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Supreme Court of the United States - 438 U.S. 104
Tags: Property, Takings, Eminent domain
tl;dr:
The state was justified in restricting the use of certain historic properties classified as landmarks, and such restrictions did not constitute a taking under the Fifth Amendment.Video Summary
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The case concerns whether New York City's Landmarks Preservation Law violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments by taking owners' property without just compensation. The law designates properties and areas with special historical or aesthetic value as landmarks or historic districts, and owners are required to maintain the exterior features of the building in good repair. The appellants claimed that the Landmarks Preservation Law had taken their property without just compensation and deprived them of their property without due process of law. The lower court granted relief, but the Appellate Division reversed the decision, stating that the restrictions on the development of the Terminal site were necessary to protect landmarks. The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's decision, stating that the Landmarks Law had not "taken" property without "just compensation" since it only restricted the appellants' exploitation of it. The court concluded that the Landmarks Law had not violated due process because the landmark regulation permitted the same use as had been made of the Terminal for more than half a century, and the development rights above the Terminal were valuable to the appellants and provided "significant, perhaps 'fair' compensation for the loss of rights above the terminal itself."
The dissenting opinion argues that designating individual buildings as landmarks imposes a significant cost on property owners without providing comparable benefits, violating the principle of "average reciprocity of advantage" established in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon. The landmark preservation scheme in New York City requires property owners to bear the cost of preserving their property, which goes beyond traditional zoning restrictions and violates the Fifth Amendment. The lower court erred in upholding the landmark preservation scheme as "zoning." The Taking Clause includes all ownership rights, and Penn Central's inability to use its property for a valuable office building due to landmark preservation constitutes a "taking" of property. The appellees are seeking to preserve the building's beaux arts architecture, rather than prohibiting a nuisance. The owners of the property are prevented from further developing it because the city of New York wants to preserve it unchanged for sightseeing purposes, which is not a valid reason for preventing development.
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