Imagine being told by a local permitting office that you cant build on your own land unless you fork over a large amount of cash for an unrelated government project.
Refuse, and permit denied.
Thats what happened to Coy Koontz Sr. when he tried to build on his Orange County property nearly 20 years ago. But June 25 the U.S. Supreme Court finally gave him his due when it remanded his case back to the Florida high court along with his new constitutional protections.
At least, the Supreme Court gave his estate its due. Koontz died in 2000 during the epic permitting battle. His son, Coy Koontz Jr., has since taken up the family cause.
In a 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court decided that a Central Florida water management districts requirement that Koontz Sr. pay $150,000 for a wetlands improvement project miles away from his own proposed construction site was a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.
The Fifth Amendment requires just compensation when private property is taken for public use, and the $150,000 fee, the court said, amounted to an unreasonable taking.
The court has recognized that money is a form of property, and the Constitution prohibits grabbing money from property owners the same way it prohibits grabbing land without compensation, said Koontzs attorney, Paul Beard, in a statement.
Koontz wanted to build a commercial project on less than a quarter of his mostly soggy 15-acre wetland property. Florida law requires that any environmental impact on a sensitive area as a result of land development must be offset, or mitigated.
So Koontz offered to deed the remaining 11 acres to the St. Johns River Water Management District for conservation. But the district wanted more.
It was an endless circle of submitting plans and having them rejected, Larry Salzman, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, told Florida Watchdog. At a certain moment in that process Mr. Koontz said enough was enough. He was already giving far more than was proportional to the impact of his project.
Koontz sued and won at a Florida trial court, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled against him. It was that decision that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed.
Until two weeks ago, landowners who were denied permits had no legal recourse against excessive land-use requirements because they could not show actual damages.
But according to Justice Samuel Alito, landowners who refuse to submit to unreasonable permitting demands are not able to build and are incurring a loss. Whats more, if the permit denial cant be challenged, a regulatory body can detour property owners by simply making unreasonable demands.
Critics worry the ruling will make it more difficult for local and state governments to protect environmentally sensitive areas.
Florida Watchdog contacted the Orlando office of the Florida Sierra Club, but did not receive a response.
Dissenting justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor argued that requiring permitting fees to be roughly proportionate to the environmental effects of a proposed building project will result in increased litigation and undermine regulatory efforts.
The boundaries of the majoritys new rule are uncertain. But it threatens to subject a vast array of land-use regulations, applied daily in states and localities throughout the country, to heightened constitutional scrutiny, Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion.
Not so, said Salzman. More than a dozen states already have a rule like this in place and the sky is not falling on those states.
When we look at what Koontz was doing, he was developing a small parcel in an already highly developed neighborhood. The idea that he should pay what amounts to more than the value of the project he is trying to develop, was just disproportionate to the impact, Salzman added.
Florida Watchodog contacted the St. Johns River Water Management District for comment and was issued this statement in an email response:
The decision issued by the Supreme Court in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District clarified the constitutional protections that must be afforded to landowners when governmental entities issue permits affecting protected property interests. While the case is remanded for further proceedings in the Florida Supreme Court, the Department of Environmental Protection and the St Johns River Water Management District will be working to ensure that the legal principles announced in the recent decision are being addressed throughout the agencies.
While the ruling is viewed as a victory for property rights advocates in general, it only affords the Koontz family the right to have their case heard again by the Florida Supreme Court.
Contact William Patrick at william@floridawatchdog.org
