Hennepin County, Minnesota, sold Geraldine Tyler's condominium to collect a tax debt of about $15,000. The condo fetched $40,000. The county kept the whole amount, including the $25,000 left over after the debt was paid. Tyler sued, and in 2023 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the county could not do that. A government that takes more of a person's property than it is owed has taken it, and the Constitution says it has to pay.
That sentence is the whole of the Takings Clause, and the Court has spent a century working out what it means. The Fifth Amendment says that private property shall not "be taken for public use, without just compensation." Every word has been fought over: what counts as a taking, what counts as a public use, and how much a government must pay. The money question sits under all of it. If taking costs nothing, governments take. If it costs something, they weigh it.
When a regulation takes: Mahon, Lucas, Murr
The first question is the hardest. Governments rarely seize land outright. More often they regulate it, and a rule can wipe out value as surely as a bulldozer.
In Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon (1922), Pennsylvania passed a law banning coal mining that caused buildings to sink. The coal company had sold the surface of its land and kept the right to mine underneath, and the law stripped that right without payment. Justice Holmes wrote for the Court (Justice Brandeis dissented) that "if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking." It is a rule with no edges. The Court did not say how far is too far, and lower courts have been arguing about it since.
The Court has been sketching the edges ever since. In Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978) it settled on a balancing test that looks at the economic impact of the rule, how much it interferes with what the owner reasonably expected, and the character of the government action. In Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992) it drew one hard line. A man who had bought beachfront lots in South Carolina was then barred by a new state law from building on them. When a regulation takes away all economically beneficial use of land, the Court held, the owner is owed compensation, unless the restriction was already part of the owner's title through the state's background principles of property and nuisance law. The government cannot get out of paying by declaring that the use is against the public interest.
Then comes the question of what the "property" is. Murr v. Wisconsin (2017) involved two adjoining lots on a Wisconsin river that a family owned separately. A state rule merged them into one lot, so the family could not sell the vacant one separately. Looked at alone, the vacant lot lost much of its value; looked at together with the lot next to it, the family still held a large riverfront property. Justice Kennedy's opinion said there is no single test: courts weigh a set of factors, including how state law treats the land and its physical characteristics, to decide what the "parcel as a whole" is. In that case the owners lost. The practical effect is that the framing of the question can decide the answer, which is why both sides argue about it first.
When government occupies: Causby, Horne, Cedar Point
The second line of cases is easier because it asks whether the government took physical possession. If it did, the Court has increasingly said, the amount of value lost does not matter. The government pays.
United States v. Causby (1946) began with a chicken farm next to a North Carolina airport. Military planes took off and landed so low over the farm that chickens, frightened by the noise, flew into walls and died, as many as six to ten in a day, and the family gave up the business. Justice Douglas rejected the old idea that a landowner owns everything up to the sky. Flights are not a taking just because they pass overhead, the Court said, but flights so low and frequent that they interfere directly with the use of the land are.
For decades after that the Court treated physical takings as a given and fought about regulations. In Horne v. Department of Agriculture (2015) it extended the rule to personal property. A federal raisin program required growers to hand over a share of their crop to a government reserve. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Takings Clause protects personal property as much as land, and the government must pay when it takes raisins as it must when it takes real estate.
Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) pushed further. A California regulation gave union organizers a right to enter farms to talk to workers, up to three hours a day, 120 days a year. The Court ruled 6-3 that the regulation was a physical taking, a per se one, because it took away the owner's right to exclude. Roberts wrote that government action that physically appropriates property is a taking even when it comes as a regulation, and even when it lasts only part of the time. Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan.
Public use, and who gets the land: Berman and Kelo
The third question is whether the taking serves a "public use" at all. In Berman v. Parker (1954), Washington, D.C. wanted to clear a neighborhood it called blighted. The owners of a department store in the area argued that the government could not take it for a redevelopment plan that would hand the land to private developers. The Court sided with the government without a dissent. Justice Douglas's opinion said that once the public purpose has been decided, how to carry it out is for Congress to decide.
Fifty years later the logic reached a New England neighborhood. In Kelo v. City of New London (2005), Connecticut's city of New London took homes in its Fort Trumbull area as part of a plan to redevelop it, in hope of jobs and more tax revenue. The Court, 5-4, with Justice Stevens writing, held that economic development counts as a public use. Justice O'Connor's dissent, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, said the ruling erased the line between public and private use. The homeowners lost.
How owners get to court: Knick
A right to compensation is only worth the forum it can be claimed in. For decades after Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank (1985), an owner who thought a local government had taken property had to seek compensation in state court first, and in practice that meant being stuck there. In Knick v. Township of Scott (2019), Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the right arises when the taking occurs and overruled that requirement, so an owner can go to federal court at once.
What the Court has added since 2021
The two most recent cases are about money at the edges. Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023), the case that opens this post, held that a government that sells a tax-delinquent home for more than the debt owes the owner the surplus. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for all nine justices; Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Jackson, added a separate concurrence.
Sheetz v. County of El Dorado (2024) asked whether the rules that restrain what a government may demand in exchange for a building permit apply when the demand comes from a legislature and not an individual official. The California courts said no. The Supreme Court said the Takings Clause does not make that distinction and sent the case back. It did not decide whether the fee in the case was valid, or how closely a fee imposed on a class of properties has to be tailored. Justice Sotomayor's concurrence flagged another open question, whether a fee outside the permit process can be a taking at all. Those are the questions that decide how much a city can charge a builder to cover the cost of new roads.
Why it matters now
Follow the money in these cases. When a government occupies property, keeps surplus from a sale, or demands a fee for a permit, the Court has said who pays and on what terms. Where a regulation only lowers value, the answer is a balancing test with no number in it. Who bears the cost of a public project, the taxpayers or one owner, is the question the Fifth Amendment poses, and the cases above answer it one set of facts at a time.
Sources
Each case below is on its scotus.etalia.ai page, which links to the opinion.
- Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon (1922), scotus.etalia.ai
- Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978), scotus.etalia.ai
- Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992), scotus.etalia.ai
- Murr v. Wisconsin (2017), scotus.etalia.ai
- United States v. Causby (1946), scotus.etalia.ai
- Horne v. Department of Agriculture (2015), scotus.etalia.ai
- Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021), scotus.etalia.ai
- Berman v. Parker (1954), scotus.etalia.ai
- Kelo v. City of New London (2005), scotus.etalia.ai
- Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank (1985), scotus.etalia.ai
- Knick v. Township of Scott (2019), scotus.etalia.ai
- Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023), scotus.etalia.ai
- Sheetz v. County of El Dorado (2024), scotus.etalia.ai
Updated October 2026.
This post was rewritten with AI (Claude) and reviewed by an editor before publication.
