Viewing the Supreme Court\u27s Exactions Cases Through the Prism of Anti-Evasion

Abstract

This Article considers the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s 2013 decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, which extended the application of the Court\u27s framework for evaluating the constitutionality of land use exactions (known as the Nollan/Dolan test). The majority of the Court relied heavily on the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, explaining that this doctrine formed the basis not only for the Nollan/Dolan framework but also for the extension of that framework to Koontz\u27s new factual setting. Four members of the Court dissented. Although the dissenting justices seemingly agreed with several of the majority\u27s propositions, they vigorously opposed the manner in which the majority applied those propositions. Although Koontz might be viewed as just another in a long line of cases that make up the messy jurisprudence of regulatory takings and unconstitutional conditions, the primary thesis of this Article is that Koontz in fact provides a key to unlocking the Court\u27s exactions framework. Relying on my prior work with Brannon Denning, this Article posits that both regulatory takings and the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions constitute anti-evasion doctrines by which the Court seeks to fill enforcement gaps left open by its prior constitutional decision rules. Inasmuch as land use exactions lie at the intersection of these two doctrinal areas, one would expect to find that anti-evasion notions play a large role in the Court\u27s exactions decisions. And indeed, both the majority and the dissent in Koontz invoked the anti-evasion characteristics of the Nollan/Dolan test in support of their analytical positions in that case. Viewing Koontz (and its jurisprudential antecedents) through the prism of anti-evasion helps both to explain the majority\u27s decision in that case and to bring the differences between the majority and dissent into sharper focus. Additionally, the anti-evasion concept suggests some guidelines for how future exactions issues might be resolved both at the micro level (dealing with future decision rules that will have to be developed in light of Koontz) and at the macro level (addressing larger questions about the Court\u27s takings jurisprudence and the place of the exactions cases within it)