Willie Benedetti spent 45 years farming 267 acres in the rolling coastal hills of Valley Ford, California. He built Willie Bird Turkeys into a celebrated ranch-to-table enterprise whose gourmet birds graced tables from the White House to Williams Sonoma catalogs. But his land was his true life’s work — and he intended it to remain as a place for his family, even after he was gone.
In 2017, Marin County adopted a new Land Use Plan requiring that anyone who builds a home on agriculturally zoned coastal land must first record a covenant promising to remain “actively and directly engaged” in commercial agriculture in perpetuity. The covenant binds not only current owners but every future owner of the property, forever. Willie was a farmer, but his two sons Arron and Arthur, were not. Willie respected their choice to be professional plumbers, and he saw Marin County’s mandate for what it was: the government telling a man what he must do with his own land and his own life.
“What kind of law forces a man to keep farming?” he asked.
That July, Willie filed suit in Marin County Superior Court, challenging the forced farming mandate as unconstitutional. He wanted to build a home on the property for his son Arthur — a simple request, consistent with the existing zoning. The county refused unless Willie surrendered his right to choose how he and every future owner of his land would earn a living.
Willie died in 2018 before the courts resolved his case. His sons inherited the land and their father’s unfinished fight, and kept the case alive. They are not farmers and have no desire to become farmers. Arthur simply wants to build a home on land his family has owned for generations.
The trial court rejected the brothers’ claims. The California Court of Appeal affirmed, applying rational basis review and concluding the covenant bore a sufficient relationship to the county’s interest in maintaining agriculture as a viable industry. The California Supreme Court declined to hear the case in December 2025.
The Benedettis are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up two constitutional questions the Court has never directly answered: whether the police power extends to conscripting private citizens into a government-chosen occupation, and whether the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right not to be forced into such an occupation.
The government’s power to regulate land has never included the power to conscript the people who own it. Americans have always had the right to choose how they earn a living — that freedom is a fundamental right. Marin County didn’t just burden the Benedettis’ property; it told the brothers what they must do with their lives as the price of building a home. That is not a land use regulation. It is something the government has never had the authority to do.
Willie Benedetti started this fight for his family. Now, almost a decade later, his sons are taking it to the nation’s highest court.
What’s At Stake?
- Private property owners should be free to use their property to accomplish their dreams — the government cannot press them into a preferred occupation as a condition of building on their own land.
- The Constitution protects every person's right to choose their own occupation — and just as importantly, their right to refuse an occupation the government has chosen for them.
