As it stands, the 9th Circuit ruling threatens to undermine the 5th Amendment: it would allow the government to take private property through successive enactments that each eliminated only a fraction of the property's value, accomplishing by degrees what the government could not do outright.
Property Rights
Oakland fined this couple $915,000 for preventing fires. That’s 18 times the penalty for actual arson
Imagine buying a piece of property, being ordered by the government to clear it of fire hazards, and then being handed a near-million-dollar bill by that same government for doing exactly what it asked. It sounds like a dystopian satire of bureaucratic overreach, but for Matthew Bernard and Lynn Warner, it is a harrowing legal...
August 19, 2026