property rights « Disasters, Property, and Politics

Hey y’all, how’s life?

I know, I know… DPP has not been particularly interesting lately. In fact, we’ve been down right uncommunicative. My apologies… There’s a good reason for that… Actually a bunch of them, all tied to my day job. Let’s just say it’s been a busy semester and blogging sort of fell by the way-side as I tried to get my fingers around some other work. That said…

I read something this morning that I knew my readers would find interesting. Here’s the link to a blogpost at the Law and Society blog (with another link to a PDF to the full article discussed in the post) by a psotdoctoral fellow at Harvard named Mekonnen Firew Ayano. Her work forcuses on land tenure issues in Ethiopia. Yes, I know, most of the readers of this blog want to hear about property politics and disasters in the US. But let me make a pitch to you about why you might be interested in Dr. Ayano’s work.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m so interested in property. I have been since my early twenties. Now that I’m approaching 50, I can say that it’s a life-long preoccupation. It began when I started thinking about what single moms need to support their families, and how important a job with a career ladder was for a good friend of mine in college (a single mom, working on her degree in business in order to support herself and her son in the future). It made sense to me that access to ownership and the ability to build wealth was pretty obviously connected. I already understood that there were a lot of different kinds of property one could own. She was focused on eventually buying a house, but I remember a fairly clear discussion about retirement and investments.

Later, I learned that women who could own land in underdeveloped places (not just outside the US, mind you, but underdeveloped parts of the US) were empowered to some degree, and as a result they suffered less domestic abuse, could participate in the politics and decision making at the community level, and were much more able to ensure that their children were fed. This was especially true compared to women who did not possess some kind of property (or, in some places in the world, had no right to property of any kind). If you go to DPP’s archive and look, you’ll see this was something I blogged about years and years ago at least once, maybe twice. It’s something I’ve been giving some thought to as I have helped with issues in southeast Missouri, and as a result of some of my research there concerning a landowner from the 1930’s named Price Hess. That’s Mrs. Price Hess, who was born with the name “Emma”. But that’s another story for another day.

Even if this all makes sense to you on some level, you may be telling me that you don’t have time to read about Ethiopia. However, I know you’re reading this because you care about the issues we write about here at DPP, and you may even be involved in the politics of property, or property and disaster recovery. Well, here’s the thing: empirical evidence of this relationship is almost always useful in political contexts. It continues to be clearest in comparative perspectives in scholarship, though. For this reason, I’ve kept up with my training in comparative law and politics, at least insofar as property issues matter despite the fact that I have never written about contexts out of the US (with the exception of a brief foray in a dissertation chapter about property in the EU). Evidence that there is a clear link between the ability of individuals in hard political, social, and economic situations to find their way to a better place is clear in much of this work. Conversely, when governments remove property rights from women or minorities, you can also see the pattern of impoverishment, disempowerment, and manipulation by more powerful people that frequently follows. Scholars can’t write the entire story in one article — you have to read many articles and put the pieces together. I happen to think this is an article worth reading if you are interested in these issues. It’s just one piece of a bigger story, but it’s an important piece.

Also, dear readers, I promise to try to make an appearance in your email box a little more often as 2018 winds down and we turn the page to 2019. In the meantime, I hope all of my US readers have a very good Thanksgiving. I am thankful for all of you!

Today the US Supreme Court handed down their decision in Murr v. Wisconsin. In a 5-3 vote (Justice Kennedy writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch not participating), the Court determined that there was no regulatory taking in this case.

In takings parlance, Murr v. Wisconsin what we refer to as a regulatory takings case. That is, it’s a case in which the title of the property remains in the hands of the owners (so no physical taking), but a regulation on the property may have changed the land’s uses in such a way that the owners no longer can find economic benefits in the land. In the case of the Murrs’ property, as already mentioned, the Supreme Court upheld an opinion in which there was no regulatory takings in this case. In doing so, they also reaffirmed several key regulatory takings cases, including Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (535 US 302), Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission (505 US 1003), and a takings case I’ve written a lot about, Palazzolo v. Rhode Island (533 US 606).

To better understand Murr, here are a few facts from the case (I’m simplifying here for brevity — I’ll do more detail in a future post):

Mr. and Mrs. Murr had purchased Lots E and F in a particular area along the St. Croix River in Wisconsin separately at two different times in the 1960s. They used the land for recreational/vacation purposes, and maintained the two lots under separate ownership for tax purposes until they transferred them to their children (Lot F in 1994 and Lot E in 1995). At that point, the two lots came under one ownership (with multiple individuals owning the land). Their children, who are the petitioners in this case, wanted to sell Lot E in order to pay for improvements to Lot F. They sought variances from the St. Croix County Board of Adjustments, but were denied the request. The Board said that because the lots had been unified in their ownership in the 1994/1995 transactions, they could no longer be sold separately under a local zoning regulation. The question for the Supreme Court, then, had much to do with whether a taking occurred when these owners were told that they could not sell Lot E without selling Lot F. The petitioners contended that the economic benefits of Lot E had been completely removed by the regulation and therefore they should be compensated for a regulatory taking.

Writing for the Court, Justice Kennedy argues that while it’s long been understood in regulatory takings jurisprudence that if a regulation goes too far it can be recognized as a taking, he explains that in this case there’s no regulatory taking because the land can still be used for economically beneficial purposes. Murr is an interesting case in part because it presented a question that is key to the analysis of regulatory takings: What is the proper unit of property against which to assess the effect of the challenged governmental action? In other words, can a part of a parcel be used in a regulatory takings analysis? Or does it have to be the parcel as a whole? Today’s decision says it’s the parcel as a whole, and how we know the whole parcel has to do with the zoning regulations of the locality.

The Court determined that a lower court decision had correctly determined that the petitioners could not have reasonably expected to sell the lots separately given the current zoning laws. The lower court had found that combining the lots lessened their value by less than 10%, which was not enough to declare a takings under Lucas and other regulatory takings cases. From the US Supreme Court’s perspective, the issue of which unit of property to use in a regulatory analysis was key to deciding the case. Since they agreed with the lower court that the appropriate unit was the entire parcel, and not the separate lots, they also found that the regulation had not decreased the economically beneficial uses of the land enough to work a regulatory takings.

The majority opinion is, of course, more complex than I’ve written here. I’ll be doing another post soon that will go into more detail, and will also take a closer look at the language around Palazzolo v. Rhode Island. There’s also a very interesting dissent that was filed by Chief Justice John Roberts, in which he argues that the majority’s opinion undermines regulatory takings jurisprudence in a way that will make it very difficult for any regulatory takings plaintiff to succeed in the future. Logan will be taking a closer look at the dissent in an upcoming post. We agreed this morning that it deserves its own analysis partly because this decision was so close. Presumably, had Justice Gorsuch participated he would likely have agreed with the Chief Justice. That would have made the decision 5-4. That, to me, suggests that the next justice of the Supreme Court may be the deciding vote in moving regulatory takings jurisprudence onto a different course should we have another conservative justice appointed to the Court. On the other hand, if the next justice is a liberal, we’ll continue to see 5-4 and 6-3 splits on these cases.

Just by way of a reminder, when it comes to physical takings, the Court has been much more unified. We can see that in recent cases such as Arkansas Game and Fish v. US, in which a temporary physical takings was found when an area was repetitively flooded. That decision was unanimous, and written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, well known as one of the most liberal justices on the current court (some would say she’s the most liberal, but I suspect Justice Sotomayor may overtake her given time).