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Steven S.C. Lim March 25, 2008 Page 2 the 14th Amendment. However, this analysis will briefly address the takings and substantive due process issues only. Partial Takings. The taking of private property without compensation is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ("...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.'). While arguably drafted principally to protect private landowners from physical takings without compensation, since at least 1922 and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon 260 U.S. 393 (1922) a regulation of land which goes "too far" is also a taking for which government must pay compensation. A partial taking by regulation occurs when a land use regulation deprives a landowner of use and value beyond the normal reduction, if any, caused by the necessary exercise of the police power for the health, safety and welfare of the people, but stops short of depriving the owner of all economically beneficial use. The government's rationale for the regulation and the economic effect of the regulation on the landowner are critical factors which a reviewing court weighs in deciding whether a landowner has suffered a partial taking of property. When the County Planning Director suggests - as he does several times in the documents which I reviewed - that the U.S. Supreme Court found no regulatory taking so long as there was a single house permitted on a parcel of land, he vastly overstates the reach of the case he cites: Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U.S. 606 (2001). Such a single-house use defeats only a total or "categorical" regulatory taking claim under Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992). As the Lucas case suggested in footnote eight of its opinion, an owner who has suffered less than a full deprivation of economically beneficial use "...might not be able to claim the benefit of our categorical formulation, but, as we have acknowledged time and again, '[tjhe economic impact of the regulation and the extent to which the regulation interfered with the distinct investment-backed expectations' are keenly relevant to the takings analysis generally." The case cited by the Court, and from which it quotes above is Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City. 438 U.S. 104 (1978), in which the Court set out the framework for deciding partial regulatory taking cases. The Court suggested "several factors" which have "particular significance" when it engages in "these essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries": 1. The economic impact of the regulation on the claimant and, particularly, the extent to which the regulation has interfered with the distinct, investment- backed expectations; 2. The character of the governmental action;