This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An appeals court has used a Florida COVID closure order case to deliver a stunning decision about the government's confiscation of property, setting a huge new precedent for closure orders that became common during the pandemic created by the China virus.
In fact, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that government orders shutting down private beaches during that time period violated the Fifth Amendment's ban on government taking property without compensation.
It is constitutional expert Jonathan Turley who pointed out, "This is a major ruling on takings, including the treatment of the limits as a physical rather than regulatory takings. It could find itself before the Supreme Court on that issue."
The case addressed by the 11th Circuit came from COVID-19 closures in April 2020, when authorities ordered private beaches in Walton County, Florida, closed.
The owners sued under the Constitution's Takings Clause.
That explains "private property" shall not "be taken for public use, without just compensation."
The appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that the ordinance, 2020-09, "was neither a physical taking nor a regulatory taking."
The judges said, "This case involves a textbook physical taking: Walton County enacted an ordinance barring the Landowners from entering and remaining on their private property; Walton County's officers physically occupied the Landowners' property; and Walton County's officers excluded the Landowners from their own property under threat of arrest and criminal prosecution. In other words, Walton County wrested the rights to possess, use, and exclude from the Landowners, and it took those rights for itself. That triggers the Landowner's right to just compensation."
Turley pointed out because such constitutional precedents sometimes take years to work out, during a pandemic state and local officials were able to enforce "sweeping limitations on individual and property rights."
He said the Constitution confirms the deep commitment of the Founders to protect property.
"John Adams declared that '[p]roperty must be secured, or liberty cannot exist,'" Turley wrote.
The court explained, "Ordinance 2020-09 physically appropriated the Landowners' property because it barred their physical access to the land. And to enforce the Ordinance, the County entered the Landowners' property at will for the specific purpose of excluding the Landowners. The County's officers parked their vehicles on private property to deter entry, used private property as their own highway, and forced Landowners to vacate their property under threat of arrest. Put simply, the County 'entered upon the surface of the land and t[ook] exclusive possession of it,' thereby triggering the right to just compensation."
The lower court had claimed the ordinance taking control of the property was simply a "use" restriction," but was struck down by the 11th.
"Ordinance 2020-09 prohibited the Landowners from physically accessing their beachfront property under any circumstances. That is different from a restriction on how the Landowners could use property they otherwise physically possessed," the court said.
The ruling built on the Supreme Court's decision in a California case that the owners of private land were allowed to bar union organizers from accessing their property. There, a lower court had held that union organizers were allowed to access the land for a certain number of hours a day and a certain number of days a year in order to be "soliciting support" for their union.
