Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Petitioner v. United States (568 U.S. 23)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided December 4, 2012 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 568 U.S. 23 · 133 S. Ct. 511
- Decided
- December 4, 2012
- Term
- October Term 2012
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court. Periodically from 1993 until 2000, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) authorized flooding that extended into the peak growing season for timber on forest land owned and managed by petitioner, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (Commission). Cumulative in effect, the repeated flooding damaged or destroyed more than 18 million board feet of timber and disrupted the ordinary use and enjoyment of the Commission’s property. The Commission sought compensation from the United States pursuant to the Fifth Amendment’s instruction: “[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The question presented is whether a taking may occur, within the meaning of the Takings Clause, when government-induced flood invasions, although repetitive, are temporary. Ordinarily, this Court’s decisions confirm, if government action would qualify as a taking when permanently continued, temporary actions of the same character may also qualify as a taking. In the instant case, the parties and the courts below divided on the appropriate classification of temporary flooding. Reversing the judgment of the Court of Federal Claims, which awarded compensation to the Commission, the Federal Circuit held, 2 to 1, that compensation may be sought only when flooding is “a permanent or inevitably recurring condition, rather than…
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