520
Syllabus
owners and are not required to continue to do so by either the city or the State. On their face, the laws at issue merely regulate petitioners' use of their land by regulating the relationship between landlord and tenant. Any transfer of wealth from park owners to incumbent mobile home owners in the form of submarket rent does not itself convert regulation into physical invasion. Additional contentions made by petitioners—that the ordinance benefits current mobile home owners but not future owners, who must purchase the homes at premiums resulting from the homes' increased value, and that the ordinance deprives petitioners of the ability to choose their incoming tenants—might have some bearing on whether the ordinance causes a regulatory taking, but have nothing to do with whether it causes a physical taking. Moreover, the footnote in Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419, 439, n. 17—that a physical taking claim cannot be defeated by an argument that a landlord can avoid a statute's restrictions by ceasing to rent his property, because his ability to rent may not be conditioned on forfeiting the right to compensation for a physical occupation—has no relevance here, where there has been no physical taking. Since petitioners have made no attempt to change how their land is used, this case also presents no occasion to consider whether the statute, as applied, prevents them from making a change. Pp. 526-532. 2. Petitioners' claim that the ordinance constitutes a denial of substantive due process is not properly before this Court because it was not raised below or addressed by the state courts. The question whether this Court's customary refusal to consider claims not raised or addressed below is a jurisdictional or prudential rule need not be resolved here, because even if the rule were prudential, it would be adhered to in this case. Pp. 532-533. 3. Also improperly before this Court is petitioners' claim that the ordinance constitutes a regulatory taking. The regulatory taking claim is ripe for review; and the fact that it was not raised below does not mean that it could not be properly raised before this Court, since once petitioners properly raised a taking claim, they could have formulated, in this Court, any argument they liked in support of that claim. Nonetheless, the claim will not be considered because, under this Court's Rule 14.1(a), only questions set forth, or fairly included, in the petition for certiorari are considered. Rule 14.1(a) is prudential, but is disregarded only where reasons of urgency or economy suggest the need to address the unpresented question in the case under consideration. The Rule provides the respondent with notice of the grounds on which certiorari is sought, thus relieving him of the expense of unnecessary litigation on the merits and the burden of opposing certiorari on unpresented questions. It also assists the Court in selecting the cases in which certiorari
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