Barron Ex Rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore
The Supreme Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment's protection against government taking private property without paying for it applies only to the federal government, not to state or local governments like the city of Baltimore.
Because the man who sued could not use the Fifth Amendment against a city government, the Court said it had no power to hear his case at all, and threw it out.
How it got here: A Maryland state court ruled against the wharf owner, and he brought a writ of error asking the Supreme Court to review that state court judgment.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A wharf owner in Baltimore sued the city, claiming that the city's street and grading work had diverted streams and dumped sand and gravel around his wharf, making the water too shallow for ships to use it. He argued this ruined his business and amounted to the city taking his property without paying him, which he said violated the Fifth Amendment.
The question before the Court
Does the Fifth Amendment's ban on taking private property without compensation limit what state and local governments can do, not just the federal government?
Why it matters
This ruling meant that, for over a century, people harmed by state and local governments could not rely on the federal Bill of Rights for protection — they had to look to their own state constitutions instead. It shaped how constitutional rights worked in America until later cases began applying Bill of Rights protections to the states individually.
What changes now
Because the Fifth Amendment did not apply to the city's actions, the Supreme Court held it had no jurisdiction to review the Maryland court's decision at all, and dismissed the writ of error. The wharf owner was left without a federal constitutional claim and had no further recourse in this litigation; his only options going forward would have been under state law or a state constitution. The ruling stood as governing law until much later cases began applying Bill of Rights protections to the states individually.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether the city actually damaged the wharf owner's property or whether he deserved compensation under Maryland law. It decided only that the federal Fifth Amendment gave him no claim against a state or local government, leaving any state-law remedy untouched.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court framed the threshold legal question as whether the Fifth Amendment's just-compensation requirement restrains the federal government only, or also restrains state and local governments — because if it only restrains the federal government, the Supreme Court would have no power to hear a case against a city.
- The Court reasoned that the Constitution was created by the people of the United States to establish and limit their national government, while each state separately wrote its own constitution to limit its own state government; a general limitation written into the national Constitution therefore naturally applies to the national government it creates, not to separate state governments.
- The Court examined Article I's structure as proof of this design: Section 9 lists restrictions using general language but is understood to bind only the federal government, while Section 10 separately and explicitly lists restrictions using the words 'no state shall' whenever the framers meant to bind the states.
- Applying that pattern to the Bill of Rights amendments, the Court found no comparable language anywhere stating that the Fifth Amendment or its companion amendments were meant to bind the states, and noted that the historical push for these amendments was aimed at fears of the new national government, not of the states' own governments.
- The Court concluded that the Fifth Amendment's just-compensation guarantee limits only the federal government's power, not the actions of state or local governments such as Baltimore's.