Something to keep an eye on.
Supreme Court will consider property rights case.
WASHINGTON – Nov. 8, 2016 – A case about protecting private property rights has gotten caught up in the political stalemate over the U.S. Supreme Court. However, it should get its hearing next year and be decided by summer, according to John Groen, principal attorney at the nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation, who will be arguing for the plaintiffs. Groen spoke at the Realtors® Conference & Expo in Orlando, Fla.
The court case, Murr v. Wisconsin, focuses on a decades-long battle over an issue referred to in the legal profession as "parcel as a whole." The term refers to how government treats a property when it imposes regulatory restrictions that affect its value.
The issue focuses on just compensation from government restrictions. Local governments say that these restrictions don't affect the parcel as a whole – rather just separate parcels even if they share common ownership – and aren't bound by the U.S. Constitution clause that requires just compensation to the owner.
In the Murr case, a family owned two parcels adjacent to one another but were prohibited from selling one of the parcels because it was never improved and thus considered substandard by the St. Croix (Wisc.) county government. If the family wanted to sell the property, the government said, they had to sell the parcel that the Murrs lived on along with it, effectively treating the two properties as a single parcel – parcel as a whole.
Treated in that way, the government wasn't bound to provide just compensation for the regulatory "taking" it had imposed on the family.
The Murrs lost a lawsuit challenging the government's parcel as a whole treatment, but the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year selected the case for a hearing. (In the unsuccessful state case, NAR filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Murrs.)
The Supreme Court was supposed to hear the case in October but rescheduled it for next year. Groen speculated that the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia caused the delay. That left the Court with only eight justices and risked stalemating the case if the ruling ended in a 4-4 tie.
Groen encouraged Realtors to keep their eye on the outcome, because the "parcel as a whole" issue has been one of the most persistent challenges to private property rights over the past few decades, and clarity is badly needed.
The hearing is now scheduled for April, and a decision is expected in June.
Source: Robert Freedman, REALTOR® Magazine
Nov 9, 2016
Something to keep an eye on!
Supreme Court will consider property rights case
WASHINGTON – Nov. 8, 2016 – A case about protecting private property rights has gotten caught up in the political stalemate over the U.S. Supreme Court. However, it should get its hearing next year and be decided by summer, according to John Groen, principal attorney at the nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation, who will be arguing for the plaintiffs. Groen spoke at the Realtors® Conference & Expo in Orlando, Fla.
The court case, Murr v. Wisconsin, focuses on a decades-long battle over an issue referred to in the legal profession as "parcel as a whole." The term refers to how government treats a property when it imposes regulatory restrictions that affect its value.
The issue focuses on just compensation from government restrictions. Local governments say that these restrictions don't affect the parcel as a whole – rather just separate parcels even if they share common ownership – and aren't bound by the U.S. Constitution clause that requires just compensation to the owner.
In the Murr case, a family owned two parcels adjacent to one another but were prohibited from selling one of the parcels because it was never improved and thus considered substandard by the St. Croix (Wisc.) county government. If the family wanted to sell the property, the government said, they had to sell the parcel that the Murrs lived on along with it, effectively treating the two properties as a single parcel – parcel as a whole.
Treated in that way, the government wasn't bound to provide just compensation for the regulatory "taking" it had imposed on the family.
The Murrs lost a lawsuit challenging the government's parcel as a whole treatment, but the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year selected the case for a hearing. (In the unsuccessful state case, NAR filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Murrs.)
The Supreme Court was supposed to hear the case in October but rescheduled it for next year. Groen speculated that the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia caused the delay. That left the Court with only eight justices and risked stalemating the case if the ruling ended in a 4-4 tie.
Groen encouraged Realtors to keep their eye on the outcome, because the "parcel as a whole" issue has been one of the most persistent challenges to private property rights over the past few decades, and clarity is badly needed.
The hearing is now scheduled for April, and a decision is expected in June.
Source: Robert Freedman, REALTOR® Magazine
© 2016 Florida Realtors®
