No hat tip for this: because, truthfully, I heard it through…
Either 8-1 or 5-3-1, depending how you score it. The short version is: the US government seizes a portion of the raisin crop each year in order to keep prices up (they typically either sell the raisins for below market value*, or stick ’em in school lunches, or things like that). Problem is, the Fifth Amendment says that you can’t do that without paying the property owners… and the raisin owners finally complained (took ’em decades to do it, mind you). The Ninth Circuit held for the government, of course – and the Supreme Court smacked them for it. Turns out that the Court couldn’t see the difference between personal property and real estate, no matter how hard the administration wanted them to. And the argument that ‘government keeping raisin prices high’ is equivalent to ‘just compensation’ didn’t really fly with the Supreme Court, either.
See more at Reason**, which is pretty much jumping up and down for joy on this one. I should also note that all it would have taken would have been a shift of one vote and this would have been a 5-4 decision in favor of sending the issue back to the courts for another decade before the raisin growers would find out whether their fine would be reversed and they’d get the value of the seized crop back. Which would have effectively meant that Horne v. USDA would effectively end up being decided for the government***. Amazing what a difference being able to nominate Supreme Court Justices at just the right moment can make, huh****?
…Here endeth the lesson.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*The government seemed to feel that giving raisin growers ‘a pro-rated share of the proceeds after administrative costs have been taken out’ on these sales counted as ‘just compensation.’ As you can guess, this argument did not fly with the Supreme Court; but it’s probably why this case took so long to litigate. Nobody wants to be the one that kicks the sleeping bear in the metaphorical testicles, you know what I mean?
**See also Leon over at RedState, who did more analysis on this and other Supreme Court decisions handed down today.
***As the Court itself has noted “This case, in litigation for more than a decade, has gone on long enough.” That it did is a whole other problem with American jurisprudence. And yet another argument to keep government as small – and thus as nimble – as possible.
****Fortunately, it was determined that, as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurrence to the majority opinion, that “having the Court of Appeals calculate “just compensation” in this case would be a fruitless exercise. “
Justice Thomas is a punster? Who knew?
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Seriously, the court system grinds finely enough, but .. its’ speed is deliberately a slow walk in a world going ever increasingly faster.. it’s a Bomag steamroller on a highway dominated by Freightliners and Lamborghinis…
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This isn’t a bad thing .. it’s just a thing .. but it’s not necessarily a just thing.
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Glad this one got slapped down.
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Mew
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p.s. It’s worth noting, by the way, that this is just the latest tic-mark on the Roberts side of the “Roberts vs. Obama” ledger. Yes, the “it’s a tax” finding was very large, by tic-mark standards, and involved both indelible ink and a laser .. but it still counts just as one tic-mark.. and it’s surprisingly near the line separating the two columns…
Reading this one, it was 8-1 that physically taking possession of the raisins was, in fact, a taking, with only the wise Latina seeing otherwise. 5-4 was on whether or not to remand to the ninth circus for a determination of what the compensation should be – the minority wanted there to be all sorts of shenanigans in determining fair market value, IE, to rule on whether or not the cartel reduced profits or increased them, but the majority correctly noticed that the government had already supplied its determination of fair market value, by setting the amount of the fine, and it did not get to change that at this point.