Item B: Ordinance Concerning Goal 5 Natural Resources Study

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2894 112 SUPREME COURT REPORTER 505 U.s. 1016 sions, the Fifth Amendment is violated when land-use regulation "does not substantially advance legitimate state interests or denies an owner. economically viable use of his land." Agins, supra, 447 U.S., at 260, 100 S.Ct., at 2141 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).7 ...!Jg17We have never set forth the justifica- tion for this rule. Perhaps it is simply, as Justice Brennan suggested, that total depri- vation of beneficial use is, from the landown- ers point of view, the equivalent of a physical appropriation. See San Diego Gas & Elec- tric Co. v. San Diego, 450 U.S., at 652, 101 S.Ct., at 1304 (dissenting opinion). "[Flor what is the land but the profits thereof[?]" 1 E. Coke, Institutes, ch. 1, ~ 1 (1st Am. ed. 1812). Surely, at least, in the extraordinary circumstance when no productive or econom- ically beneficial use of land is permitted, it is less realistic to indulge our usual assumption that the legislature is simply "adjusting the violates it-for example, the rule generaIly pro- hibiting content-based restrictions on speech. See, e.g., Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. N.Y. Members af State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. lOS, 1l5, 112 S.Ct. SOl, 508, 116 L.Ed.2d.476 (1991) ("A statute is presumptively inconsistent with the First Amendment if it imposes a financial burden on speakers because of the content of their speech"). Justice BLACKMUN's real quarrel is with the :substantive standard. of liability we ap- ply in this case, a long-established standard we see no need to repudiate. 7. Regrettably, the rhetorical force of our "depri- vation of ~1I economically feasible use" rule is greater than its precision, since the rule does not make clear the "property interest" against which the loss of value is to be measured. When, for example, a regulation requires a developer to leave 90% of a rural tract in its natural state, it is unclear whether we would analyze the situation as one in which the owner has been deprived of alI economically beneficial use of the burdened portion of the tract, or as one in which the owner has suffered a mere diminution "in value of the tract as a whole. (For an extreme-and, we think, unsupportable-view of the relevant calcu- lus, see Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 42 N.Y.2d 324, 333-334, 397 N.Y.S.2d 914, 920, 366 N.E.2d 1271, 1276-1277 (I~77), afrd, 438 U.S. 104, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978), where the state court examined the diminution in a particular parcel's value pro- benefits and burdens of economic life," Penn Central Transportation Co., 438...!Jg18U,S" at 124, 98 S.Ct., at 2659, in a manner that secures an "average reciprocity of advan- tage" to everyone concerned, Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S., at 415, 43 S.Ct., at 160. And the junctional basis for pennit- ting the government, by regulation, to affect property values without compensation-that "Government hardly could go on if to some extent values incident to property could not be diminished without paying for every such change in the general law," id., at 413, 43 S.Ct., at 159-does not apply to the relatively rare situations where the government has deprived a landowner of all economically ben- eficial uses. On the other side of the balance, affirma- tively supporting a compensation require- ment, is the fact that regulations that leave the owner of land without economically bene- ficial or productive options for its use-typi- duced by a municipal ordinance in light of total value of the takings claimant's other holdings in the vicinity.) Unsurprisingly, this uncertainty reo garding the composition of the denominator in our "deprivation" fraction has produced incon- sistent pronouncements by the Court. Compare Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 414,43 S.Ct. 158, 160,67 L.Ed. 322 (1922) (law restricting subsurface extraction of coal held to effect a taking), with Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictiS, 480 U.S. 470, 497-502, 107 S.Ct. 1232, 1248--1251, 94 LEd.2d 472 (1987) (nearly identical law held not to effect a taking); see also id., at 515-520, 107 s.et., at 1257-1260 (REHNQUIST, C.J.. dissenting); Rose, Mahon Reconstructed: Why the Takings Issue is Still a Muddle, 57 S.CaI.L.Rev. 561, 566- 569 (1984). The answer to this difficult question may lie in how the owner's reasonable expecta- tions have been shaped by the State's law of property-i.e., whether and to what degree the State's law has accorded legal recognition and protection to the particular interest in land with respect to which the takings claimant alleges a diminution in (or elimination of) value. In any event, we avoid this difficulty in the present case, since the "interest in land" that Lucas has plead- ed (a fee simple interest) is an estate with a rich tradition of protection at common law, and since the" South Carolina Court of Common Pleas found that the Beachfront Management Act left each of Lucas's beachfront lots without economic value.