Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2021

Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid

594 U.S. 139 | 141 S. Ct. 2063 | 210 L. Ed. 2d 369

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a government rule granting third parties a recurring right to enter private property takes the owner’s right to exclude and is a per se physical taking, even if access is limited in time and purpose.

Background

California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board adopted an access regulation allowing union organizers to enter an agricultural employer’s property to speak with and solicit employees. A union may take access for up to four 30-day periods each year, for three hours per day: one hour before work, one during lunch, and one after work. The rule limits the number of organizers and bars disruptive conduct, but it gives organizers a formal right of entry.

Cedar Point Nursery, a strawberry grower, alleged that United Farm Workers organizers entered its property early one morning and disrupted operations. Fowler Packing Company, a grape and citrus grower, blocked organizers who sought access to its property. Neither company housed its employees on site. The growers sued Board officials, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on the ground that the regulation took an easement-like right of access without just compensation.

The Federal District Court denied a preliminary injunction and dismissed the complaint. It concluded that the rule was not a per se physical taking because it did not give the public permanent, continuous access to the growers’ property. A divided Ninth Circuit affirmed, reasoning that the rule should be assessed under the multifactor regulatory-takings framework of Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a regulation that grants third parties a right to enter private property is analyzed as a per se physical taking or as an ordinary use restriction under Penn Central.

Holding

A regulation that physically appropriates private property for the government or a third party is a per se physical taking, even when the appropriation is accomplished through a regulation rather than formal eminent domain.

Reasoning

The Takings Clause requires just compensation when government physically takes private property for public use. The Court distinguishes that categorical rule from the more flexible Penn Central framework, which generally governs restrictions on an owner’s own use of property, such as zoning or limits on selling particular goods.

The form of government action does not control. A statute, ordinance, or administrative regulation can create a physical taking if it appropriates property for the government or another person. In that circumstance, Penn Central does not apply because the government must pay for what it has physically taken.

The central question is therefore whether California merely regulated how the growers used their land or instead appropriated one of their property rights for union organizers. The Court held that the latter characterization governs.

Issue #2

Whether California’s union-organizer access regulation effects a per se physical taking.

Holding

Yes. The regulation appropriates the growers’ right to exclude union organizers from their property and therefore effects a per se physical taking.

Reasoning

The right to exclude others is a fundamental component of property ownership. California’s rule did not merely limit the growers’ operations; it granted union organizers an affirmative legal entitlement to enter and occupy the growers’ land at specified times for a specified purpose.

The Court’s precedents treat government-authorized rights to physically invade private property as physical takings. Causby recognized a taking from repeated low military flights; Kaiser Aetna treated compelled public access to a private marina as a taking; Loretto applied a per se rule to a permanent cable installation; and Nollan recognized that compelled public access easements are takings.

The access rule appropriated a right of access for third parties, even if that right did not precisely match every technical feature of an easement under California property law. Because California law otherwise gave the growers the right to exclude organizers, the State could not avoid takings liability by describing its appropriation in a nontraditional form.

Issue #3

Whether the regulation avoids per se treatment because access is intermittent, limited to union organizers, and restricted to a union-organizing purpose.

Holding

No. The limited duration and scope of the access right may affect the compensation owed, but they do not change a physical appropriation into a mere use regulation.

Reasoning

The Ninth Circuit erred by treating permanence and continuous, around-the-clock access as prerequisites for a physical taking. The Court’s cases establish that a physical appropriation may be temporary; duration bears on the amount of just compensation, not on whether a taking has occurred.

Physical invasions may also be intermittent. Causby involved flights occurring only on some takeoffs and landings, yet the government’s asserted right to use the landowner’s airspace supported a takings claim. What matters is the appropriation of a right to invade, not how constantly that right is exercised.

Nor did the rule’s narrow purpose save it. The State gave union organizers the legally enforceable power to enter property that was otherwise closed to the public for up to three hours a day, 120 days a year. That is an appropriation of access, not simply a restriction on the growers’ use of their own land.

Issue #4

Whether PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins or federal labor-law precedent requires Penn Central review rather than per se treatment.

Holding

No. PruneYard involved a business already open to the public, and the federal labor cases did not decide a Takings Clause claim or authorize California’s broader access rule.

Reasoning

PruneYard did not establish that every limited access right is a regulatory, rather than physical, taking. The shopping center in PruneYard invited the public onto its premises, and the owner retained substantial ability to regulate expressive activity through reasonable time, place, and manner rules. The growers’ properties, by contrast, were not open to the public.

The Court also rejected reliance on NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co. Babcock interpreted the National Labor Relations Act and generally denied union organizers access to employer property unless employees were otherwise beyond reasonable communication. It did not resolve the constitutional consequences of California’s separate regulatory access entitlement.

Thus, neither PruneYard’s rules for publicly accessible businesses nor Babcock’s statutory interpretation displaced the ordinary rule that a government-authorized right to invade private property is a per se physical taking.

Issue #5

Whether treating the access rule as a per se physical taking threatens ordinary government entries onto private property, including inspections, searches, and emergency access.

Holding

No. Traditional limits on property rights, isolated trespasses, and properly conditioned access requirements remain outside the rule applied here.

Reasoning

A one-time or isolated intrusion is ordinarily a trespass, not a taking, because it does not reflect the government’s appropriation of a continuing property right. The California rule was different: it formally granted union organizers a recurring, enforceable right of access.

Many entries are also consistent with background principles of state property law. Traditional privileges of public or private necessity, certain law-enforcement entries, and reasonable searches permitted by law do not take a right that property owners previously possessed.

Government may also condition discretionary benefits, permits, licenses, or registrations on reasonable access requirements when the condition has an essential nexus and rough proportionality to the benefit or the impacts of the proposed activity. Ordinary health and safety inspection regimes will generally fit within that doctrine. California’s union-access rule did not rest on a traditional privilege or on a condition tied to a governmental benefit received by the growers.

Concurrences

Justice Kavanaugh

Reasoning

Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court’s opinion in full but wrote to emphasize that NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co. independently supports the result. In his view, Babcock construed the National Labor Relations Act against the constitutional backdrop of an employer’s Fifth Amendment right to exclude others from private property.

Babcock allowed organizer access only when necessary—principally where employees lived on company property and could not otherwise be reached through reasonable union communication. Because the California regulation authorized access well beyond that necessity-based exception, and the growers’ off-site employees were otherwise reachable, Justice Kavanaugh concluded that the regulation violated the constitutional protection for private property.

Dissents

Justice Breyer

Reasoning

Justice Breyer argued that California regulated, rather than appropriated, the growers’ right to exclude. The rule gave organizers a carefully confined privilege to enter at particular times, places, and for a particular labor-organizing purpose; it did not transfer a traditional property interest, such as a leasehold or easement, to the organizers or the government.

In his view, the Court’s precedents distinguish permanent physical occupations from temporary invasions. Loretto’s categorical rule applied because the cable equipment permanently occupied space and stripped the owner of control over it. By contrast, temporary access restrictions ordinarily require a fact-specific inquiry into whether the regulation goes too far under Penn Central.

Justice Breyer read PruneYard as especially instructive. There, the Court rejected a per se takings claim arising from compelled expressive access to a shopping center. Although the growers’ land was not open to the public, that distinction was one factor in a regulatory-takings analysis, not a basis for converting every limited access requirement into a categorical taking.

He also understood cases such as Causby, Portsmouth Harbor, and Kaiser Aetna to consider factors including duration, severity, purpose, and economic impact. Those cases did not, he argued, establish a blanket rule that every temporary government-authorized entry automatically requires compensation.

Finally, Justice Breyer warned that the majority’s new rule and its exceptions would complicate ordinary regulation. Governments frequently authorize temporary entry for inspections, public-health measures, environmental protection, and other regulatory functions. The prior Penn Central approach was more flexible and better suited to determining when an access requirement genuinely goes too far. He added that, on remand, California should be able to avoid injunctive relief by providing just compensation.