takings

Check out this recently-filed cert petition, which might be filed under government “keepings” as well as takings. In Greene v. Kansas Dep’t of Revenue, 576 P.3d 320 (Kan. Ct. App. 2025), the Kansas Court of Appeals held that the Department didn’t owe just compensation after it seized some of Greene’s property (the petition and the lower court’s opinion don’t really say what this property is, but we can presume it is some of the “potpourri substance named ‘Diablo’ that the Kansas Board of Pharmacy had deemed a controlled substance” that was at the heart of the tax dispute.
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Temporarily Keeping Property Seized For Taxes After A Ruling The Taxes Were Not Owed Is A Taking

We like seeing student-authored pieces in our areas of interest, especially those where the subject is eminent domain. Here’s another example. In “Public Use on the Loose: Clarifying the Takings Clause’s Public Use Requirement,” author Megan Hoefs focuses on the pretext argument, arguing that the Public Use Clause imposes a good faith requirement.
Continue Reading New Note On Good Faith In Eminent Domain: “Public Use on the Loose: Clarifying the Takings Clause’s Public Use Requirement,” 53 Pepperdine L. Rev. 729 (Megan Hoefs)

You remember when the Court of Federal Claims denied the government’s motion to dismiss a takings claim and issued a very readable opinion rejecting the argument that oysters planted on submerged land leased from Louisiana are not “private property.” The CFC opinion held that “plaintiffs have all three essential features of the ‘bundle of rights’ commonly characterized as ‘property’ under Louisiana law.” But like all court orders made before entry of final judgment, the CFC’s opinion was interlocutory. Meaning subject to change. And change it did.
Continue Reading Aw Shucks: CAFED Agrees That Oysters Destroyed By Govt Aren’t Private Property

Here’s a recently-filed cert petition which asks this Question Presented: “Is the application of a prudential rule of exhaustion, where the only relief is voluntary cessation of government’s physical possession, a decision on the merits of an uncompensated Takings Clause claim?”…
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Remember First English?

Here’s a just-filed cert petition, which poses a question that has been around since at least 1980: when third parties enter private property under color of state law against the wishes of the owner, is this a taking? That’s right, the issue decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980). (And yes, the above photo is from a visit to The Pruneyard shopping center in Campbell, California a while back.)…
Continue Reading New Cert Petition: Time For PruneYard To Go

Yes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s opinion in Banks v. Charter Twp. of Bloomfield, No. 25-1833 (Apr. 28, 2026) is unpublished, and we usually don’t cover unpublished opinions. But we put aside our usual reluctance to discuss unpublished work because the decision raises an important point: are the rules in “regulatory” takings only applicable when the government has adopted a regulation?
Continue Reading CA6: To Be A Regulatory Taking, There Must Be A Regulation

Programming note: On the weekend we’ve set aside to remember our nation’s war dead, we thought we’d repost this one, about how Arlington National Cemetery came to be. And yes, there’s a takings story there.
Continue Reading Memorial Day 2026: Arlington National Cemetery And Takings

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

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