In a major Supreme Court victory for property rights, the Supreme Court ruled against the government in Koontz v. St. John’s River Water Management District, an important Takings Clause case that I described here here. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion for a 5-4 Court split along ideological lines. This was an unexpected outcome because the oral argument went well for the government. Justice Scalia, who seemed supportive of the government’s position at argument, apparently changed his mind. As I speculated in this recent post, the fact that Alito ended up with the opinion was a positive sign for the property owner.
I will have more to say about this case once I have had a chance to study the opinion.
UPDATE: I should note that the case was remanded to the Florida Supreme Court for further proceedings. So technically the property owner did not win a complete victory; we don’t yet know what kind of compensation he will get. However, he did prevail on the big issue before the Supreme Court.
UPDATE #2: I have change “regulatory takings” to “takings” in the title of this post, because the Supreme Court majority ruled that the case was not technically a regulatory takings claim, but a per se taking.