302
OCTOBER TERM, 2001
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 00-1167. Argued January 7, 2002—Decided April 23, 2002
Respondent Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) imposed two moratoria, totaling 32 months, on development in the Lake Tahoe Basin while formulating a comprehensive land-use plan for the area. Petitioners, real estate owners affected by the moratoria and an association representing such owners, filed parallel suits, later consolidated, claiming that TRPA's actions constituted a taking of their property without just compensation. The District Court found that TRPA had not effected a "partial taking" under the analysis set out in Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104; however, it concluded that the moratoria did constitute a taking under the categorical rule announced in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, because TRPA temporarily deprived petitioners of all economically viable use of their land. On appeal, TRPA successfully challenged the District Court's takings determination. Finding that the only question in this facial challenge was whether Lucas' rule applied, the Ninth Circuit held that because the regulations had only a temporary impact on petitioners' fee interest, no categorical taking had occurred; that Lucas applied to the relatively rare case in which a regulation permanently denies all productive use of an entire parcel, whereas the moratoria involved only a temporal slice of the fee interest; and that First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304, concerned the question whether compensation is an appropriate remedy for a temporary taking, not whether or when such a taking has occurred. The court also concluded that Penn Central's ad hoc balancing approach was the proper framework for analyzing whether a taking had occurred, but that petitioners had not challenged the District Court's conclusion that they could not make out a claim under Penn Central's factors.
Held: The moratoria ordered by TRPA are not per se takings of property requiring compensation under the Takings Clause. Pp. 321-343.
(a) Although this Court's physical takings jurisprudence, for the most part, involves the straightforward application of per se rules, its regulatory takings jurisprudence is characterized by "essentially ad hoc,
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