240
Opinion of the Court
these accounts. Indeed, if the funds were able to make any net return, they would not be subject to the IOLTA program." No. C97-0146C (WD Wash., Jan. 30, 1998), App. to Pet. for Cert. 94a.
The categorical requirement in Washington's IOLTA program that mandates the choice of a non-IOLTA account when net interest can be generated for the client provided an independent ground for the en banc court's judgment. It held that the program did "not work a constitutional violation with regard to Brown's and Hayes's property: Even if their property was taken, the Fifth Amendment only protects against a taking without just compensation. Because of the way the IOLTA program operates, the compensation due Brown and Hayes for any taking of their property would be nil. There was therefore no constitutional violation when they were not compensated." 271 F. 3d, at 861-862.
We agree with that holding.11
VI
To recapitulate: It is neither unethical nor illegal for lawyers to deposit their clients' funds in a single bank account. A state law that requires client funds that could not otherwise generate net earnings for the client to be deposited in an IOLTA account is not a "regulatory taking." A law that requires that the interest on those funds be transferred to a different owner for a legitimate public use, however, could be a per se taking requiring the payment of "just compensation" to the client. Because that compensation is measured by the owner's pecuniary loss—which is zero whenever the Washington law is obeyed—there has been no violation of the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment in this case. It is therefore unnecessary to discuss the reme-11 Contrary to Justice Scalia's assertion, this conclusion does not depend on the fact that interest "was created by the beneficence of a state regulatory program." Post, at 241. It rests instead on the fact that just compensation for a net loss of zero is zero.
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