It should surprise no one that the government isn’t particularly good at respecting property rights. Still, the Constitution requires that property owners be provided with “due process of law” against arbitrary and unjustified deprivation of their right to put their property to beneficial use. According to several federal appellate courts, however, landowners lack such protections unless they show that they have a statutory “entitlement” to use their land.
This is circular Humpty Dumpty logic. Indeed, that approach impermissibly presumes the legitimacy of restrictions, without considering whether they are lawfully applied.
Most recently, the New York‐based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit employed the “entitlement” theory to deprive a small developer of its right to upgrade run‐down apartment buildings. The NYC Landmarks Commission deprived Stahl York Avenue Company of its property rights by designating these nondescript buildings as landmarks—this despite a previous ruling that these exact buildings lacked any architectural or cultural merit worth preserving.