Yee v. Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, 10 (1992)

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528

YEE v. ESCONDIDO

Opinion of the Court

erty to tenants, to continue doing so. To the contrary, the Mobilehome Residency Law provides that a park owner who wishes to change the use of his land may evict his tenants, albeit with 6 or 12 months notice. Cal. Civ. Code Ann. § 798.56(g). Put bluntly, no government has required any physical invasion of petitioners' property. Petitioners' tenants were invited by petitioners, not forced upon them by the government. See Florida Power, supra, at 252-253. While the "right to exclude" is doubtless, as petitioners assert, "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), we do not find that right to have been taken from petitioners on the mere face of the Escondido ordinance.

Petitioners suggest that the statutory procedure for changing the use of a mobile home park is in practice "a kind of gauntlet," in that they are not in fact free to change the use of their land. Reply Brief for Petitioners 10, n. 16. Because petitioners do not claim to have run that gauntlet, however, this case provides no occasion to consider how the procedure has been applied to petitioners' property, and we accordingly confine ourselves to the face of the statute. See Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470, 493-495 (1987). A different case would be presented were the statute, on its face or as applied, to compel a landowner over objection to rent his property or to refrain in perpetuity from terminating a tenancy. See Florida Power, supra, at 251-252, n. 6; see also Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U. S. 825, 831-832 (1987); Fresh Pond Shopping Center, Inc. v. Callahan, 464 U. S. 875, 877 (1983) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).

On their face, the state and local laws at issue here merely regulate petitioners' use of their land by regulating the relationship between landlord and tenant. "This Court has consistently affirmed that States have broad power to regulate housing conditions in general and the landlord-tenant rela-

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