The Obama Administration has had a bad time recently in property rights cases. In particular, three cases, Arkansas Game & Fish Commision v. United States, Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, and Sackett v. EPA, were big losses for the government and big wins for the private property owners who are increasingly subject to unconstitutional attempts to take land. Last week, Cato, along with the National Federation of Independent Business and the Chapman Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to review a circuit court decision that could have far-reaching implications for property owners everywhere.
The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause guarantees that private land cannot be taken for public use without “just compensation.” But apparently, according to the Federal Circuit, this right has an expiration date. Specifically, the Federal Circuit ruled that Mike Mehaffy purchased his land too late to claim that the government regulated away most of his property value. Mehaffy should’ve known, said the court, that the Clean Water Act had been passed and degraded the value of the land he had purchased. This is called the “Notice Rule,” and it leaves Mehaffy without a claim, unable to recoup most of his property investment.
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/takings-clause-has-no-expiration-date-0
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