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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 14–275
_________________
MARVIN D. HORNE, et al., PETITIONERS
v. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[June 22, 2015]
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of
the Court.
Under the United States Department of
Agriculture’s California Raisin Marketing Order, a percentage of a
grower’s crop must be physically set aside in certain years for the
account of the Government, free of charge. The Government then
sells, allocates, or otherwise disposes of the raisins in ways it
determines are best suited to maintaining an orderly market. The
question is whether the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment bars
the Government from imposing such a demand on the growers without
just compensation.
I
The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of
1937 authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to promulgate
“marketing orders” to help maintain stable markets for particular
agricultural products. The marketing order for raisins requires
growers in certain years to give a percentage of their crop to the
Government, free of charge. The required allocation is determined
by the Raisin Administrative Committee, a Government entity
composed largely of growers and others in the raisin business
appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture. In 2002–2003, this
Committee ordered raisin growers to turn over 47 percent of their
crop. In 2003–2004, 30 percent.
Growers generally ship their raisins to a raisin
“handler,” who physically separates the raisins due the Government
(called “reserve raisins”), pays the growers only for the remainder
(“free-tonnage raisins”), and packs and sells the free-tonnage
raisins. The Raisin Committee acquires title to the reserve raisins
that have been set aside, and decides how to dispose of them in its
discretion. It sells them in noncompetitive markets, for example to
exporters, federal agencies, or foreign governments; donates them
to charitable causes; releases them to growers who agree to reduce
their raisin production; or disposes of them by “any other means”
consistent with the purposes of the raisin program. 7 CFR
§989.67(b)(5) (2015). Proceeds from Committee sales are principally
used to subsidize handlers who sell raisins for export (not
including the Hornes, who are not raisin exporters). Raisin growers
retain an interest in any net proceeds from sales the Raisin
Committee makes, after deductions for the export subsidies and the
Committee’s administrative expenses. In the years at issue in this
case, those proceeds were less than the cost of producing the crop
one year, and nothing at all the next.
The Hornes—Marvin Horne, Laura Horne, and their
family—are both raisin growers and handlers. They “handled” not
only their own raisins but also those produced by other growers,
paying those growers in full for all of their raisins, not just the
free-tonnage portion. In 2002, the Hornes refused to set aside any
raisins for the Government, believing they were not legally bound
to do so. The Government sent trucks to the Hornes’ facility at
eight o’clock one morning to pick up the raisins, but the Hornes
refused entry. App. 31; cf.
post, at 11 (Sotomayor, J.,
dissenting). The Government then assessed against the Hornes a fine
equal to the market value of the missing raisins—some $480,000—as
well as an additional civil penalty of just over $200,000 for
disobeying the order to turn them over.
When the Government sought to collect the fine,
the Hornes turned to the courts, arguing that the reserve
requirement was an unconstitutional taking of their property under
the Fifth Amendment. Their case eventually made it to this Court
when the Government argued that the lower courts had no
jurisdiction to consider the Hornes’ constitutional defense to the
fine.
Horne v.
Department of Agriculture, 569
U. S. ___ (2013) (
Horne I ). We rejected the
Government’s argument and sent the case back to the Court of
Appeals so it could address the Hornes’ contention on the merits.
Id., at ___ (slip op.,at 15).
On remand, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the
Hornes that the validity of the fine rose or fell with the
constitutionality of the reserve requirement. 750 F. 3d 1128,
1137 (2014). The court then considered whether that requirement was
a physical appropriation of property, giving rise to a
per se taking, or a restriction on a raisin grower’s
use of his property, properly analyzed under the more flexible and
forgiving standard for a regulatory taking. The court rejected the
Hornes’ argument that the reserve requirement was a
per se taking, reasoning that “the Takings Clause
affords less protection to personal than to real property,” and
concluding that the Hornes “are not completely divested of their
property rights,” because growers retain an interest in the
proceeds from any sale of reserve raisins by the Raisin Committee.
Id., at 1139.
The court instead viewed the reserve requirement
as a use restriction, similar to a government condition on the
grant of a land use permit. See
Dolan v.
City of
Tigard, 512 U. S. 374 (1994) ;
Nollan v.
California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U. S. 825 (1987) . As in
such permit cases, the Court of Appeals explained, the Government
here imposed a condition (the reserve requirement) in exchange for
a Government benefit (an orderly raisin market). And just as a
landowner was free to avoid the government condition by forgoing a
permit, so too the Hornes could avoid the reserve requirement by
“planting different crops.” 750 F. 3d, at 1143. Under that
analysis, the court found that the reserve requirement was a
proportional response to the Government’s interest in ensuring an
orderly raisin market, and not a taking under the Fifth
Amendment.
We granted certiorari. 574 U. S. ___
(2015).
II
The petition for certiorari poses three
questions, which we answer in turn.
A
The first question presented asks “Whether the
government’s ‘categorical duty’ under the Fifth Amendment to pay
just compensation when it ‘physically takes possession of an
interest in property,’
Arkansas Game & Fish Comm’n v.
United States, 133 S. Ct. 511, 518 (2012), applies only to
real property and not to personal property.” The answer is no.
1
There is no dispute that the “classic taking
[is one] in which the government directly appropriates private
property for its own use.”
Tahoe-Sierra Preservation
Council,
Inc. v.
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency,
535 U. S. 302, 324 (2002) (brackets and internal quotation
marks omitted). Nor is there any dispute that, in the case of real
property, such an appropriation is a
per se taking that
requires just compensation. See
Loretto v.
Teleprompter
Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U. S. 419 –435 (1982).
Nothing in the text or history of the Takings
Clause, or our precedents, suggests that the rule is any different
when it comes to appropriation of personal property. The Government
has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your
car, just as when it takes your home.
The Takings Clause provides: “[N]or shall
private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation.” U. S. Const., Amdt. 5. It protects “private
property” without any distinction between different types. The
principle reflected in the Clause goes back at least 800 years to
Magna Carta, which specifically protected agricultural crops from
uncompensated takings. Clause 28 of that charter forbade any
“constable or other bailiff ” from taking “corn or other
provisions from any one without immedi-ately tendering money
therefor, unless he can have postponement thereof by permission of
the seller.” Cl. 28 (1215), in W. McKechnie, Magna Carta, A
Commentary on the Great Charter of King John 329 (2d ed. 1914).
The colonists brought the principles of Magna
Carta with them to the New World, including that charter’s
protection against uncompensated takings of personal property. In
1641, for example, Massachusetts adopted its Body of Liberties,
prohibiting “mans Cattel or goods of what kinde soever” from being
“pressed or taken for any publique use or service, unlesse it be by
warrant grounded upon some act of the generall Court, nor without
such reasonable prices and hire as the ordinarie rates of the
Countrie do afford.” Massachusetts Body of Liberties ¶8, in R.
Perry, Sources of Our Liberties 149 (1978). Virginia allowed the
seizure of surplus “live stock, or beef, pork, or bacon” for the
military, but only upon “paying or tendering to the owner the price
so estimated by the appraisers.” 1777 Va. Acts ch. XII. And South
Carolina authorized the seizure of “necessaries” for public use,
but provided that “said articles so seized shall be paid for
agreeable to the prices such and the like articles sold for on the
ninth day of October last.” 1779 S. C. Acts §4.
Given that background, it is not surprising that
early Americans bridled at appropriations of their personal
property during the Revolutionary War, at the hands of both sides.
John Jay, for example, complained to the New York Legislature about
military impressment by the Continental Army of “Horses, Teems, and
Carriages,” and voiced his fear that such action by the “little
Officers” of the Quartermasters Department might extend to
“Blankets, Shoes, and many other articles.” A Hint to the
Legislature of the State of New York (1778), in John Jay, The
Making of a Revolutionary 461–463 (R. Morris ed. 1975) (emphasis
deleted). The legislature took the “hint,” passing a law that,
among other things, provided for compensation for the impressment
of horses and carriages. 1778 N. Y. Laws ch. 29. According to
the author of the first treatise on the Constitution, St. George
Tucker, the Takings Clause was “probably” adopted in response to
“the arbitrary and oppressive mode of obtaining supplies for the
army, and other public uses, by impressment, as was too frequently
practised during the revolutionary war, without any compensation
whatever.” 1 Blackstone’s Commentaries, Editor’s App. 305–306
(1803).
Nothing in this history suggests that personal
property was any less protected against physical appropriation than
real property. As this Court summed up in
James v.
Campbell, 104 U. S. 356, 358 (1882) , a case concerning
the alleged appropriation of a patent by the Government:
“[A patent] confers upon the patentee an
exclusive property in the patented invention which cannot be
appropriated or used by the government itself, without just
compensation, any more than it can appropriate or use without
compensation land which has been patented to a private
purchaser.”
Prior to this Court’s decision in
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v.
Mahon, 260 U. S. 393
(1922) , the Takings Clause was understood to provide protection
only against a direct appropriation of property—personal or real.
Pennsylvania Coal expanded the protection of the Takings
Clause, holding that compensation was also required for a
“regulatory taking”—a restriction on the use of property that went
“too far.”
Id., at 415. And in
Penn Central Transp.
Co. v.
New York City, 438 U. S. 104, 124 (1978) ,
the Court clarified that the test for how far was “too far”
required an “ad hoc” factual inquiry. That inquiry required
considering factors such as the economic impact of the regulation,
its interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations,
and the character of the government action.
Four years after
Penn Central, however,
the Court reaffirmed the rule that a physical
appropriation
of property gave rise to a
per se taking, without
regard to other factors. In
Loretto, the Court held that
requiring an owner of an apartment building to allow installation
of a cable box on her rooftop was a physical taking of real
property, for which compensation was required. That was true
without regard to the claimed public benefit or the economic impact
on the owner. The Court explained that such protection was
justified not only by history, but also because “[s]uch an
appropriation is perhaps the most serious form of invasion of an
owner’s property interests,” depriving the owner of the “the rights
to possess, use and dispose of” the property. 458 U. S., at
435 (internal quotation marks omitted). That reasoning—both with
respect to history and logic—is equally applicable to a physical
appropriation of personal property.
The Ninth Circuit based its distinction between
real and personal property on this Court’s discussion in
Lucas v.
South Carolina Coastal Council, 505
U. S. 1003 (1992) , a case involving extensive limitations on
the use of shorefront property. 750 F. 3d, at 1139–1141.
Lucas recognized that while an owner of personal property
“ought to be aware of the possibility that new regulation might
even render his property economically worthless,” such an “implied
limitation” was not reasonable in the case of land. 505 U. S.,
at 1027–1028.
Lucas, however, was about regulatory
takings, not direct appropriations. Whatever
Lucas had to
say about reasonable expectations with regard to regulations,
people still do not expect their property, real or personal, to be
actually occupied or taken away. Our cases have stressed the
“longstanding distinction” between government acquisitions of
property and regulations.
Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council,
535 U. S., at 323. The different treatment of real and
personal property in a regulatory case suggested by
Lucas
did not alter the established rule of treating direct
appropriations of real and personal property alike. See 535
U. S., at 323
. (It is “inappropriate to treat cases
involving physical takings as controlling precedents for the
evaluation of a claim that there has been a ‘regulatory taking,’
and vice versa” (footnote omitted)).
2
The reserve requirement imposed by the Raisin
Committee is a clear physical taking. Actual raisins are
transferred from the growers to the Government. Title to the
raisins passes to the Raisin Committee. App. to Pet. for Cert.
179a; Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. The Committee’s raisins must be
physically segregated from free-tonnage raisins. 7 CFR
§989.66(b)(2). Reserve raisins are sometimes left on the premises
of handlers, but they are held “for the account” of the Government.
§989.66(a). The Committee disposes of what become its raisins as it
wishes, to promote the purposes of the raisin marketing order.
Raisin growers subject to the reserve
requirement thus lose the entire “bundle” of property rights in the
appropriated raisins—“the rights to possess, use and dispose
of ” them,
Loretto, 458 U. S., at 435 (internal
quotation marks omitted)—with the exception of the speculative hope
that some residual proceeds may be left when the Government is done
with the raisins and has deducted the expenses of implementing all
aspects of the marketing order. The Government’s “actual taking of
possession and control” of the reserve raisins gives rise to a
taking as clearly “as if the Government held full title and
ownership,”
id., at 431 (internal quotation marks omitted),
as it essentially does. The Government’s formal demand that the
Hornes turn over a percentage of their raisin crop without charge,
for the Government’s control and use, is “of such a unique
character that it is a taking without regard to other factors that
a court might ordinarily examine.”
Id., at 432.
The Government thinks it “strange” and the
dissent “baffling” that the Hornes object to the reserve
requirement, when they nonetheless concede that “the government may
prohibit the sale of raisins without effecting a per se
taking.” Brief for Respondent 35;
post, at 12
(Sotomayor, J., dissenting). But that distinction flows
naturally from the settled difference in our takings jurisprudence
between appropriation and regulation. A physical taking of raisins
and a regulatory limit on production may have the same economic
impact on a grower. The Constitution, however, is concerned with
means as well as ends. The Government has broad powers, but the
means it uses to achieve its ends must be “consist[ent] with the
letter and spirit of the constitution.”
McCulloch v.
Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819). As Justice Holmes noted,
“a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not
enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the
constitutional way.”
Pennsylvania Coal, 260 U. S., at
416.
B
The second question presented asks “Whether
the government may avoid the categorical duty to pay just
compensation for a physical taking of property by reserving to the
property owner a contingent interest in a portion of the value of
the property, set at the government’s discretion.” The answer is
no.
The Government and dissent argue that raisins
are fungible goods whose only value is in the revenue from their
sale. According to the Government, the raisin marketing order
leaves that interest with the raisin growers: After selling reserve
raisins and deducting expenses and subsidies for exporters, the
Raisin Committee returns any net proceeds to the growers. 7 CFR
§§989.67(d), 989.82, 989.53(a), 989.66(h). The Government contends
that because growers are entitled to these net proceeds, they
retain the most important property interest in the reserve raisins,
so there is no taking in the first place. The dissent agrees,
arguing that this possible future revenue means there has been no
taking under
Loretto. See
post, at 2–6.
But when there has been a physical
appropriation, “we do not ask . . . whether it deprives
the owner of all economically valuable use” of the item taken.
Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, 535 U. S., at 323;
see
id., at 322 (“When the government physically takes
possession of an interest in property for some public purpose, it
has a categorical duty to compensate the former owner, regardless
of whether the interest that is taken constitutes an entire parcel
or merely a part thereof.” (citation omitted)). For example, in
Loretto, we held that the installation of a cable box on a
small corner of Loretto’s rooftop was a
per se taking,
even though she could of course still sell and economically benefit
from the property. 458 U. S., at 430, 436. The fact that the
growers retain a contingent interest of indeterminate value does
not mean there has been no physical taking, particularly since the
value of the interest depends on the discretion of the taker, and
may be worthless, as it was for one of the two years at issue
here.
The dissent points to
Andrus v.
Allard, 444 U. S. 51 (1979) , noting that the Court
found no taking in that case, even though the owners’ artifacts
could not be sold at all.
Post, at 6. The dissent suggests
that the Hornes should be happy, because they might at least get
something from what had been their raisins. But
Allard is a very different case. As the dissent recognizes,
the owners in that case retained the rights to possess, donate, and
devise their property. In finding no taking, the Court emphasized
that the Government did not “compel the surrender of the artifacts,
and there [was] no physical invasion or restraint upon them.” 444
U. S.
, at 65–66. Here of course the raisin program
requires physical surrender of the raisins and transfer of title,
and the growers lose any right to control their disposition.
The Government and dissent again confuse our
inquiry concerning
per se takings with our analysis for
regulatory takings. A regulatory restriction on use that does not
entirely deprive an owner of property rights may not be a taking
under
Penn Central. That is why, in
PruneYard Shopping
Center v.
Robins, 447 U. S. 74 (1980) , we held
that a law limiting a property owner’s right to exclude certain
speakers from an already publicly accessible shopping center did
not take the owner’s property. The owner retained the value of the
use of the property as a shopping center largely unimpaired, so the
regulation did not go “too far.”
Id., at 83 (quoting
Pennsylvania Coal Co., 260 U. S., at 415). But once
there is a taking, as in the case of a physical appropriation, any
payment from the Government in connection with that action goes, at
most, to the question of just compensation. See
Suitum v.
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 520 U. S. 725 –748
(1997) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
That is not an issue here: The Hornes did not receive any net
proceeds from Raisin Committee sales for the years at issue,
because they had not set aside any reserve raisins in those years
(and, in any event, there were no net proceeds in one of them).
C
The third question presented asks “Whether a
governmental mandate to relinquish specific, identifiable prop-erty
as a ‘condition’ on permission to engage in commerce effects a
per se taking.” The answer, at least in this case, is yes.
The Government contends that the reserve
requirement is not a taking because raisin growers voluntarily
choose to participate in the raisin market. According to the
Government, if raisin growers don’t like it, they can “plant
different crops,” or “sell their raisin-variety grapes as table
grapes or for use in juice or wine.” Brief for Respondent 32
(brackets and internal quotation marks omitted).
“Let them sell wine” is probably not much more
comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to
others throughout history. In any event, the Government is wrong as
a matter of law. In
Loretto, we rejected the argument that
the New York law was not a taking because a landlord could avoid
the requirement by ceasing to be a landlord. We held instead that
“a landlord’s ability to rent his property may not be conditioned
on his forfeiting the right to compensation for a physical
occupation.” 458 U. S., at 439, n. 17. As the Court
explained, the contrary argument “proves too much”:
“For example, it would allow the
government to require a landlord to devote a substantial portion of
his building to vending and washing machines, with all profits to
be retained by the owners of these services and with no
compensation for the deprivation of space. It would even allow the
government to requisition a certain number of apartments as
permanent government offices.”
Ibid.
As the Court concluded, property rights “cannot
be so easily manipulated.”
Ibid.
The Government and dissent rely heavily on
Ruckelshaus v.
Monsanto Co., 467 U. S. 986
(1984) . There we held that the Environmental Protection Agency
could require companies manufacturing pesticides, fungicides, and
rodenticides to disclose health, safety, and environmental
information about their products as a condition to receiving a
permit to sell those products. While such information included
trade secrets in which pesticide manufacturers had a property
interest, those manufacturers were not subjected to a taking
because they received a “valuable Government benefit” in exchange—a
license to sell dangerous chemicals.
Id., at 1007; see
Nollan, 483 U. S., at 834, n. 2 (discussing
Monsanto).
The taking here cannot reasonably be
characterized as part of a similar voluntary exchange. In one of
the years at issue here, the Government insisted that the Hornes
turn over 47 percent of their raisin crop, in exchange for the
“benefit” of being allowed to sell the remaining 53 percent. The
next year, the toll was 30 percent. We have already rejected the
idea that
Monsanto may be extended by regarding basic and
familiar uses of property as a “Government benefit” on the same
order as a permit to sell hazardous chemicals. See
Nollan,
483 U. S., at 834, n. 2 (distinguishing
Monsanto on the
ground that “the right to build on one’s own property—even though
its exercise can be subjected to legitimate permitting
requirements—cannot remotely be described as a ‘governmental
benefit’ ”). Selling produce in interstate commerce, although
certainly subject to reasonable government regulation, is similarly
not a special governmental benefit that the Government may hold
hostage, to be ransomed by the waiver of constitutional protection.
Raisins are not dangerous pesticides; they are a healthy snack. A
case about conditioning the sale of hazardous substances on
disclosure of health, safety, and environmental information related
to those hazards is hardly on point.
Leonard & Leonard v.
Earle,
279 U. S. 392 (1929) , is also readily distinguishable. In
that case, the Court upheld a Maryland requirement that oyster
packers remit ten percent of the marketable detached oyster shells
or their monetary equivalent to the State for the privilege of
harvesting the oysters. But the packers did “not deny the power of
the State to declare their business a privilege,” and the power of
the State to impose a “privilege tax” was “not questioned by
counsel.”
Id., at 396. The oysters, unlike raisins, were
“feræ naturæ” that belonged to the State under state law, and “[n]o
individual ha[d] any property rights in them other than such as the
state may permit him to acquire.”
Leonard v.
Earle,
155 Md. 252, 258, 141 A. 714, 716 (1928). The oyster packers did
not simply seek to sell their property; they sought to appropriate
the State’s. Indeed, the Maryland Court of Appeals saw the issue as
a question of “a reasonable and fair compensation”
from the
packers
to “the state, as owner of the oysters.”
Id.,
at 259, 141 A., at 717 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Raisins are not like oysters: they are private
property—the fruit of the growers’ labor—not “public things subject
to the absolute control of the state,”
id., at 258, 141 A.,
at 716. Any physical taking of them for public use must be
accompanied by just compensation.
III
The Government correctly points out that a
taking does not violate the Fifth Amendment unless there is no just
compensation, and argues that the Hornes are free to seek
compensation for any taking by bringing a damages action under the
Tucker Act in the Court of Federal Claims. See 28
U. S. C. §1491(a)(1);
Monsanto, 467 U. S., at
1020. But we held in
Horne I that the Hornes may, in their
capacity as handlers, raise a takings-based defense to the fine
levied against them. We specifically rejected the contention that
the Hornes were required to pay the fine and then seek compensation
under the Tucker Act. See 569 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at
13–14) (“We . . . conclude that the [Agricultural
Marketing Agreement Act] withdraws Tucker Act jurisdiction over
[the Hornes’] takings claim. [The Hornes] (as handlers) have no
alternative remedy, and their takings claim was not ‘premature’
when presented to the Ninth Circuit.”).
As noted, the Hornes are both growers and
handlers. Their situation is unusual in that, as handlers, they
have the full economic interest in the raisins the Government
alleges should have been set aside for its account. They own the
raisins they grew and are handling for themselves, and they own the
raisins they handle for other growers, having paid those growers
for all their raisins (not just the free-tonnage amount, as is true
with respect to most handlers). See
supra, at 2–3; Tr. of
Oral Arg. 3–4. The penalty assessed against them as handlers
included the dollar equivalent of the raisins they refused to set
aside—their raisins. 750 F. 3d, at 1135, n. 6; Brief for
Petitioners 15. They may challenge the imposition of that fine, and
do not have to pay it first and then resort to the Court of Federal
Claims.
Finally, the Government briefly argues that if
we conclude that the reserve requirement effects a taking, we
should remand for the Court of Appeals to calculate “what
compensation would have been due if petitioners had complied with
the reserve requirement.” Brief for Respondent 55. The Government
contends that the calculation must consider what the value of the
reserve raisins would have been without the price support program,
as well as “other benefits . . . from the regulatory
program, such as higher consumer demand for raisins spurred by
enforcement of quality standards and promotional activities.”
Id., at 55–56. Indeed, according to the Government, the
Hornes would “likely” have a net gain under this theory.
Id., at 56.
The best defense may be a good offense, but the
Government cites no support for its hypothetical-based approach, or
its notion that general regulatory activity such as enforcement of
quality standards can constitute just compensation for a specific
physical taking. Instead, our cases have set forth a clear and
administrable rule for just compensation: “The Court has repeatedly
held that just compensation normally is to be measured by ‘the
market value of the property at the time of the taking.’ ”
United States v.
50 Acres of Land, 469 U. S. 24, 29
(1984) (quoting
Olson v.
United States, 292 U. S.
246, 255 (1934) ).
Justice Breyer is concerned that applying this
rule in this case will affect provisions concerning whether a
condemning authority may deduct special benefits—such as new access
to a waterway or highway, or filling in of swampland—from the
amount of compensation it seeks to pay a landowner suffering a
partial taking.
Post, at 5 (opinion concurring in part and
dissenting in part); see
Bauman v.
Ross, 167 U. S.
548 (1897) (laying out of streets and subdivisions in the District
of Columbia). He need not be. Cases of that sort can raise
complicated questions involving the exercise of the eminent domain
power, but they do not create a generally applicable exception to
the usual compensation rule, based on asserted regulatory benefits
of the sort at issue here. Nothing in the cases Justice Breyer
labels “
Bauman and its progeny,”
post, at 5, suggests
otherwise, which may be why the Solicitor General does not cite
them.[
1]
In any event, this litigation presents no
occasion to consider the broader issues discussed by Justice
Breyer. The Government has already calculated the amount of just
compensation in this case, when it fined the Hornes the fair market
value of the raisins: $483,843.53. 750 F. 3d, at 1135, n. 6.
The Government cannot now disavow that valuation, see Reply Brief
21–23, and does not suggest that the marketing order affords the
Hornes compensation in that amount. There is accordingly no need
for a remand; the Hornes should simply be relieved of the
obligation to pay the fine and associated civil penalty they were
assessed when they resisted the Government’s effort totake their
raisins. This case, in litigation for more than a decade, has gone
on long enough.
The judgment of the United States Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.