## Facts

- Peter Mugler built and operated a brewery in Salina, Kansas, in 1877, specially designed for manufacturing beer and far less valuable for other uses.
- Kansas amended its constitution in 1880 to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, except for specified non-beverage purposes.
- Kansas enacted an implementing statute in 1881 criminalizing unpermitted liquor manufacture (and related conduct) after a stated effective date.
- Mugler continued manufacturing beer after the prohibition took effect without a permit for the constitutionally permitted purposes.
- Mugler was indicted and prosecuted on separate charges for unlawful manufacture and unlawful sale of intoxicating liquors.
- Kansas later enacted an 1885 statute declaring places used for illegal liquor manufacture or sale to be nuisances subject to equitable abatement; in a companion case, the state sought to enjoin and abate another brewery as a nuisance.

## Issues

1. Whether Kansas’s prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections for liberty and property.
2. Whether the severe diminution in value of property specially fitted for brewing, caused by prohibition, constituted a taking of property for public use requiring compensation.
3. Whether statutory nuisance-abatement proceedings in equity, including abatement without a jury, violated federal constitutional protections.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed Mugler’s convictions and upheld the Kansas prohibition scheme.
- The Court held that prohibiting liquor manufacture and sale for beverage purposes was a permissible exercise of state police power to protect health, safety, and morals.
- The Court ruled that loss in property value caused by a valid prohibition on harmful uses is not a compensable taking.
- The Court sustained the nuisance-abatement regime, including equitable proceedings to abate places used for illegal liquor activity, and rejected claims that such proceedings required a jury.

## Legal Principles

- A state may, under its police power, prohibit uses of property deemed injurious to public health, morals, or safety, even if the regulation substantially reduces property value.
- Regulation that forbids harmful uses of property is not an “appropriation” for public benefit in the eminent-domain sense and therefore is not a taking requiring compensation.
- Property used in violation of law to maintain a public nuisance may be restrained or destroyed under valid police power without constituting a taking or a deprivation of property without due process.
- A state may authorize equity courts to abate public nuisances arising from illegal liquor manufacture or sale; abatement in equity without a jury is consistent with traditional equity practice and does not, by itself, violate federal constitutional guarantees.

## Conclusion

The Court sustained Kansas’s liquor prohibition and related nuisance-abatement measures as valid exercises of police power, holding that the Constitution does not require compensation merely because a lawful prohibition eliminates the primary economic use of property and that equity abatement of illegal liquor premises may proceed without a jury.


Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887)