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whole.” Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49. Even so, the
States have substantial authority to regulate land use, see Village of
Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U. S. 365, and a State law that merely
restricts land use in a way “reasonably necessary to the effectuation of
a substantial government purpose” is not a taking unless it saps too
much of the property’s value or frustrates the owner’s investment-
backed expectations. Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438
U. S. 104, 123, 127. Similarly, when the government can deny a build-
ing permit to further a “legitimate police-power purpose,” it can also
place conditions on the permit that serve the same end. Nollan, 483
U. S., at 836. For example, if a proposed development will “substan-
tially increase traffic congestion,” the government may condition the
building permit on the owner’s willingness “to deed over the land
needed to widen a public road.” Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Man-
agement Dist., 570 U. S. 595, 605. But when the government with-
holds or conditions a building permit for reasons unrelated to its legit-
imate land-use interests, those actions amount to extortion. See
Nollan, 483 U. S., at 837.
The Court’s decisions in Nollan and Dolan address the potential
abuse of the permitting process by setting out a two-part test modeled
on the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. See Perry v. Sindermann,
408 U. S. 593, 597. First, permit conditions must have an “essential
nexus” to the government’s land-use interest, ensuring that the gov-
ernment is acting to further its stated purpose, not leveraging its per-
mitting monopoly to exact private property without paying for it. See
Nollan, 483 U. S., at 837, 841. Second, permit conditions must have
“rough proportionality” to the development’s impact on the land-use
interest and may not require a landowner to give up (or pay) more than
is necessary to mitigate harms resulting from new development. See
Dolan, 512 U. S., at 391, 393; Koontz, 570 U. S., at 612–615. Pp. 4–6.
(b) The County’s traffic impact fee was upheld below based on the
view that the Nollan/Dolan test does not apply to monetary fees im-
posed by a legislature, but nothing in constitutional text, history, or
precedent supports exempting legislatures from ordinary takings
rules. The Constitution provides “no textual justification for saying
that the existence or the scope of a State’s power to expropriate private
property without just compensation varies according to the branch of
government effecting the expropriation.” Stop the Beach Renourish-
ment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, 560 U. S. 702,
714 (plurality opinion). Historical practice similarly shows that legis-
lation was the conventional way that governments at the state and
national levels exercised their eminent domain power to obtain land
for various governmental purposes, and to provide compensation to
dispossessed landowners. The Fifth Amendment enshrined this long
Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024) 3
Syllabus
standing practice. Precedent points the same way as text and history.
A legislative exception to the Nollan/Dolan test “conflicts with the rest
of [the Court’s] takings jurisprudence,” which does not otherwise dis-
tinguish between legislation and other official acts. Knick v. Township
of Scott, 588 U. S. 180, 185. That is true of precedents involving phys-
ical takings, regulatory takings, and the unconstitutional conditions
doctrine which underlies the Nollan/Dolan test. Pp. 7–10.
(c) As the parties now agree, conditions on building permits are not
exempt from scrutiny under Nollan and Dolan just because a legisla-
tive body imposed them. Whether a permit condition imposed on a
class of properties must be tailored with the same degree of specificity
as a permit condition that targets a particular development is an issue
for the state courts to consider in the first instance, as are issues con-
cerning whether the parties’ other arguments are preserved and how
those arguments bear on Sheetz’s legal challenge. Pp. 10–11.
84 Cal. App. 5th 394, 300 Cal. Rptr. 3d 308, vacated and remanded.
No. 22–1074
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Government/planning/Pages/adopted_general_plan.aspx.
Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024) 3
B
George Sheetz owns property in the center of the County
near Highway 50, which the General Plan classifies as “Low
Density Residential.” 2 Sheetz and his wife applied for a
permit to build a modest prefabricated house on the parcel,
with plans to raise their grandson there. As a condition of
receiving the permit, the County required Sheetz to pay a
traffic impact fee of $23,420, as dictated by the General
Plan’s rate schedule. Sheetz paid the fee under protest and
obtained the permit. The County did not respond to his re-
quest for a refund.
Sheetz sought relief in state court. He claimed, among
other things, that conditioning the building permit on the
payment of a traffic impact fee constituted an unlawful “ex-
action” of money in violation of the Takings Clause. In
Sheetz’s view, our decisions in Nollan v. California Coastal
Comm’n, 483 U. S. 825, and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512
U. S. 374, required the County to make an individualized
determination that the fee amount was necessary to offset
traffic congestion attributable to his specific development.
The County’s predetermined fee schedule, Sheetz argued,
failed to meet that requirement.
The trial court rejected Sheetz’s claim and the California
Court of Appeal affirmed. Relying on precedent from the
California Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal asserted
that the Nollan/Dolan test applies only to permit conditions
imposed “ ‘on an individual and discretionary basis.’ ” 84
Cal. App. 5th, at 406, 300 Cal. Rptr. 3d, at 316 (quoting San
Remo Hotel L. P. v. City and Cty. of San Francisco, 27 Cal.
4th 643, 666–670, 41 P. 3d 87, 102–105 (2002)). Fees im-
posed on “a broad class of property owners through legisla-
tive action,” it said, need not satisfy that test. 84 Cal. App.
——————
2 See Figure LU–1: Land Use Diagram, https://edcgov.us/government/
planning/adoptedgeneralplan/figures/documents/LU-1.pdf.
4 SHEETZ v. COUNTY OF EL DORADO
5th, at 407, 300 Cal. Rptr. 3d, at 316. The California Su-
preme Court denied review.
State courts have reached different conclusions on the
question whether the Takings Clause recognizes a distinc-
tion between legislative and administrative conditions on
land-use permits.3 We granted certiorari to resolve the
split. 600 U. S. ___ (2023).
II
A
When the government wants to take private property to
build roads, courthouses, or other public projects, it must
compensate the owner at fair market value. The just com-
pensation requirement comes from the Fifth Amendment’s
Takings Clause, which provides: “nor shall private property
be taken for public use, without just compensation.” By re-
quiring the government to pay for what it takes, the Tak-
ings Clause saves individual property owners from bearing
“public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be
borne by the public as a whole.” Armstrong v. United
States, 364 U. S. 40, 49 (1960).
The Takings Clause’s right to just compensation coexists
with the States’ police power to engage in land-use plan-
ning. (Though at times the two seem more like in-laws than
soulmates.) While States have substantial authority to reg-
ulate land use, see Village of Euclid v. Amber Realty Co.,
272 U. S. 365 (1926), the right to compensation is triggered
if they “physically appropriat[e]” property or otherwise in-
——————
3 Compare, e.g., Home Builders Assn. of Dayton and Miami Valley v.
Beavercreek, 89 Ohio St. 3d 121, 128, 729 N. E. 2d 349, 356 (2000); North-
ern Ill. Home Builders Assn. v. County of Du Page, 165 Ill. 2d 25, 32–33,
649 N. E. 2d 384, 389 (1995) (applying the Nollan/Dolan test to legisla-
tive permit conditions), with, e.g., St. Clair Cty. Home Builders Assn. v.
Pell City, 61 So. 3d 992, 1007 (Ala. 2010); Home Builders Assn. of Central
Ariz. v. Scottsdale, 187 Ariz. 479, 486, 930 P. 2d 993, 1000 (1997) (follow-
ing California’s approach).
Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024) 5
terfere with the owner’s right to exclude others from it, Ce-
dar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U. S. 139, 149–152 (2021).
That sort of intrusion on property rights is a per se taking.
Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S.
419, 426 (1982). Different rules apply to State laws that
merely restrict how land is used. A use restriction that is
“reasonably necessary to the effectuation of a substantial
government purpose” is not a taking unless it saps too much
of the property’s value or frustrates the owner’s investment-
backed expectations. Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York
City, 438 U. S. 104, 123, 127 (1978); see also Lucas v. South
Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, 1016 (1992)
(“[T]he Fifth Amendment is violated when land-use regula-
tion does not substantially advance legitimate state inter-
ests or denies an owner economically viable use of his land”
(internal quotation marks omitted)).
Permit conditions are more complicated. If the govern-
ment can deny a building permit to further a “legitimate
police-power purpose,” then it can also place conditions on
the permit that serve the same end. Nollan, 483 U. S., at
836. Such conditions do not entitle the landowner to com-
pensation even if they require her to convey a portion of her
property to the government. Ibid. Thus, if a proposed de-
velopment will “substantially increase traffic congestion,”
the government may condition the building permit on the
owner’s willingness “to deed over the land needed to widen
a public road.” Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Manage-
ment Dist., 570 U. S. 595, 605 (2013). We have described
permit conditions of this nature as “a hallmark of responsi-
ble land-use policy.” Ibid. The government is entitled to
put the landowner to the choice of accepting the bargain or
abandoning the proposed development. See R. Epstein,
Bargaining With the State 188 (1993).
The bargain takes on a different character when the gov-
ernment withholds or conditions a building permit for rea-
6 SHEETZ v. COUNTY OF EL DORADO
B
The California Court of Appeal declined to assess the
County’s traffic impact fee for an essential nexus and rough
proportionality based on its view that the Nollan/Dolan test
does not apply to “legislatively prescribed monetary fees.”
84 Cal. App. 5th, at 407, 300 Cal. Rptr. 3d, at 316 (internal
quotation marks omitted). That was error. Nothing in con-
stitutional text, history, or precedent supports exempting
legislatures from ordinary takings rules.
The Constitution’s text does not limit the Takings Clause
to a particular branch of government. The Clause itself,
which speaks in the passive voice, “focuses on (and prohib-
its) a certain ‘act’: the taking of private property without
just compensation.” Knight v. Metropolitan Govt. of Nash-
ville & Davidson Cty., 67 F. 4th 816, 829 (CA6 2023). It
does not single out legislative acts for special treatment.
Nor does the Fourteenth Amendment, which incorporates
the Takings Clause against the States. On the contrary,
the Amendment constrains the power of each “State” as an
undivided whole. §1. Thus, there is “no textual justification
for saying that the existence or the scope of a State’s power
to expropriate private property without just compensation
varies according to the branch of government effecting the
expropriation.” Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Flor-
ida Dept. of Environmental Protection, 560 U. S. 702, 714
(2010) (plurality opinion). Just as the Takings Clause “pro-
tects ‘private property’ without any distinction between dif-
ferent types,” Horne v. Department of Agriculture, 576 U. S.
351, 358 (2015), it constrains the government without any
distinction between legislation and other official acts. So
far as the Constitution’s text is concerned, permit condi-
tions imposed by the legislature and other branches stand
on equal footing.
The same goes for history. In fact, special deference for
legislative takings would have made little sense histori-
cally, because legislation was the conventional way that
8 SHEETZ v. COUNTY OF EL DORADO
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