Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302, 34 (2002)

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Cite as: 535 U. S. 302 (2002)

Opinion of the Court

"normal delays in obtaining building permits, changes in zoning ordinances, variances, and the like," 482 U. S., at 321, as well as to orders temporarily prohibiting access to crime scenes, businesses that violate health codes, fire-damaged buildings, or other areas that we cannot now foresee. Such a rule would undoubtedly require changes in numerous practices that have long been considered permissible exercises of the police power. As Justice Holmes warned in Mahon, "[g]overnment hardly could go on if to some extent values incident to property could not be diminished without paying for every such change in the general law." 260 U. S., at 413. A rule that required compensation for every delay in the use of property would render routine government processes prohibitively expensive or encourage hasty decisionmaking. Such an important change in the law should be the product of legislative rulemaking rather than adjudication.30

More importantly, for reasons set out at some length by Justice O'Connor in her concurring opinion in Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U. S., at 636, we are persuaded that the better approach to claims that a regulation has effected a temporary taking "requires careful examination and weighing of all the relevant circumstances." In that opinion, Justice O'Connor specifically considered the role that the "temporal relationship between regulatory enactment and title acquisition" should play in the analysis of a takings claim. Id., at 632. We have no occasion to address that particular issue in this case, because it involves a differ-30 In addition, we recognize the anomaly that would be created if we were to apply Penn Central when a landowner is permanently deprived of 95% of the use of her property, Lucas, 505 U. S., at 1019, n. 8, and yet find a per se taking anytime the same property owner is deprived of all use for only five days. Such a scheme would present an odd inversion of Justice Holmes' adage: "A limit in time, to tide over a passing trouble, well may justify a law that could not be upheld as a permanent change." Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135, 157 (1921).

335

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