Murr v. Wisconsin
The Supreme Court ruled that a Wisconsin family's two adjacent, undersized river lots should be evaluated together, not separately, when deciding whether a local building restriction amounted to an unconstitutional taking of their property.
Because the combined lots retained substantial value and use, the Court found no taking occurred, and in doing so laid out a new multi-factor test for how courts should decide which property counts as the relevant 'parcel' in future takings disputes.
“Like the ultimate question whether a regulation has gone too far, the question of the proper parcel in regulatory takings cases cannot be solved by any simple test.”
The majority explains why it adopted a flexible, multi-factor approach rather than a rigid rule.
How it got here: A Wisconsin trial court ruled against the family, the state appeals court affirmed, the state supreme court declined review, and the family asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Murr siblings inherited two adjoining lots along Wisconsin's Lower St. Croix River, a federally protected waterway. Local rules barred selling or developing substandard lots separately once they came under common ownership, and the family's two lots became merged this way. When the family sought a variance to sell one lot to fund improving the other, the county denied it, and the family sued, claiming the restriction took their property without compensation.
The question before the Court
A family owned two adjacent riverside lots that local rules treated as merged because they were too small to build on separately. Should courts judge whether the government "took" their property by looking at the two lots together or at the restricted lot alone?
Why it matters
Landowners who acquire adjoining parcels now know that courts may combine those parcels when assessing whether a regulation goes too far, based on factors like state law treatment, physical layout, and how one lot's restrictions boost the other's value. This affects families with vacation properties, developers assembling adjacent land, and local governments enforcing minimum-lot-size and merger rules nationwide.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision resolving the case; there is no remand because the Court agreed with the state appeals court's conclusion that no taking occurred. Going forward, the multi-factor test the Court announced for identifying the relevant 'parcel' in regulatory takings cases will guide lower courts nationwide in similar disputes involving adjoining lots, merger ordinances, and minimum-lot-size rules.
What this does not decide
The Court did not adopt a bright-line rule that all contiguous, commonly owned lots must always be combined for takings purposes; it stressed that defining the parcel depends on the specific factors present in each case rather than a categorical formula.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Roberts
“I would stick with our traditional approach: State law defines the boundaries of distinct parcels of land, and those boundaries should determine the "private property" at issue in regulatory takings cases.”The dissent's core objection to the majority's new multi-factor test for defining the relevant property.
Chief Justice Roberts agreed the family should lose but objected to the majority's multi-factor test for identifying the relevant property. He argued state law alone should define the parcel's boundaries, with common ownership of adjacent land considered only later, when deciding if a taking occurred—not baked into the definition of the property itself. He would have sent the case back for the state court to identify the parcel using ordinary Wisconsin property law first.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas joined the Chief Justice's dissent as correctly applying existing precedent, but wrote separately to suggest the Court should someday reexamine whether its regulatory takings doctrine is actually grounded in the original meaning of the Takings Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than assuming the modern framework is correct.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that regulatory takings claims require identifying the proper 'denominator'—the unit of property whose lost value is measured—before deciding whether a regulation went too far under the Takings Clause, which bars government from taking private property without paying for it.
- The Court rejected two rigid alternatives: defining the parcel solely by whatever portion the regulation targets, and treating state-law lot lines as automatically controlling, since either approach lets the government or landowner too easily manipulate the outcome.
- Instead, the Court adopted a multi-factor test asking whether reasonable expectations about property ownership would lead a landowner to treat adjoining holdings as one parcel: courts should weigh the property's treatment under state and local law, its physical characteristics such as contiguity and topography, and the value one part of the land adds to the rest.
- Applying that test, the Court found the two lots were merged under a valid state regulation, were physically contiguous with similar rugged terrain along a protected river, and that keeping the restricted lot boosted the value and usability of the other lot, so the two should be treated as a single parcel.
- Evaluating the merged property as a whole, the Court applied the categorical rule from Lucas (a regulation that destroys all economic use is automatically a taking) and found it inapplicable, since the family retained substantial residential use and lost less than 10 percent of the property's combined value.
- The Court then applied the flexible, multi-factor Penn Central test for lesser burdens (weighing economic impact, interference with investment expectations, and the character of the government action) and again found no taking, because the restriction was a longstanding, foreseeable type of land-use regulation.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City (438 U. S. 104)
The Court relied on Penn Central's 'parcel as a whole' principle as the foundation for its new multi-factor test.
Reaffirms Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (505 U. S. 1003)
The Court applied Lucas's rule that total loss of economic use is automatically a taking, finding it didn't apply here.