WASHINGTON (CN) — Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked for a lower court assist Monday in deciding when property owners should be compensated if the government damages their belongings.
The high court refused to hear an appeal from a Texas woman whose house sustained $50,000 in damages during a police standoff. The court didn’t explain its decision, but Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a statement suggesting that the justices wanted more appeals courts to weigh in.
Sotomayor said Vicki Baker’s case poses questions on whether there are exceptions to the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause when the government deems its actions necessary.
“I write separately to emphasize that petitioner raises a serious question: whether the takings clause permits the government to destroy private property without paying just compensation, as long as the government had no choice but to do so,” Sotomayor wrote.
Baker’s house in McKinney, Texas, became the scene of a hostage situation in 2020 after fugitive Wesley Little showed up at her door with a 15-year-old girl. Baker’s daughter tipped off police to Little’s location and officers swarmed the property.
Little released his hostage but barricaded himself in Baker’s home. Police knocked down the front door and fence, used explosives to take down the garage door and launched tear gas grenades into the house.
When McKinney police could finally enter Baker’s home, they found Little had committed suicide.
Baker needed a hazmat team to fix the damage to her home. Nearly all of her personal property had to be destroyed, and all the flooring, drywall and insulation had to be removed. Baker had to replace all her appliances, doors, and windows. The explosions also left Baker’s dog permanently blind and deaf.
Baker sued the city for compensation. A lower court ruled in her favor, finding that the damage to her home was compensable under the takings clause. But, the Fifth Circuit reversed.
Joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee, Sotomayor compared the damage to Baker’s home to razing a house to build a public park.
“Here, the McKinney police destroyed Baker’s home for a different public benefit: to protect local residents and themselves from an armed and dangerous individual,” Sotomayor wrote. “Under the Fifth Circuit’s decision, Baker alone must bear the cost of that public benefit.”
Under the court’s precedents, Sotomayor said, there are some exceptions to the takings clause. In the 1879 case Bowditch v. Boston the justices found that a building owner wasn’t entitled to compensation after firefighters destroyed his building to stop a fire from spreading. And in United States v. Caltex, the court held in 1952 that the takings clause did not require the government to pay for its destruction of oil companies’ facilities in the Philippines amid a military invasion.
“These cases do not resolve Baker’s claim, however, because the destruction of her property was necessary, but not inevitable,” Sotomayor wrote. “Whether the inevitable-destruction cases should extend to this distinct context remains an open question.”
While Sotomayor and Gorsuch appeared interested in deciding that question, they said the court didn’t have enough lower court rulings to work with.
“Whether any such exception exists (and how the takings clause applies when the government destroys property pursuant to its police power) is an important and complex question that would benefit from further percolation in the lower courts prior to this court’s intervention,” Sotomayor wrote.