Is there an exception to the 5th Amendment's promise that government cannot take private property without "just compensation"? The Supreme Court declined to address that question this past Monday when it rejected a trio of petitions asking the justices to consider whether people should be compensated when law enforcement seizes or destroys their property.

Two of the cases concerned individuals who were not accused of a crime but whose property nevertheless became collateral damage as police pursued a suspect. In June 2022, police fired 30 tear gas canisters into Amy Hadley's home in South Bend, Indiana. Officers smashed windows, tore down security cameras, ransacked furniture, ripped down a panel and a fan, and punched holes in the walls as they searched for a fugitive named John Parnell Thomas, who had never been there. The police had erroneously concluded that Thomas accessed the internet via the IP address at Hadley's home. According to Hadley, the police caused at least $16,000 in damages, which insurance only partially covered.

About two months later, a SWAT team in Los Angeles arrived at Carlos Pena's North Hollywood printing business and destroyed it, along with his equipment inside, crippling his livelihood after a fugitive broke in and barricaded himself in the shop. (The suspect ultimately escaped.) Pena alleged approximately $60,000 in damages in his suit against the city, which declined to compensate him for his losses. His insurance also refused to step in—as is common in such cases, as policies often exclude damage caused by the government.

The third petition concerned Chicago drivers whose vehicles were seized by the city over modest unpaid parking tickets. Ryan O'Donnell's vehicle was impounded and sold for scrap because of about $524 in debt. Michael Goree's was seized and relinquished to the lienholder over a debt that did not belong to him; the $560 in unpaid tickets were for a different vehicle owned by his co-signer.

In all of these cases the lower courts' reasoning came from a similar place. Hadley, O'Donnell, and Goree's petitions were heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which has adopted a categorical rule: Property destroyed in the exercise of "police power" is immune to claims under the Takings Clause, the U.S. Constitution's pledge that government cannot usurp private property without fairly compensating the owner. Pena's case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, where the judges have declined to issue such a sweeping exception but have instead ruled that governments are exempt from paying out claims when the police actions in question were "necessary."

In a statement, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, outlined the many inconsistencies between the circuits on the topic. "It is still an 'open question' whether these or any other approaches are consistent with this Court's precedents. Few of these decisions likewise explain the source of any such police-power exception to the Takings Clause—whether the common law, the Constitution, or elsewhere," she wrote. "Such questions thus continue to 'benefit from further percolation' in the lower courts before this Court chooses to intervene."

Sotomayor was quoting herself. In 2024, she released similar remarks in response to a petition from Texas woman Vicki Baker, whose house in McKinney had been hollowed by a SWAT team attempting to capture a fugitive. The high court declined to hear Baker's case, although she finally found relief under the Texas state constitution this year.

"It's possible that the Court sincerely doesn't think the lower courts have done enough thinking on this important but novel issue," Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice who represented Hadley, tells me. "Still, we've brought them 5 cases from 5 circuits. How much more percolation is needed?…The Court is going to have to address this important issue, and it's not clear what another circuit decision or 6 might do to aid that consideration."

Though Sotomayor's statement ran in parallel to the one two years ago, its slightly sharper warning intimated that we may be inching closer to a resolution. "I again encourage courts considering this issue to take care," she wrote, "that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights."

The post Police Destroyed Their Homes and Businesses. The Supreme Court Won't Say Who Should Pay. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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Citadel is one of the most visited shopping centers in Los Angeles. But in these lean times, few customers browse its clothing, bag and shoe stores. On this hot October afternoon, Rocío López is here, treating herself to “a luxury” amid the cuts her family has made to blunt the impact every time they fill the car’s tank or do the grocery shopping. The pressure on her finances became clearer with her latest tax return: she and her husband were shocked to find they owed $8,000 to the IRS.

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Google Maps still shows a prosperous image of Pacific Place, a business center on the busy Valley boulevard in a suburb east of Los Angeles, California. But that picture no longer matches reality. The windows of a mental health clinic and a real estate agency have been boarded up to protect the premises from vandalism. One by one, shops pulled down their shutters until the mall was almost deserted. Several businesses belonging to an enigmatic figure also closed: Guojun Xuan, a wealthy Chinese immigrant who is at the center of a chilling case involving the alleged mistreatment of 21 children at his Arcadia mansion.

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Frustrated that law enforcement and government officials are unable to help them, Venice property owners have called upon a private company, staffed by former gang members, to remove encampments in their neighborhood. For L.A. Material, Hayes Davenport talked to one of the company’s owners—lifelong Venice resident Bobby Luna—as well as dozens of locals, from homeowners to unhoused folks, about the company’s presence in the community. Homeowners are satisfied with Ghost Town’s service, while some unhoused people who have been forced to relocate report harassment and physical force from its employees. “Ghost Town has stepped in to address a decades-old problem with an unconventional approach,” writes Davenport. “Are they an inspiring story of neighborhood reclamation, filling the void left by an insufficient, hobbled government response? Or mercenary enforcers, contracted to speed along the neighborhood’s gentrification?”

One homeowner — who said she has paid between $100 and $300 a month for Ghost Town’s services, with the cost going down as more neighbors became clients — told me she signed up after multiple people trespassed on her property while she was pregnant, triggering their security system. “Police didn’t come for an hour and a half,” she said. “Ghost Town shows up in five minutes.”

“They’re the reason we still live here,” she added.

But Andrew’s contention that “most people in the homeless community have had some kind of negative interaction with Ghost Town” had also been supported by the people I talked to on the street.