Subscriber Special Content: Supreme Court narrows local governments’ ability to impose impact fees – a potential sea change for California

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On April 12, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its much-anticipated ruling in Sheetz v. County of El Dorado. The case concerned the legality of a local jurisdiction’s imposition of a traffic impact mitigation (TIM) fee upon a project applicant as a development permit condition. The threshold question in Sheetz was whether a legislatively authorized and broadly applicable permit condition is subject to the same analysis as an administratively imposed, ad-hoc permit condition for the purpose of determining whether it violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court held that there is no reason to distinguish between permit conditions imposed legislatively or administratively. Consequently, the Court explained that the two-part “Nollan/Dolan” constitutional test indeed applies to legislatively imposed permit conditions. In California, where local governments routinely use legislatively authorized development impact fees to impose sizeable mitigation fees on new development, this ruling could represent a sea change for developers and local governments alike.

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