Horne v. Dep't of Agric.

• Decision Date: 22 June 2015
• Docket Number: No. 14–275.,14–275.
• Citation: 576 U.S. 350,135 S.Ct. 2419,192 L.Ed.2d 388
• Parties: Marvin D. HORNE, et al., Petitioners v. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

576 U.S. 350

135 S.Ct. 2419

192 L.Ed.2d 388

Marvin D. HORNE, et al., Petitioners

v.DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

No. 14–275.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued April 22, 2015.

Decided June 22, 2015.

Michael W. McConnell, Washington, DC, for Petitioners.

Edwin S. Kneedler, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Jeffrey M. Prieto, Acting General Counsel, Carrie F. Ricci, Associate General Counsel, Leslie K. Lagomarcino, Senior Counsel, Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Solicitor General, Counsel of Record, Benjamin C. Mizer, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Edwin S. Kneedler, Deputy Solicitor General, Elizabeth B. Prelogar, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Michael S. Raab, Joshua Waldman, Attorneys, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Brian C. Leighton, Clovis, CA, Michael W. McConnell, Counsel of Record, John C. O'Quinn, Stephen S. Schwartz, Jason M. Wilcox, Devin A. DeBacker, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Washington, DC, for Petitioners.

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 2442 (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. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 2053, 186 L.Ed.2d 69 (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 ––––, 133 S.Ct., at 2063–2064.

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, 114 S.Ct. 2309, 129 L.Ed.2d 304 (1994) ; Nollan v. California Coastal Comm'n, 483 U.S. 825, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (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. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 1039, 190 L.Ed.2d 907 (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, ––– U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 511, 518, 184 L.Ed.2d 417 (2012), applies only to real property and not to personal property." The answer is no.

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, 122 S.Ct. 1465, 152 L.Ed.2d 517 (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, 426–435, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (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 immediately 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...