SCOTUS smacks down California in property rights

Property rights are an inalienable right and a fundamental part of this nation’s political tradition. Yet they face attacks from government busybodies.

This month, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that legislative governments can’t impose excessive fees on property owners looking to build on their own land. The ruling in Sheetz v. County of El Dorado, California, is a welcome limitation to the tentacles of government.

The case began in 2016 when George Sheetz sought to build a single-family home. He owned property in California’s El Dorado County. County officials there told him he had to pay $23,420 for “traffic impact mitigation” before he would be allowed to build. Even for California, that’s ridiculous. Public officials involved were oblivious to the clear conflict with the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which prohibits the government from taking private property “for public use, without just compensation.” Sheetz paid the fee to obtain the permit but did so under protest. He argued that any assessed traffic fee should be based on the need to mitigate traffic from his specific project. In what’s called the Nollan/Dolan test, the Supreme Court had previously ruled that permit conditions need to have an “essential nexus” to the government’s land-use requirements. In other words, the government can’t extort money from property owners by holding up their permits. Further, any fees must be generally proportional to the public burden added by the project.

State courts rejected that argument. They believed the excessive fee was constitutional because the County Board of Supervisors — rather than bureaucrats making decisions by fiat — had enacted the requirement through the legislative process. In its ruling, the high court dismissed that logic.