Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council

Decided June 29, 1992. Certiorari to the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Judgment reversed and remanded. Opinion of the Court by Justice Scalia; Justices Blackmun and Stevens dissenting; Justice Kennedy concurring in the judgment.

Editorial note. Lucas purchased two residential lots on a South Carolina barrier island for $975,000, intending to build single-family homes as his neighbors had. Two years later the Beachfront Management Act established a setback line that barred any permanent habitable structure on his parcels. The state trial court found the lots rendered valueless; the Supreme Court of South Carolina reversed on the ground that the Act was directed at a serious public harm.

Editorial note. When a regulation denies an owner all economically beneficial or productive use of land, compensation is required without case-specific inquiry into the public interest advanced. The State may defeat such a claim only by identifying background principles of its own property and nuisance law that already prohibited the intended use.

Editorial note. Justice Scalia rejected the harm-prevention rationale as a talismanic distinction, observing that noxious-use reasoning is indistinguishable in practice from benefit-conferring regulation and would leave the Takings Clause dependent on legislative characterization. Total deprivation of beneficial use is the functional equivalent of physical appropriation, so it belongs with the categorical rules rather than with ad hoc balancing. The relevant limitation instead comes from the objective understanding of the owner's title: restrictions that inhere in the State's background law of property and nuisance were never part of the estate acquired.

Editorial note. Lucas establishes the second categorical takings rule (with Loretto) and relocates the police-power defense from legislative purpose to antecedent property law. It makes the content of state nuisance and property doctrine determinative of federal takings liability, and it renders the denominator question — what parcel is measured — decisive in practice.

Editorial note. Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606 (2001), held that a regulation in force at acquisition is not automatically a background principle and that a residual value defeats the categorical rule. Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302 (2002), refused to apply Lucas to temporary development moratoria. Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc., 544 U.S. 528 (2005), catalogued Lucas as one of the discrete categories of per se takings.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. V (Takings Clause), Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), and Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978).