Supreme Court delivers victory for property rights, defeat for union organizers

A California regulation allowed labor organizations to access an agricultural employer's property to solicit support for unionization, but the U.S. Supreme Court recently decided the rule amounted to a per se physical taking requiring compensation.

Facts and findings

The California rule allowed the labor organizers to access agricultural employers' private property for up to three hours per day, 120 days a year, to solicit support for unionization. The employers sued several United Farm Workers (UFW) board members in their official capacity, requesting declaratory and injunctive relief because they claimed the rule was an unconstitutional per se physical taking under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The district court denied the growers' request for a preliminary injunction and granted the UFW board's request to dismiss, reasoning the regulation didn't "allow the public to access their property in a permanent and continuous manner for whatever reason." The district court stated the access regulation was instead subject to evaluation under the multifactor balancing test set forth in Penn Central, which the growers hadn't attempted to satisfy.

A divided panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers California and several other western states) agreed, explaining the regulation placed limits on who could access the growers' private property and when. In addition, the growers didn't contend they were deprived of all economically beneficial use of their property, which meant the regulation couldn't be a per se physical taking.