## Facts

- Florence Dolan owned a plumbing and electrical supply store in Tigard, Oregon; part of her property lay within the 100-year floodplain of Fanno Creek.
- Dolan applied for a permit to expand her store and pave a gravel parking lot, increasing impervious surface.
- The City granted conditional approval requiring Dolan to dedicate (1) land within the floodplain as a public greenway and (2) an additional adjacent strip for a public pedestrian/bicycle path.
- Dolan sought variances from the dedication conditions; the City denied them.
- Dolan appealed, asserting the required land dedications were uncompensated takings under the Fifth Amendment (as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment).
- Oregon land-use authorities and courts upheld the conditions under a “reasonable relationship” standard.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the Takings Clause permits conditioning a development permit on uncompensated land dedications when the exactions are supported only by a general relationship to anticipated impacts.
2. Whether, beyond an “essential nexus” to a legitimate public purpose, the Constitution requires a closer fit between the degree of an exaction and the development’s projected impacts.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
- The Court accepted flood control and traffic mitigation as legitimate interests and found an essential nexus between those interests and the challenged conditions.
- The Court held that a permit exaction must satisfy “rough proportionality”: the government must make an individualized determination that the dedication is related in both nature and extent to the development’s impacts.
- The City failed to show rough proportionality for the public greenway condition because it did not justify why public access (rather than a nonpublic restriction) was necessary for flood control.
- The City failed to show rough proportionality for the path condition because it did not provide project-specific support that Dolan’s expansion justified the extent of the land required for a public pathway.

## Legal Principles

- The unconstitutional conditions doctrine limits the government’s ability to require surrender of property interests as the price of a discretionary land-use permit.
- Exactions analysis proceeds in two steps: (1) there must be an essential nexus between a legitimate public interest and the permit condition; and (2) the exaction must be roughly proportional to the development’s projected impacts.
- “Rough proportionality” requires an individualized determination that the condition is related in nature and extent to the impact; exact calculations are not required, but generalized assertions are insufficient.
- A compelled public easement implicates the right to exclude and therefore requires a concrete, impact-based justification for both the type and scope of the dedication.
- The government bears the burden to justify the exaction’s proportionality to the development’s impacts.

## Conclusion

The Court held that, even when a permit condition serves legitimate public goals and satisfies an essential nexus, the Takings Clause requires the government to show through an individualized determination that the exaction is roughly proportional in nature and extent to the development’s impacts; Tigard did not meet that standard, so the uncompensated land dedications were unconstitutional.


Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994)