Cite as: 505 U. S. 1003 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
South Carolina, on which he intended to build single-family homes. In 1988, however, the South Carolina Legislature enacted the Beachfront Management Act, S. C. Code Ann. § 48-39-250 et seq. (Supp. 1990), which had the direct effect of barring petitioner from erecting any permanent habitable structures on his two parcels. See § 48-39-290(A). A state trial court found that this prohibition rendered Lucas's parcels "valueless." App. to Pet. for Cert. 37. This case requires us to decide whether the Act's dramatic effect on the economic value of Lucas's lots accomplished a taking of private property under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments requiring the payment of "just compensation." U. S. Const., Amdt. 5.
I
A
South Carolina's expressed interest in intensively managing development activities in the so-called "coastal zone" dates from 1977 when, in the aftermath of Congress's passage of the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 1280, as amended, 16 U. S. C. § 1451 et seq., the legislature enacted a Coastal Zone Management Act of its own. See S. C. Code Ann. § 48-39-10 et seq. (1987). In its original form, the South Carolina Act required owners of coastal zone land that qualified as a "critical area" (defined in the legislation to include beaches and immediately adjacent sand dunes,
Inc., by William E. Hegarty, Michael S. Gruen, Philip K. Howard, Norman Marcus, and Philip Weinberg; for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States by Lloyd N. Cutler, Louis R. Cohen, David R. Johnson, Peter B. Hutt II, Jerold S. Kayden, David A. Doheny, and Elizabeth S. Merritt; for the Sierra Club et al. by Lawrence N. Minch, Laurens H. Silver, and Charles M. Chambers; and for the U. S. Conference of Mayors et al. by Richard Ruda, Michael G. Dzialo, and Barbara Etkind.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the National Association of Realtors by Ralph W. Holmen; and for the Washington Legal Foundation by Daniel J. Popeo and Paul D. Kamenar.
1007
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