sure to check out this student note which criticizes the Second Circuit’s approach to pretextual takings in Brinkmann v. Town of Southold, 96 F.4th 209 (2d Cir. 2024), and offers a different way to analyze cases in which the government’s stated public use doesn’t appear to be its actual use or purpose for exercising eminent domain. …
Continue Reading New Must-Read Article: Anna Fein, Pants on Fire: How the Brinkmann Majority Forgot About the Takings Clause in a Takings Clause Case, 99 S. Cal. L. Rev. 405 (2025)

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 density regulations as a valid exercise of the government’s police power to regulate property uses to further the public health, safety, welfare, or morals. See Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U S. 365 (1926).
Continue Reading You Don’t Look A Day Over 98, Nectow v. City of Cambridge

Here’s the latest (a development we predicted) in a case we’ve been following. In this Order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit confirmed that it will be rehearing the Fulton case en banc. As you recall, last year a 2-1 panel of the court held that an owner whose property has been taken does not need Congress to have created a cause of action, and may directly sue for just compensation under the constitution. That’s right, the “self-executing just compensation” issue that the Supreme Court dodged in DeVillier.
Continue Reading En Banc CA11 To Consider Self-Executing Just Compensation

Here’s the story: Los Angeles issued a homeowner demolition and grading permits, okaying the tear down of a dilapidated house. The owners already owned the adjacent parcel, and purchased the dilapidated house with plans to tear it down and make a better use of the adjacent land. The next day, a city council member (cosplaying as Marilyn Monroe) began the city’s process of designating the property a historic-cultural monument because the house was once owned by Ms. Monroe for a few months (it’s where she o.d.’d in 1962).
Continue Reading Property Rights Are No Candle In The Wind: LA May Designate A Dilapidated House An Historic Monument, But Only If Owner Paid Compensation

Hawaii has a unique status among American states. It is the only state that once was a separate sovereign nation, the Kingdom of Hawaii and then its short-lived successor, the Republic of Hawaii. Yes, we know that Texas may lay claim to the whole six-flags thing, so maybe the more accurate statement would be that Hawaii is the only state that was a sovereign kingdom, ruled by royalty.
Continue Reading If A King Must Comply With “Every Form And Particular” In Eminent Domain, Then Today’s Condemnors Also Surely Must

In an historic win for property owners in California, in Shear Dev. Co., LLC v. California Coastal Comm’n, No. S2284378 (Apr. 23, 2026), the unanimous California Supreme Court held that the Coastal Commission–which we can say without exaggeration is the most unaccountable and out-of-control agency in the nation–overstepped its authority when it purported to override a municipal government’s approval of a building permit. [Barista’s note: our firm represents the prevailing property owner in the case, and the head of our Coastal Property Rights group, Jeremy Talcott is lead counsel.]…
Continue Reading California Supreme Court Reins In The Most Unaccountable Agency In The Nation, The California Coastal Commission

In a state like Vermont that is heavily dependent on tourism, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that one of the most prominent issues is the policy and legal fight over short-term rentals. In 2022, Burlington, the state’s largest city, tightened up its short-term rental regulations to prohibit “nonhost-occupied short-term rentals in Burlington with…

Check this out a newly-filed complaint, filed in a New York federal court, challenging New York’s ban on hydraulic fracking as a taking. Our firm represents the plaintiffs, so we won’t be saying much here. But we will point out that this one is very much like the O.G. modern takings case, Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922).
Continue Reading New Complaint: NY’s Fracking Ban Is A Penn Coal v. Mahon Taking

Here’s the latest in a case we’ve been following. After a loss at the Eighth Circuit, the property owners have filed a 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.
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Invoking “Police Power” Alone Doesn’t Avoid Takings

Here’s the latest in a case out of a storied New York City neighborhood that we have been following.

Today, our shop filed this cert petition, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision from the New York Court of Appeals (dun-dun) which held that New York City’s charging a massive fee…