540
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
Our cases do not support the plurality's conclusion that the Coal Act takes property. The Coal Act imposes a staggering financial burden on the petitioner, Eastern Enterprises, but it regulates the former mine owner without regard to property. It does not operate upon or alter an identified property interest, and it is not applicable to or measured by a property interest. The Coal Act does not appropriate, transfer, or encumber an estate in land (e. g., a lien on a particular piece of property), a valuable interest in an intangible (e. g., intellectual property), or even a bank account or accrued interest. The law simply imposes an obligation to perform an act, the payment of benefits. The statute is indifferent as to how the regulated entity elects to comply or the property it uses to do so. To the extent it affects property interests, it does so in a manner similar to many laws; but until today, none were thought to constitute takings. To call this sort of governmental action a taking as a matter of constitutional interpretation is both imprecise and, with all due respect, unwise.
As the role of Government expanded, our experience taught that a strict line between a taking and a regulation is difficult to discern or to maintain. This led the Court in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U. S. 393 (1922), to try to span the two concepts when specific property was subjected to what the owner alleged to be excessive regulation. "The general rule at least is, that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking." Id., at 415. The quoted sentence is, of course, the genesis of the so-called regulatory takings doctrine. See Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, 1014 (1992) ("Prior to Justice Holmes's exposition in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, it was generally thought that the Takings Clause reached only a 'direct appropriation' of property or the functional equivalent of a 'practical ouster of [the owner's] possession' " (citations omitted)). Without denigrating the importance the
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