Decisions legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states and upholding Obamacare weren’t the only ones issued by the Supreme Court this month, nor were all the decisions so sharply divisive. By a vote of 8-1, the justices also upheld the right of Marvin Horne, a raisin farmer in Fresno, California, to keep the government from confiscating a third of his crop without just compensation. This established a precedent that extended Fifth Amendment protections against government seizure of property are not limited to real estate but extend to raisins as well.
This is a welcome decision that reinforces critical constitutional protection of personal property rights.
What’s noteworthy about this case is that, before this decision, the government wasn’t willing to acknowledge that it was taking the farmer’s property at all. As part of a New Deal-era program, a board of private raisin growers issued annual “marketing orders” that prevented individual growers from selling a substantial portion of their crops so all could command a higher price in the market for a reduced supply. The U.S. Department of Agriculture backed the marketing orders and gave them force of law, which meant that Horne had no choice but to withhold his product from the open market, with the government taking the surplus raisins — with little or no compensation — for use in federal programs, exports or charity. While this was fine with most of the growers, Horne likened this to the government “stealing his crop.”
The lone dissenting justice was Sonia Sotomayor, who insisted that this didn’t constitute a confiscation of property, but rather a regulation of the sale of raisins. But as Chief Justice John Roberts noted, this constituted a “clear physical taking” because “(a)ctual raisins are transferred from the growers to the government." The fact that this happened with the approval of the majority of the growers did not mean that Horne had to surrender his rights to his own property.
Cases involving Fifth Amendment consideration usually focus on eminent domain seizures of land, which is condemned and then used for a purpose that the government deems more worthy than that of private property owners. Eminent domain powers have been extended by the judicial branch in a number of cases, and many are rightly concerned that this power is far too easy to abuse. The fact that the high court is now willing to recognize that the Constitution protects raisins as well as real estate demonstrates that it is moving away from the broader eminent domain parameters established by prior precedents. That’s a positive development. When it comes to seizing private property, it’s generally better to err on the side of caution.