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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / SCOTUS Ruling

SCOTUS Ruling

by John Cole|  June 21, 20054:01 pm| 18 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics

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Property Rights case turned away:

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away a challenge by hotel owners Monday to San Francisco’s conversion ordinance, which requires owners of long-term residential hotels to pay a city fee before switching their property to short-term tourist use.

In a unanimous ruling, the justices said the owners of the San Remo Hotel in North Beach had no right to go to federal court with their claim that the ordinance was an unconstitutional confiscation of private property, because they had already lost the same argument in the state Supreme Court.

“State courts are fully competent to adjudicate constitutional challenges to local land-use decisions,” said Justice John Paul Stevens. He said neither federal law nor constitutional guarantees of property rights entitled the owners to “a second bite at the apple in their forum of choice.”

The backstory:

Tom Field, who along with his brother filed the suit in 1993, said the ruling was disappointing.

“Is our economic system based on capitalism and private property rights, or are we going to be increasingly told by government how to run our businesses and our lives?” he asked.

The Fields bought the three-story hotel in 1971 and spent $500,000 restoring it. After they applied to convert their remaining residential rooms to tourist use in 1990, the city charged them a $567,000 fee, which they paid in 1996 while continuing to litigate.

Their original suit in Superior Court claimed that the fee was invalid because the city had wrongly classified the hotel as residential, when it had actually been mainly a tourist hotel for many years. But by the time the case reached the state Supreme Court in 2002, after stops in both state and federal courts, the Fields were making a full-scale attack on the ordinance, claiming it failed to promote any legitimate city interest and amounted to confiscation of their property without compensation.

The state’s high court upheld the ordinance in a 4-3 decision, saying the fees were reasonably related to the loss of low-cost housing and prompting Justice Janice Rogers Brown to declare in dissent that private property was “entirely extinct in San Francisco.”

Discuss.

More here (.pdf).

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Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    TM

    June 21, 2005 at 4:13 pm

    Note on page 9 of the opinion: http://wid.ap.org/scotus/pdf/04-340P.ZO.pdf

    “Petitioner’s did not seek a writ of certiorari from the California Supreme Court’s decision in this Court. Instead, they returned to Federal District Court…”

    So the Plaintiff’s procedural choice not to seek the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of the CA Sup. Ct. decision appears to have more to do with this outcome than the newspaper article might suggest.

  2. 2.

    Rick

    June 21, 2005 at 4:30 pm

    “Is our economic system based on capitalism and private property rights, or are we going to be increasingly told by government how to run our businesses and our lives?”

    Like you gotta ask. That’s (especially) a midnight-blue city in a royal-blue state for you.

    Cordially…

  3. 3.

    Nancy

    June 21, 2005 at 4:35 pm

    Fabulous I can read the comments!!!

  4. 4.

    Rick

    June 21, 2005 at 4:43 pm

    Nancy,

    John turns 35 tomorrow, so as he enters middle age, he finds his eyesight coming under strain as well.

    Maybe that explains some of his blind spots.

    Cordially…

  5. 5.

    JG

    June 21, 2005 at 5:24 pm

    ‘”Is our economic system based on capitalism and private property rights, or are we going to be increasingly told by government how to run our businesses and our lives?”’

    Isn’t it government’s role to determine the rules and regulations under which people can run their businesses? How can you have private property without a government to prevent someone from taking what you call your private property? Are we really on some horrible trip back to the early 1900s? The days of the robber barons and working 80hrs a week with no sick time or vacation? Geeting paid crap so you borrowed from the company?

    Sing it with me you know the words…
    ’16 tons and what do you get
    another day older and deeper in debt’

  6. 6.

    John Cole

    June 21, 2005 at 5:24 pm

    Great- What is next?

    Viagra jokes?

  7. 7.

    Steven

    June 21, 2005 at 5:41 pm

    This isn’t the greatest case for property rights advocates. The city didn’t prohibit the intended use; it taxed it. The earlier comment about the procedural aspects of this case are accurate.

    And Justice Brown’s dissent is typically hyperbolic. By all appearances, the San Remo is still privately held and apparently turning a profit. Check out the penthouse…it looks very cozy.

    http://www.sanremohotel.com/

  8. 8.

    Randolph Fritz

    June 21, 2005 at 6:00 pm

    The states have always had the right to regulate intrastate commerce and land use. So if the San Francisco ordinance is consistent with state law–and the state supreme court said that it was–what’s the issue?

  9. 9.

    Stormy70

    June 21, 2005 at 6:17 pm

    Middle age?!? Et tu, Rick?

  10. 10.

    Halffasthero

    June 21, 2005 at 6:26 pm

    I can read this beautifully at home but at work I can only have one setting for my computer for resulution – so I can’t get the bottom of the comments box if a shitstorm has hit and lots of people comment. No comments from me while at work in that case.

    Some would ask, “And the problem with that is…” : )

    By the way, I passed 35 a long time ago. I apreciate the larger fonts.

    I WAS disappointed Stormy didn’t comment on my having a new bottle of Pinch however.

  11. 11.

    Halffasthero

    June 21, 2005 at 6:29 pm

    Damn typo – the fonts haven’t corrected my spelling however.

    “appreciate”

  12. 12.

    Rick

    June 21, 2005 at 6:44 pm

    Stormy,

    Deep middle.

    Isn’t it government’s role to determine the rules and regulations under which people can run their businesses?

    Well, we sure have plenty of a “good thing.” Our nation is full of frustrated, wannabe hall monitors.

    Cordially…

  13. 13.

    p.lukasiak

    June 21, 2005 at 7:46 pm

    Its difficult to feel sorry for the Fields, who despite having paid over $500,000 for the privilege of throwing poor people out on the streets, were still able to afford to litigate this case all the way up to the US Supreme Court.

  14. 14.

    Stormy70

    June 21, 2005 at 8:31 pm

    Halffasthero – Where was that comment? And where is my bottle?! Us “deep middle” aged gals need to be kept in the good stuff, or we may turn all soft and leftie. Like John. I don’t think he’s drinking enough Laphroiag. I think I feel a craving for a drink, though. (While I still have property rights.)

  15. 15.

    Mark

    June 21, 2005 at 9:21 pm

    Great- What is next?

    Viagra jokes?

    Why tempt us?

  16. 16.

    M. Scott Eiland

    June 21, 2005 at 10:33 pm

    Gee, are we going to start adjudicating death penalty cases this way, since the state courts are fully competent to adjudicate constitutional challenges? We might actually be able to execute a few murderers in California and Oregon if the federal courts aren’t a necessary step any more.

  17. 17.

    metalgrid

    June 22, 2005 at 9:51 am

    But, by people staying in this hotel and not staying in an out of state hotel, this becomes interstate commerce, and thus should be taken to the federal legislature – out of the hands of both state and federal courts!

  18. 18.

    Randolph Fritz

    June 22, 2005 at 1:02 pm

    “we going to start adjudicating death penalty cases this way?” Isn’t this a bit over the top? Are property rights now on the level of the right to life?

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