BREAKING: Supreme Court GUTS Impact Fees

Sheetz v. El Dorado County, Supreme Court decision has a huge effect on impact fees, school fees, and all kinds of takings that occur when you're trying to get a permit to build a house, an ADU, or any other type of real estate development.

This hugely important decision sends Sheetz back to the state supreme court with explicit instructions that legislative fees (like impact mitigation fees) are subject to the same standards as administrative fees, if they are takings.

Watch the video for a nuanced explanation of my notes from the supreme court arguments, decision, opinions and commentary.

But please note that this video and the words on this page are not legal advice, nor am I providing advice for your specific situation. This video is general information only and may contain inaccuracies or information that is not at all relevant to your specific situation! I'm not a lawyer or legal advisor!

Rough summary:
1. This is not legal advice
2. When the government takes your land, or does something akin to that like ask for use of the land, or ask for money in lieu of that taking, there are some tests it has to pass to show the government is being fair.
3. In this case, George Sheetz was charged a $23k traffic fee. He paid in protest and then sued to be refunded. The state supreme court of California said the fee is a legislative fee and does not need to pass the tests for takings
4. The US Supreme Court said legislative fees and administrative fees all have to pass the same standards, and sent this back to the state court
5. The 2 tests from Nollan and Dolan (and clarified in Koontz) are about essential nexus and rough proportionality.
5a) The state has to show that the project being permitted has an essential nexus with a legitimate public land use concern
5b) The state has to show that the taking is roughly proportional to the impact of the project, and not placing an unfair burden on an individual
6. Now we'll see what the state court says and what arguments the county makes. Some legal scholars seem to think that the county may still argue that this particular impact fee is not a taking at all, or that the fee is roughly proportional and it is on a public land use nexus.

The judges voted 9-0 that this should be remanded to the state court and they should review with the confirmation that legislative fees are subject to the same standards as administrative fees and all takings. But in their many consenting opinions, they give hints to how the state might now go about evaluating this fee, whether it is a taking at all, and whether regulating a class of construction is enough to satisfy proportionality requirements or not, amongst lots of other details. We'll have to wait and see what the California State Supreme Court says and whether this will apply to many impact fees, park fees, school fees, mitigation fees, non-utility fees, non-service fees, and so on.

MORE RESOURCES:
🏠 Subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowToADU?su...
🏠 Read the SC opinions yourself: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
🏠 My full bibliography: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
🏠 An excellent twitter thread from Chris Elmendorf:   / 1779601732856881330  
🏠 A great blog all about TAKINGS: https://www.inversecondemnation.com/i...
🏠 Full Fox & Friends segment that I fair use clip: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6345630...
🏠 The Riverside guys who are facing that $350k park endowment fee: https://triplexmillionaire.com/tpm-zo... (affiliate link)
🏠 Josef from NEO Builders who provided that fee breakdown: https://www.neobuildersadu.com/
🏠 2015 Impact Fee study: https://impactfees.com/publications%2...
🏠 CalMatters article on decision: https://calmatters.org/commentary/202...
🏠 For more videos about nation-wide housing:    • Housing Reform in Washington DC  
🏠 For more videos about ADUs:    • How To ADU - Advanced Videos  

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