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Tag: private property

  • Supreme Court appears likely to strike down California law banning guns in stores and restaurants

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    WASHINGTON  — Do licensed gun owners have a right to carry a loaded weapon into stores, restaurants and other private places that are open to the public?

    California and Hawaii are among five states with new laws that forbid carrying firearms onto private property without the consent of an owner or manager. But the Trump administration joined gun-rights advocates on Tuesday in urging the Supreme Court to strike down these laws as unconstitutional under the 2nd Amendment.

    Such a law “effectively nullifies licenses to carry arms in public,” Trump’s lawyers said.

    If you “stop at a gasoline station, you are committing a crime,” Deputy Solicitor Gen. Sarah Harris told the court.

    An attorney representing Hawaii said the issue is one of property rights, not gun rights.

    “An invitation to shop is not an invitation to bring your Glock,” Washington attorney Neal Katyal told the court. “There is no constitutional right to enter property that includes a right to bring firearms.”

    The justices sounded split along the usual ideological lines, with the court’s conservatives signaling they are likely to strike down the new laws in five Democratic-led states.

    “You are relegating the 2nd Amendment to second-class status,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told Katyal.

    He said the court had ruled law-abiding persons have a right to carry a firearm for self-defense when they leave home. That would include going to stores or businesses that are open to the public.

    “If the owners don’t like guns, why don’t they just put up a sign?” Alito said.

    Both sides agreed that business owners are generally free to allow or prohibit guns on their property. However, state officials said, the laws are important because business owners rarely post signs that either welcome or forbid the carrying of guns.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the 2nd Amendment should have the same standing as the 1st Amendment.

    He said it was understood based on the 1st Amendment that a political candidate may walk up to a house and knock on the door or drop off a pamphlet. He questioned why the court should uphold a law that limits gun owners from entering places that are open to the public.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they too believed the “right to keep and bear arms” included the right to carry weapons, including into stores.

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said property rights should prevail over gun rights.

    “Is there a right to go on private property with a gun?” Sotomayor asked repeatedly. She said the court had never upheld such a broad right.

    But with the possible exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, none of the conservatives agreed.

    Four years ago, the court ruled law-abiding gun owners had a right to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense when they left home. They also said then that guns may be prohibited in “sensitive places” but they did not decide what that meant.

    In the wake of that decision, California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey and Maryland adopted new laws that restricted carrying guns in public places, including parks and beaches.

    The laws also said gun owners may not take a gun into a privately owned business without the “express authorization” of an owner or manager. California’s law went a step further and said the owner must post a clear sign allowing guns.

    The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the laws from Hawaii and California, except for the required posting of a sign in California.

    Three Hawaii residents with concealed carry permits appealed to the Supreme Court and won the backing of the Trump administration.

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    David G. Savage

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  • Supreme Court turns down claim from L.A. landlords over COVID evictions ban

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    WASHINGTON — With two conservatives in dissent, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a property-rights claim from Los Angeles landlords who say they lost millions from unpaid rent during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.

    Without comment, the justices said they would not hear an appeal from a coalition of apartment owners who said they rent “over 4,800 units” in “luxury apartment communities” to “predominantly high-income tenants.”

    They sued the city seeking $20 million in damages from tenants who did not pay their rent during the pandemic emergency.

    They contended that the city’s strict limits on evictions during that time had the effect of taking their private property in violation of the Constitution.

    In the past, the court has repeatedly turned down claims that rent control laws are unconstitutional, even though they limit how much landlords can collect in rent.

    But the L.A. landlords said their claim was different because the city had in effect taken use of their property, at least for a time. They cited the 5th Amendment’s clause that says “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.”

    “In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the most onerous eviction moratoria in the country, stripping property owners … of their right to exclude nonpaying tenants,” they told the court in GHP Management Corporation vs. City of Los Angeles. “The city pressed private property into public service, foisting the cost of its coronavirus response onto housing providers.”

    “By August 2021, when [they] sued the City seeking just compensation for that physical taking, back rents owed by their unremovable tenants had ballooned to over $20 million,” they wrote.

    A federal judge in Los Angeles and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision dismissed the landlords’ suit. Those judges cited the decades of precedent that allowed the regulation of property.

    The court had considered the appeal since February, but only Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case.

    “I would grant review of the question whether a policy barring landlords from evicting tenants for the nonpayment of rent effects a physical taking under the Taking Clause,” Thomas said. “This case meets all of our usual criteria. … The Court nevertheless denies certiorari, leaving in place confusion on a significant issue, and leaving petitioners without a chance to obtain the relief to which they are likely entitled.”

    The Los Angeles landlords asked the court to decide “whether an eviction moratorium depriving property owners of the fundamental right to exclude nonpaying tenants effects a physical taking.”

    In February, the city attorney’s office urged the court to turn down the appeal.

    “As a once-in-a-century pandemic shuttered its businesses and schools, the city of Los Angeles employed temporary, emergency measures to protect residential renters against eviction,” they wrote. The measure protected only those who could “prove COVID-19 related economic hardship,” and it “did not excuse any rent debt that an affected tenant accrued.”

    The city argued that the landlords are seeking a “radical departure from precedent” in the area of property regulation.

    “If a government takes property, it must pay for it,” the city attorneys said. “For more than a century, though, this court has recognized that governments do not appropriate property rights solely by virtue of regulating them.”

    The city said the COVID emergency and the restriction on evictions ended in January 2023.

    In reply, lawyers for the landlords said bans on evictions are becoming the “new normal.” They cited a Los Angeles County measure they said would “preclude evictions for non-paying tenants purportedly affected by the recent wildfires.”

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    David G. Savage

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  • Builders may fight ‘impact fees’ that fund municipal projects in California, Supreme Court rules

    Builders may fight ‘impact fees’ that fund municipal projects in California, Supreme Court rules

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    WASHINGTON — 

    The Supreme Court ruled Friday that developers and home builders in California may challenge the fees commonly imposed by cities and counties to pay for new roads, schools, sewers and other public improvements.

    The justices said these “impact fees” may be unconstitutional if builders and developers are forced to pay an unfair share of the cost of public projects.

    Developers have contended that limiting California’s high fees would lead to the construction of more affordable new housing.

    California state courts had blocked claims arising from “a development impact fee imposed pursuant to a legislatively authorized fee program” for new development in a city or county.

    But the 9-0 Supreme Court decision opened the door for such challenges. The justices revived a constitutional claim brought by an El Dorado County man who put a manufactured home on a small lot and was told he would have to pay a “traffic mitigation fee” of $23,420.

    The decision could have wide impact in California, since local governments have increasingly relied on impact fees rather than property taxes to pay for new projects.

    But the justices did not spell out when such fees become unfair and unconstitutional.

    Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they joined the majority opinion in Sheetz vs. El Dorado County because it merely allows such challenges.

    In a separate opinion, conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he saw merit to the “common government practice of imposing permit conditions, such as impact fees, on new development through reasonable formulas or schedules that assess the impact of classes of development rather than the impact of specific parcels of property.”

    State and county attorneys had made just that argument. They said it was fairer to impose a development fee on all the lots in an area.

    But the justices nonetheless ruled that homeowners and developers may sue to challenge these fees as an unconstitutional taking of their private property. The case will now go back to the California courts.

    The Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento hailed the ruling as a significant victory for property rights.

    “Holding building permits hostage in exchange for excessive development fees is obviously extortion,” said attorney Paul Beard, who represented the El Dorado County homeowner. “We are thrilled that the court agreed and put a stop to a blatant attempt to skirt the 5th Amendment’s prohibition against taking private property without just compensation.”

    Beard said El Dorado County “failed to show — and cannot show — that the fee is sufficiently related and proportionate to the traffic impacts” of his client’s “modest home.”

    The debate over development fees is especially relevant in California, where local governments have increasingly relied on the charges to finance parks, streets, schools and other infrastructure and services since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 limited property tax revenues.

    The fees have come under scrutiny in other cases as developers and others have blamed them for driving up the cost of housing and for a wide disparity in cities’ fees.

    A 2018 study by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that, depending on the city, fees for new single-family homes could range from $21,000 to $157,000, and could account for 6% to 18% of the median home price.

    For decades, the Supreme Court has cast a skeptical eye at California’s regulation of private property. In a pair of decisions, it limited the power of government officials to demand concessions from a property owner in exchange for a building permit.

    In 1987, justices ruled for the owner of a beach bungalow in Ventura who was told he could not obtain a permit to expand his home unless he agreed to allow the public access to the beachfront. The conservative majority at the time described this demand as akin to “extortion” and said it violated the 5th Amendment’s clause that forbids the taking of “private property … for public use without just compensation.”

    In a follow-up decision involving a store owner who was forced to allow a bike path on her property, the court said the government may not impose such special conditions on property owners unless it can show an owner’s new development would cause direct harm to the community.

    But since then, it has been unclear whether this property right applies to development fees or in situations where fees are set by legislation rather than imposed on a single owner seeking a permit.

    Writing for the court in Friday’s ruling, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that “there is no basis for affording property rights less protection in the hands of legislators than administrators. The Takings Clause applies equally to both — which means that it prohibits legislatures and agencies alike from imposing unconstitutional conditions on land-use permits.”

    The case arose when property owner George Sheetz sought a permit to put a manufactured home on a lot he owned in Placerville, outside Sacramento. El Dorado County required him to pay a “traffic impact mitigation” fee to obtain the permit. Some of the money was to go toward upgrades to Highway 50, which runs through the area, but most was to go toward new or expanded roads in the county.

    Sheetz paid the fee and obtained his permit, then sued to challenge the fee as unconstitutional. He argued that the taxpayers of the county, not the new owner of a small home, should be required to pay for road building.

    The justices agreed to hear his appeal after he lost in the California courts.

    State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who has supported legislation to rein in developer fees, said he didn’t expect Friday’s decision by itself to have a significant effect on the debate in Sacramento because it only called out one extreme situation.

    “Ultimately, the solution is the same today as it was yesterday,” Wiener said. “The California Legislature needs to put in place an actual structure for impact fees. Right now, it’s all over the map.”

    Wiener said he sympathizes with local governments that turn to the fees because it’s easier than raising revenue through broad-based taxes — but he said some cities use sky-high fees to block housing development.

    “There is something a little odd about effectively taxing new housing to pay for societal needs that should be paid generally by taxpayers — by the entire community,” he said.

    Graham Knaus, executive director of the California State Assn. of Counties, said in a statement Friday that the organization was still reviewing the ruling to understand its implications.

    But he said that “limiting the ability to legislatively enact fees will negatively impact the ability of our 58 counties to protect the health and welfare of their communities and drastically limit the building of vital local infrastructure.”

    “In many cases,” Knaus said, “these fees are the only tool available to pay for new infrastructure around certain development projects.”

    Times staff writer Liam Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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    David G. Savage

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