Parking Ass'n of Georgia, Inc. v. City of Atlanta
The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to an Atlanta ordinance requiring parking lot owners to add landscaping, leaving in place a Georgia Supreme Court ruling that the law was not an unconstitutional taking of property.
Justices Thomas and O'Connor dissented from the denial, arguing that lower courts are split over whether a stricter property-rights test applies when a legislature, rather than an individual permitting decision, imposes the burden.
How it got here: A Georgia trial court ruled for the city; a divided Georgia Supreme Court affirmed; the parking lot owners asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, which it declined to do.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Atlanta's city council passed an ordinance requiring roughly 350 existing surface parking lots to add landscaped areas and trees, aiming to improve the appearance of downtown. Parking lot owners said compliance would cost about $4.4 million and cause about $1.6 million in lost advertising revenue from signs blocked by new trees. They sued, claiming the ordinance took their property without compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The question before the Court
Could Atlanta force existing parking lot owners to add landscaping worth millions of dollars without paying them, or did the Georgia courts wrongly excuse the city from the Supreme Court's usual property-taking test because the rule came from a city council rather than a planning board?
Why it matters
Parking lot owners in Atlanta must comply with the landscaping ordinance despite estimated costs exceeding $4 million and lost advertising revenue. More broadly, because the Court did not resolve the dispute over which legal test applies to broad legislative rules versus individualized permit conditions, property owners in other states remain subject to inconsistent standards depending on where they live.
What changes now
Because the Supreme Court denied certiorari, the Georgia Supreme Court's ruling upholding the ordinance stands, and Atlanta's parking lot owners must comply with the landscaping requirements. The denial is not a ruling on the merits and sets no binding nationwide precedent, so the conflict among lower courts over which takings test applies to legislative enactments remains unresolved and could return to the Court in a future case.
What this does not decide
A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits and does not establish that Atlanta's ordinance is constitutional as a matter of federal law. It leaves standing the Georgia Supreme Court's decision but does not resolve the disagreement among lower courts about whether Dolan's proportionality test applies to legislative takings.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Dissent (1). Justice Thomas (author).
Dissent — Justice Thomas
“The distinction between sweeping legislative takings and particularized administrative takings appears to be a distinction without a constitutional difference.”Thomas argues courts should not treat legislative takings differently from administrative ones.
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice O'Connor, argued the Court should have taken the case because lower courts are split on whether Dolan's rough-proportionality test applies to takings caused by legislative acts rather than individualized administrative permit decisions. He argued the distinction between legislative and administrative takings has no real constitutional basis, since a city council can take property just as effectively as a planning commission, and urged the Court to resolve the tension between Agins and Dolan. Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Georgia Supreme Court evaluated the ordinance under Agins v. City of Tiburon, a more lenient test asking only whether a regulation advances a legitimate government interest and leaves the owner an economically viable use of the property.
- Applying that test, the Georgia court found the ordinance valid because it served Atlanta's interest in improving the downtown area's appearance and still let owners operate their lots profitably.
- The Georgia court distinguished Dolan v. City of Tigard, a stricter test requiring a showing that a permit condition is roughly proportional to a specific development's impact, reasoning that Dolan applies only to individualized administrative permit decisions.
- Because Atlanta's ordinance was a general legislative rule applying to many landowners rather than an individualized permit condition, the Georgia court held that the stricter Dolan test did not apply, and the ordinance survived under the looser Agins standard.
- The U.S. Supreme Court denied review of that decision, leaving the Georgia court's reasoning and the underlying legislative-versus-administrative distinction unresolved at the national level.