First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles

FIRST ENGLISH EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH OF GLENDALE v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Appeal from the Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District.

No. 85-1199. Argued January 14, 1987 — Decided June 9, 1987.

Reversed and remanded.

REHNQUIST, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, POWELL, and SCALIA, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in Parts I and III of which BLACKMUN and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined, post, p. 322.

Michael M. Berger argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was Jerrold A. Fadem. Jack R. White argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were DeWitt W. Clinton, Charles J. Moore, and Darlene B. Fischer.

The report occupies pages 304 through 341 of volume 482 of the United States Reports. The opinion of the Court begins at page 306 and ends at page 322; the dissenting opinion of Justice Stevens begins at page 322.

[482 U.S. 304] “In 1957, appellant church purchased land on which it operated a campground, known as ‘Lutherglen,’ as a retreat center and a recreational area for handicapped children. The land is located in a canyon along the banks of a creek that is the natural drainage channel for a watershed area. In 1978, a flood destroyed Lutherglen's buildings. In response to the flood, appellee Los Angeles County, in 1979, adopted an interim ordinance prohibiting the construction or reconstruction of any building or structure in an interim flood protection area that included the land on which Lutherglen had stood. Shortly after the ordinance was adopted, appellant filed suit in a California court, alleging, inter alia, that the ordinance denied appellant all use of Lutherglen, and seeking to recover damages in inverse condemnation for such loss of use.”

[482 U.S. 304] “The court granted a motion to strike the allegation, basing its ruling on Agins v. Tiburon, 24 Cal. 3d 266, 598 P. 2d 25, aff'd on other grounds, 447 U. S. 255, in which the California Supreme Court held that a landowner may not maintain an inverse condemnation suit based upon a ‘regulatory’ taking, and that compensation is not required until the challenged regulation or ordinance has been held excessive in an action for declaratory relief or a writ of mandamus and the government has nevertheless decided to continue the regulation in effect. . . . The California Court of Appeal affirmed.”

[482 U.S. 305] “Held: . . . 2. Under the Just Compensation Clause, where the government has ‘taken’ property by a land-use regulation, the landowner may recover damages for the time before it is finally determined that the regulation constitutes a ‘taking’ of his property. The Clause is designed not to limit the governmental interference with property rights per se, but rather to secure compensation in the event of otherwise proper interference amounting to a taking. A landowner is entitled to bring an action in inverse condemnation as a result of the self-executing character of the constitutional provision with respect to compensation.”

[482 U.S. 305] “‘Temporary’ regulatory takings which, as here, deny a landowner all use of his property, are not different in kind from permanent takings for which the Constitution clearly requires compensation. Once a court determines that a taking has occurred, the government retains the whole range of options already available — amendment of the regulation, withdrawal of the invalidated regulation, or exercise of eminent domain. But where the government's activities have already worked a taking of all use of property, no subsequent action by the government can relieve it of the duty to provide compensation for the period during which the taking was effective. Invalidation of the ordinance without payment of fair value for the use of the property during such period would be a constitutionally insufficient remedy. Pp. 314-322.”

[482 U.S. 306] “In this case the California Court of Appeal held that a landowner who claims that his property has been ‘taken’ by a land-use regulation may not recover damages for the time be- [482 U.S. 307] fore it is finally determined that the regulation constitutes a ‘taking’ of his property. We disagree, and conclude that in these circumstances the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution would require compensation for that period.”

[482 U.S. 314] “Consideration of the compensation question must begin with direct reference to the language of the Fifth Amendment, which provides in relevant part that ‘private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.’ As its language indicates, and as the Court has frequently noted, this provision does not prohibit the taking of private property, but instead places a condition on the exercise of that power.”

[482 U.S. 315] “This basic understanding of the Amendment makes clear that it is designed not to limit the governmental interference with property rights per se, but rather to secure compensation in the event of otherwise proper interference amounting to a taking. Thus, government action that works a taking of property rights necessarily implicates the ‘constitutional obligation to pay just compensation.’ Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49 (1960).”

[482 U.S. 315] “We have recognized that a landowner is entitled to bring an action in inverse condemnation as a result of ‘“the self-executing character of the constitutional provision with respect to compensation . . . .”’ United States v. Clarke, 445 U. S. 253, 257 (1980), quoting 6 P. Nichols, Eminent Domain § 25.41 (3d rev. ed. 1972).”

[482 U.S. 318] “In considering this question, we find substantial guidance in cases where the government has only temporarily exercised its right to use private property. In United States v. Dow, supra, at 26, though rejecting a claim that the Government may not abandon condemnation proceedings, the Court observed that abandonment ‘results in an alteration in the property interest taken — from [one of] full ownership to one of temporary use and occupation . . . .’”

[482 U.S. 318] “These cases reflect the fact that ‘temporary’ takings which, as here, deny a landowner all use of his property, are not different in kind from permanent takings, for which the Constitution clearly requires compensation. Cf. San Diego Gas & Electric Co., 450 U. S., at 657 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting) (‘Nothing in the Just Compensation Clause suggests that “takings” must be permanent and irrevocable’).”

[482 U.S. 321] “Thus we do not, as the Solicitor General suggests, ‘permit a court, at the behest of a private person, to require the . . . Government to exercise the power of eminent domain . . . .’ Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 22. We merely hold that where the government's activities have already worked a taking of all use of property, no subsequent action by the government can relieve it of the duty to provide compensation for the period during which the taking was effective.”

[482 U.S. 321] “We also point out that the allegation of the complaint which we treat as true for purposes of our decision was that the ordinance in question denied appellant all use of its property.”

[482 U.S. 322] “Here we must assume that the Los Angeles County ordinance has denied appellant all use of its property for a considerable period of years, and we hold that invalidation of the ordinance without payment of fair value for the use of the property during this period of time would be a constitutionally insufficient remedy. The judgment of the California Court of Appeal is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.”

[482 U.S. 322] “It is so ordered.”

[482 U.S. 322] “One thing is certain. The Court's decision today will generate a great deal of litigation.”

Editorial note. The dissent maintained that the case was not properly presented, no taking having been established below, and that the Court had announced a compensation rule without any finding that the ordinance had in fact deprived the church of all use of its land.

Editorial note. On the merits the dissent distinguished regulation from appropriation: a regulation later held invalid, it argued, is not a taking of a temporary interest but an excessive exercise of the police power for which invalidation is the appropriate remedy. It warned that the Court's rule would expose municipalities to damages for good-faith planning and would make cautious regulators of officials who ought to act promptly in the face of hazards such as the flood that destroyed Lutherglen.

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Editorial note. Three limitations are declared. First, the numbered footnotes of both opinions are not reproduced. Second, the jurisdictional discussion at pages 311 through 313 and the dissenting opinion at pages 322 through 341 are summarised rather than quoted at length. Third, obvious typographic and scanning defects in the digitised bound volume have been silently corrected against the surrounding text; no substantive word has been altered, modernised, or paraphrased inside a quotation.

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Editorial note. In 1957 the appellant church bought a twenty-one-acre parcel in a canyon along the Middle Fork of Mill Creek in the Angeles National Forest and operated on it a campground called Lutherglen, a retreat centre and recreational area for handicapped children. Twelve acres were flat and carried a dining hall, two bunkhouses, a caretaker's lodge, an outdoor chapel, and a footbridge. In July 1977 a forest fire denuded some 3,860 acres of the watershed upstream; in February 1978 a storm dropped eleven inches of rain and the resulting flood destroyed Lutherglen's buildings. In January 1979 Los Angeles County adopted Interim Ordinance No. 11,855, forbidding the construction, reconstruction, placement, or enlargement of any building within an interim flood protection area that included the flat land on which Lutherglen had stood.

Editorial note. The church sued in inverse condemnation, alleging that the ordinance denied it all use of Lutherglen. Relying on Agins v. Tiburon, 24 Cal. 3d 266, 598 P. 2d 25 (1979), the Superior Court struck the allegation because the church sought only damages, and the California Court of Appeal affirmed. The California Supreme Court denied review. The Supreme Court took the case on appeal, reversed, and remanded.

Editorial note. The issue was remedial: whether a landowner whose property has been taken by regulation may recover damages for the period before the regulation is set aside. The Court held that he may. Invalidation is not enough where the regulation has already denied all use; the Constitution itself obliges the government to pay for the interference that has occurred, and the government's continuing freedom to amend, withdraw, or condemn does not extinguish the accrued obligation.

Editorial note. Chief Justice Rehnquist read the Just Compensation Clause as placing a condition on the power to take rather than forbidding takings, from which it follows that the constitutional obligation to pay attaches as soon as a taking occurs and is enforceable in inverse condemnation without statutory authorisation.

Editorial note. He then reasoned by analogy to the wartime temporary-use cases, in which compensation was plainly required and the only question was measurement, to conclude that a temporary deprivation of all use is not different in kind from a permanent one. The Court expressly limited its holding to the case before it, reserving normal delays in obtaining permits, changes in zoning, and variances.

Editorial note. First English supplies the treatise's remedial rule for regulatory takings and establishes that compensation, not invalidation alone, is the constitutional response once a taking is found. Its careful separation of the remedial question from the antecedent question whether a taking occurred became the hinge of the later temporary-moratorium litigation.

Editorial note. Confined in scope. Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302 (2002), held that First English addressed only the measure of compensation once a regulatory taking is established and implicitly rejected a categorical rule for temporary deprivations. Knick v. Township of Scott, 588 U.S. 180 (2019), relied on the same self-executing character of the Clause in holding that a takings claim accrues when the taking occurs.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. V (Takings Clause) and the treatise chapters on regulatory takings, on inverse condemnation, and on remedies for interference with land.