Real Estate & Property Law

Sotomayor On Takings And Property Rights Issues

By Robert Thomas (inversecondemnation.com)

The Senate's hearings on Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court begin today. Here's our summary of cases in which she was involved as a circuit and district judge on the issue.

If confirmed, we may find out her thinking about regulatory takings very soon, because in its next Term, the Court will be reviewing Stop the Beachfront Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dep't of Environmental Protection, No. 08-11 (cert. granted. June 15, 2009), a case about the taking of littoral (beachfront) land in Florida. Our summary of the issues in that case is here.

If she is elevated to the Court, this case could prove especially interesting because her one unabashedly pro-property owner decision as a Second Circuit judge focused on procedural due process. In Brody v. Village of Port Chester, 434 F.3d 121 (2d Cir. 2005), the court held that New York's eminent domain law deprived the property owner of adequate notice, and that when the law provides a short time frame to institute a challenge to a condemnation, the government has an obligation to provide express and conspicuous notice of the time frame. The Stop the Beachfront petition raises a procedural due process question:

Is the Florida Supreme Court's approval of a legislative scheme that allows an executive agency to unilaterally modify a private landowner's property boundary without a judicial hearing or the payment of just compensation a violation of the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution?

This case is shaping up to be very interesting.

Full post as published by inversecondemnation on July 13, 2009 (boomark / email).