Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 11 (1994)

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384

DOLAN v. CITY OF TIGARD

Opinion of the Court

cago, 166 U. S. 226, 239 (1897), provides: "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." 5 One of the principal purposes of the Takings Clause is "to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole." Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49 (1960). Without question, had the city simply required petitioner to dedicate a strip of land along Fanno Creek for public use, rather than conditioning the grant of her permit to redevelop her property on such a dedication, a taking would have occurred. Nollan, supra, at 831. Such public access would deprive petitioner of the right to exclude others, "one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property." Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164, 176 (1979).

On the other side of the ledger, the authority of state and local governments to engage in land use planning has been sustained against constitutional challenge as long ago as our decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365 (1926). "Government hardly could go on if to some extent values incident to property could not be diminished

5 Justice Stevens' dissent suggests that this case is actually grounded in "substantive" due process, rather than in the view that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment was made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. But there is no doubt that later cases have held that the Fourteenth Amendment does make the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment applicable to the States, see Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 122 (1978); Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U. S. 825, 827 (1987). Nor is there any doubt that these cases have relied upon Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226 (1897), to reach that result. See, e. g., Penn Central, supra, at 122 ("The issu[e] presented . . . [is] whether the restrictions imposed by New York City's law upon appellants' exploitation of the Terminal site effect a 'taking' of appellants' property for a public use within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment, which of course is made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, see Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226, 239 (1897)").

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