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Supreme Court Sides With Raisin Farmers in Property Rights Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a government program dating to the Great Depression meant to increase raisin prices by keeping some of them off the market amounted to an unconstitutional taking of private property by the government.

The case, Horne v. Department of Agriculture, No. 14-275, arose from the activities of Marvin D. and Laura Horne, raisin farmers in Fresno, Calif., who set up a business arrangement that they claimed allowed them to avoid the program.

The Agriculture Department imposed fines, and the Hornes defended themselves on the ground that aspects of the program violated the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which says private property may not be taken for public use without just compensation.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for eight justices, said the program was indeed a government taking of private property.

He started by rejecting the argument that personal property is subject to different rules from real estate and the like. So long as there is wholesale government appropriation rather than taxation or regulation, he wrote, the same rules apply to both kinds of property.

Chief Justice Roberts added that it made no difference that the government in some years paid growers for some of the raisins kept from the market.

“The fact that the growers retain a contingent interest of indeterminate value does not mean there has been no physical taking,” the chief justice wrote, “particularly since the value of the interest depends on the discretion of the taker, and may be worthless, as it was for one of the two years at issue here.”

Chief Justice Roberts rejected the government’s argument, relying in part on a decision concerning pesticides, that raisin farmers dissatisfied with the marketing program remained free to plant different crops.

“ ‘Let them sell wine’ is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history,” the chief justice wrote.

“Selling produce in interstate commerce, although certainly subject to reasonable government regulation, is similarly not a special governmental benefit that the government may hold hostage, to be ransomed by the waiver of constitutional protection,” Chief Justice Roberts added. “Raisins are not dangerous pesticides; they are a healthy snack.”

He went on to dismiss as irrelevant a case about a government program concerning oyster shells. “Raisins are not like oysters: They are private property — the fruit of the growers’ labor — not ‘public things subject to the absolute control of the state,’ ” he wrote, quoting the earlier decision. “Any physical taking of them for public use must be accompanied by just compensation.”

In ruling that the Hornes were indeed entitled to compensation, Chief Justice Roberts’s majority narrowed. On that point, he was joined only by the other more conservative members of the court: Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“The Hornes should simply be relieved of the obligation to pay the fine and associated civil penalty they were assessed when they resisted the government’s effort to take their raisins,” the chief justice wrote. “This case, in litigation for more than a decade, has gone on long enough.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, parted ways with the majority on that last point. The program’s benefits should be weighed against its costs, Justice Breyer wrote. He would have returned the case to the lower courts for a determination of whether the program helped or hurt the Hornes, and how much.

In a concurrence, Justice Thomas said such a move “would be a fruitless exercise.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from both parts of Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion. She said the program was not a classic taking because it did not deprive the Hornes of all of their property rights.

She added that the majority had damaged settled legal principles “in a manner that is as unwarranted as it is vague.”

“What makes the court’s twisting of the doctrine even more baffling is that it ultimately instructs the government that it can permissibly achieve its market control goals by imposing a quota without offering raisin producers a way of reaping any return whatsoever on the raisins they cannot sell,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “I have trouble understanding why anyone would prefer that.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Justices Side With Raisin Farmers on Property Case. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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