The Supreme Court Friday limited government's power to require private property owners to set aside part of their land for public environmental purposes.
Ruling 5-4 in an Oregon case, the court said a city cannot force a store owner to make part of her land a public bike path in exchange for a permit to build a larger store.The court ruled that the city of Tigard must find other ways to address the increased traffic and storm-water runoff that a larger store could create.
"The city's goals of reducing flooding hazards and traffic congestion, and providing for public greenways, are laudable, but there are outer limits to how this may be done," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the court.
"The city must make some sort of individualized determination that the required dedication is related both in nature and extent to the impact of the proposed development," Rehnquist wrote.
Writing in dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said that when there is doubt about how urban development might affect the risk of traffic congestion or environmental problems, "the public interest in averting them must outweigh the private interest of the commercial entrepreneur."
Stevens, whose dissent was joined by two other justices, said the majority "has stumbled badly" in its opinion.
Friday's ruling reversed an Oregon Supreme Court ruling that allowed Tigard city planners to set a public-use requirement before they would let Florence Dolan build a larger plumbing-supply store.
The Constitution's Fifth Amendment bars government from taking private land without fair compensation. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that government can regulate private land use without payment to the owner as long as the regulation does not deny all economically viable use of the land.
In other decisions, the justices ruled:
- Federal juries don't have to be told a criminal defendant will be committed to a mental hospital if found not guilty by reason of insanity.
- A state cannot bar judges who preside over personal-injury lawsuits from reducing punitive-damages awards they think are excessive.
- People cannot sue over their criminal convictions unless those convictions have been invalidated.