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Registration is open and underway for this year’s edition of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute in Denver, March 5-7, 2025. Location: University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

This conference is more what we’ll call “land usey” than ALI-CLE’s Eminent Domain & Land Valuation Litigation Conference (as the respective titles suggest), but there’s a lot at RMLUI for those whose practices lean more on the eminent domain side than the land usey. As we know, any attempt to draw a clean line between these practices is futile, and there’s tons of crossover. That’s why we’ll be there, downloading the latest.

As always, there’s a great a la carte menu of programs and tracks for attendees to choose from, including sessions on “Sheetz and Exactions,” “Brownfields Re-Re-Development,” “Managing Growth and Infrastructure in the Southwest,” “ADUs for Aging in Place,” and, thankfully, “Legal Ethics.” And some add-on workshops the day…

Continue Reading 2025 Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, Denver (March 5-7, Denver U. Law School)

Check this out, a recent Fourth Branch pod featuring lawprof Donald Kochan and our law firm colleague Jeremy Talcott, “Explainer Episode 85 – Rebuilding California: Lessons from the Pacific Palisades Fire.”

Here’s the description:

The 2025 Pacific Palisades Fire has underscored the challenges of building in California’s complex regulatory landscape. In response, Governor Newsom issued an executive order suspending CEQA and Coastal Act requirements to expedite reconstruction, raising important questions about the future of development in the state. In this podcast, experts Jeremy Talcott and Donald Kochan examine California’s regulatory environment before the disaster and the broader implications of its permitting processes in the effort to rebuild. Join us for an in-depth discussion on balancing efficient recovery with long-term regulatory considerations.

The money quote from Jeremy:

And I think this fire really offers a very good inflection point for a reimagining or a revisiting of the utility…

Continue Reading Fourth Branch Podcast: Talcott & Kochan On “Rebuilding California: Lessons from the Pacific Palisades Fire”

You remember when in grade school you learned that your teacher was out for the day, and you were getting a substitute? It could be a very good day, or a very not-so-good day. Maybe the sub was cool, and you end up watching filmstrips. But if you drew the short straw, the sub acted like a real teacher and did real teacher stuff like give you homework.

That’s what it must’ve felt like when the advocates showed up for arguments in the First Circuit as it considered 29 Greenwood, LLC v. City of Newton, No. 24-1518 (Feb. 4, 2025), and there on the bench was none other than Justice (ret.) Breyer, sitting by designation. Was it going to be filmstrips, or homework?

The case was an appeal of the district court’s rejection of a federal takings claim on the grounds that “this case amounts to an…

Continue Reading When The Substitute Teacher Gives You Homework: Justice Breyer Says Federal Court Needs State Court Decision Before Considering Takings Claim

Nothing to do with the case, beyond the owner’s name.
But c’mon, its ABBA.

Ms. Money and her spouse own a home in San Marcos, Texas. That home is in a historic district.

But it turns out that some of that history isn’t pretty: one of the previous owners was “notoriously associated with the Ku Klux Klan.” Yikes. And to make it worse, that owner, a certain Frank Zimmerman, branded the home by installing a Juliet balcony with a big ol’ wrought iron “Z” on the front of the house.

Very understandably, once they found out this detail (after they purchased the home), Ms. Money and her spouse wanted the Z gone. First the good news: although the home is in a historic district, the structure itself isn’t historic. So there’s that. But game not over, because even though it isn’t historic, the home nonetheless…

Continue Reading Show Me The Money: Reg Takings Claim Ripe Because City Made Its Decision Even If Owner Could Have Administratively Appealed

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Shands Key, with the City of Marathon in the background

This just in: in Shands v. City of Marathon, No. 3D21-1987 (Fed. 5, 2025), Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals sitting en banc held that the city’s downzoning of property (Shands Key, shown above in an exhibit from the Key West trial we participated in in June 2021) from General Use (density: one home per acre) to Conservation Offshore Island (one home per 10 acres; Shands Key is just under 8 acres) effected a Lucas taking because it deprived the owners of economically beneficial uses of their land. This, notwithstanding the possibility of the owners selling the property to a third party, who could have donated the property to city in return for a chit to move up in the city’s development queue.

We’re not going to go into too much detail or offer our opinion because this…

Continue Reading Fla Ct App (en banc) In Takings Case: “failing to vindicate a right expressly stated in the Constitution is not judicial restraint but judicial abnegation. That we must not do.”

Here’s what we’re reading this day:

Good weekend reading as well. Continue Reading Friday Dirt Law Round-Up

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The only courthouse we know where the Supreme Court
is below the Court of Appeals (SJC on the second floor,
appellate court on the third)

A brief one from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

In Attorney General v. Town of Milton, No. SJC-13580 (Jan. 8, 2025), the court rejected a challenge to a state statue which allowed the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the public transit authority in the Boston area, to require municipalities which access the T loosen their zoning regimes to “provide for at least one district of multifamily housing ‘as of right’ near their local MTBA facilities.” Slip op. at 3. One town declined to do so, and the state AG sued to enforce the statute.

The town responded by challenging the statute’s validity and the AG’s authority to sue to enforce it. Yes on both counts held the SJC. But (and there’s a…

Continue Reading Mass SJC: State Requiring Municipalities To Adopt Multi-Family Zoning Is Enforceable By AG…But

Here’s a recently-filed cert petition to watch. We won’t go into the background, because the Questions Presented pretty much lay the foundation:

Respondent County of San Diego, et al. (County), a California land use agency, denied the land use permits for Village Communities et al. (Village) to develop a much-needed residential and mixed-use community in North San Diego County, California. The County denied the Project solely because Village “failed” to satisfy the County’s condition requiring Village to pay money to acquire offsite easements from 100 percent of the 50 property owners along a public road near Village’s property site in spite of the fact that the County made no individualized determination that the monetary exaction, a sum of approximately $2.5 million, bore an “essential nexus” and “rough proportionality” to the purported impacts associated with Village’s project as required by Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U.S. 825 (1987)…

Continue Reading New Cert Petition: To Have A Nollan-Dolan-Koontz Claim, Must You Be Forced To Give Up Land And Money?

At first glance, it might seem like there’s a lot there in the U.S. Court of Appeals’ opinion in Becker v. City of Hillsboro, No. 23-3367 (Jan. 7, 2025).

After all, the city’s prohibition on new private wells and another requirement that newly built homes connect to the city’s water system seems a bit arbitrary (at least the opinion doesn’t give a lot of detail why, other than “the city said so”). And the opinion evaluates a Lucas wipeout, a physical invasion, a Penn Central ad hoc taking, and a Nollan/Dolan claim. Even a Murr denominator issue. This case could have been a good vehicle to examine those questions in more detail that many courts do.

But after taking a dive in, our initial impression that this case would provide a lot of insight — or even food for deeper thought — didn’t pan out. Take a…

Continue Reading CA8 Misses An Opportunity For Penn Central Clarity: No Taking When City Bans New Private Wells, Requires City Water

It’s been a couple of weeks, but we’re still trying to wrap our head around the Iowa Supreme Court’s opinion in Singer v. City of Orange City, No. 23-1600 (Dec. 20, 2024).

The court rejected a facial challenge under the Iowa Constitution’s search-and-seizure clause to a city ordinance requiring the owner of rental units to have a rental permit and to submit to “regular inspections” of those properties. The ordinance purports to create a “right of entry” for a “code official,” and if the owner refuses to voluntarily allow inspection, the inspector may obtain an “administrative search warrant” to enter and search. An owner can exempt itself from inspection by a city inspector if a unit is “inspected by a certified third-party inspection organization[.]” And the ordinance says nothing about probable cause.

Several owners sued, and after discovery, the court granted the plaintiff-owners summary judgment. It declared the ordinance…

Continue Reading Iowa: Mandatory Inspection Of Rental Units Without A Warrant Is Not Facially Unconstitutional, Because Private Inspectors Might Barge In