mistermack wrote:Going back to the OP, I think that getting a court decision in favour of compensation is extremely unlikely.
You base your claim on the assertion that the government is effectively taking your property. That is not proved and very hard to establish.
Regulatory takings are hard to prove because the Court typically engages in an "ad hoc inquiry" based on the factual circumstances because it has not been able to come up with a bright-line test, such as the Involuntary Good Samaritan test. But the essential question is whether the government has gone "too far" in regulating the use that the owner can make of his property. In my view, effectively barring entry or ANY physical occupation or use of that 33 acre circle under a nest tree, not to mention taking dominion and control of the tree and nest itself (it's just as illegal to "disturb" a nest, whether occupied or unoccupied), is equivalent to the government occupying the property physically itself, using the eagles as its proxy. They have, through regulation, effectively erected a barbed-wire, electrified chain-link fence around the nest tree and the penalty for breaching that barrier is extreme. That they use a "recommendation" backed by a law so vague that ANY "disturbance" whatsoever that affects eagle behavior (and who really knows what will do that to any particular nesting pair) results in a draconian penalty that has the practical effect of simply excluding me, the owner, from that part of my property, using fear of prosecution instead of wire and electricity. But the effect is exactly the same: I don't get to freely use and enjoy nearly 100 acres of my own land (three nest sites, only one occupied at a time, but the other two protected for 10 years) because the government (which is the people) value my property as eagle habitat without my consent.
If I was defending the government in court, I would argue that protecting the Eagles was not done to benefit the government, nor the population, but purely a duty that we ALL inherit when we are born, and that is to defend the environment.
That's not a duty that the government gets to impose on the individual. If it were, cities would not exist, nor suburbs, nor towns, nor roads, nor agriculture, nor any human activity. We'd all have to commit suicide at birth to abide by that duty. Every person has a duty not to HARM the environment in ways that export that harm to others. Thus, one cannot poison the air or land so that the poison leaves your property and harms others, either by air or water. But one can apply poison on one's own land in ways that do not harm others in order to use and enjoy, and profit from one's own property. One can eliminate natural habitat and build a house, or a parking lot. One can do many things that don't "defend" the environment by way of using and enjoying one's own property and the government has little say in that unless it wants to buy it to preserve it. Certainly some regulation is allowed to prevent the export of harm, but the landowner has wide latitude in how he uses and enjoys his property if the concept of private property ownership is to have any true existence or utility.
One of the concepts in takings jurisprudence is the idea that the individual should not be required to bear the burden of providing a public benefit when it should be the burden of the public as well. This is the root concept in the Fifth Amendment proscription on uncompensated takings. Why, for example, should the landowner who owns property the public wants to turn into a park, or a post office, or a road, or a government building be required to bear the economic costs all on his own by having the government simply take his property for the public use? Should not the public purchase what it wants to use for public purposes? That's the intent of the Fifth Amendment.
So, effectively, how does my situation differ from that of the landowner who is being expelled from his land so that the government can build a highway? Both are dispossessed of our ability to use our land by government action. In one case its by physical occupation of the land by the public through the building of a road, in the other it's through regulatory closing of the land to use by the owner to benefit the public's desire to protect eagles...or in other words the public's desire to establish a federally-protected eagle breeding facility, with the location chosen by the eagles. That would be no different in effect from the government coming in and laying claim to the tree and 33 acres around it and building an artificial nest and planting captive eagles on the nest and covering the whole thing with netting to keep the eagles in place.
To argue that it is done for the sake of the federal government is really to argue that nothing has any value except a monetary one. In reality, it's a restriction placed on the use of property, similar to planning laws.
Again, a zoning restriction is a restriction on activity or improvements to a property that applies equally to all, not just to one person. And when a zoning restriction goes "too far" in restricting how a landowner may use his land, it becomes a taking requiring compensation. One of the fundamental rights in the "bundle of rights" one has as a property owner is the right to occupy your land...all of it. One's right to physically walk upon and use and enjoy one's property is an "essential strand" in the theory of property rights. It's closely connected to an equally fundamental right to exclude others. The Court has ruled that when a person's right to exclude others (like the public) is impaired, by requiring him to submit to trespass by others, that is an ipso facto taking that requires compensation and no further ad hoc inquiry is required. That's what the Nollan case in California pointed out, and that's been affirmed in numerous other cases. Likewise, when the property owner is excluded from his own land...not just restricted as to what he may do by way of improvement or agriculture but physically excluded from any use... this too is an ipso facto violation of a fundamental right of property ownership, notwithstanding that it's being done using threats contingent on animal behavior rather than with armed guards and barbed wire.
If you acquire property with planning restrictions, you have to abide by them and can't expect compensation.
But this is not a "planning restriction" because I didn't propose to do anything other than enter upon and use and enjoy my property. I did not propose to cut down the trees, or build houses, or put up carnival rides, I just want to be free to walk upon my own land and tend to my cattle and manage my pastures as necessary to profit from my land. The eagles showed up uninvited, although they were a welcome sight, and suddenly I was physically excluded from 99 acres of my land on threat of prosecution, fine and imprisonment. That's no different than the military coming onto my property and declaring it to be a military training site and erecting barbed wire an setting armed guards to keep me out. When that happens, it's a taking, and compensation is owed according to the Constitution. That the physical occupation is performed by a proxy of the government in the form of a pair of eagles is not really relevant because the practical effect is the same.
The planning restrictions are there to preserve a certain kind of world, and so are the Eagle laws. Not to materially benefit the state, but to protect the quality of the environment. You are effectively arguing that when you acquire land, you acquire the right to use it in a way that spoils the environment, and should be compensated if you are prevented in doing that.
Not at all. In fact, it is BECAUSE I did not use it in a way that spoils the environment, like everyone around me who subdivided and built tract homes did, that the eagles had habitat that was attractive to them in the first place. So where were the restrictions on them? Why were they allowed to use, enjoy and occupy their land freely and I'm not? Why could they cut down trees and build houses and roads and cities, but I'm now expected to give up my land in order that their desire to protect eagles can be effectuated? Again, it's a matter of the individual being required to bear the burden of preserving eagles, which is a burden that rightfully ought to be borne by the entire public, since it is they who insist on preserving them.
The other thing that would work against you is that any new law, or new extension to existing law, has to be practical.
If they allowed this, you could not possibly restrict it to Eagles. Once the principle was established, you could apply it to lizards, newts, bushes, grasses, frogs, badgers, anything that had a legal protection.
The number of claims would grow and grow, with potentially millions of petty claims, and the cost of administering it would be gigantic.
No court is going to want to be responsible for a can of worms that size.
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The court, in my view, has no choice. They only determine if the law violates my constitutional rights. The economic impacts are not their concern and indeed they are not permitted to consider economic arguments in the adjudication of constitutional rights, that's the concern of the Congress. If the law is so draconian that it opens the government to widespread liability under the Fifth Amendment, then Congress will have to amend or repeal the law to comport with the Constitution. And frankly, that's exactly what needs to happen. If the public wants to take effective possession of private property in order to preserve it as wildlife habitat for endangered species, then the public should be willing to pay to acquire that property in fee simple rather than trying to shift the burden of paying for that preservation to the private landowner, who must now sacrifice sometimes substantial (as in my case) and sometimes complete use and economic value of his land to serve the needs and desires of the public for biodiversity. It's hypocritical and unfair in the extreme for all those people living in houses and cities who are actually responsible for the destruction of wildlife habitat that facilitated THEIR style of living to now complain that the few remaining large landowners like me must sacrifice their economic futures to satisfy the public's need to preserve wildlife habitat. We, of everyone on the planet, are the only ones who have walked the walk when it comes to preserving the environment, which is precisely why the public now wants to take dominion and control of our property through regulations that THEY THEMSELVES are completely exempt from because they have ALREADY DESTROYED their share of that habitat. Do you not see the fundamental unfairness of those who have already destroyed their "share" of habitat demanding that those who have properly stewarded the land all this time and have preserved the remaining habitat continue to do so at the expense of the private property owner and NOT THE PUBLIC? How on earth do you see that as fair and reasonable?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protecting endangered species and wildlife habitat, but the public has to be willing to pay for what it takes in order to achieve that goal, if it wants to use private, rather than the abundant public lands to do so. That's what the Constitution demands. The ONLY reason that more takings cases are not forcing the government to buy private lands (and it happens sometimes) is because the ESA has a permitting process that allows landowners to work out operating plans and agreements that leave them with at least some remaining reasonable economic value, and the F&WS is careful to meet this standard so that it won't be forced to provide compensation. But the Eagle Act has no such provisions. While one can ostensibly get a permit to "take" an eagle, there is no provision for creating an operating plan that authorizes specific uses that will immunize the landowner from prosecution if he follows that approved plan. That's a major difference, and one that renders the Eagle Act constitutionally suspect and likely invalid.
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