Florida decides couple’s land is for the birds

Gordon and Molly Beyer purchased an undeveloped, nine-acre island off the Florida coast known as Bamboo Key on which they planned to build a retirement home where their family could gather for generations to come. The island was originally zoned to permit nine homes, and it was later downzoned to allow only one. That was consistent with the Beyers’ plans, and they did not object. But then the city rezoned the property to forbid any construction whatsoever, choosing instead to designate the Beyers’ property as a “bird rookery” – that is, an avian breeding ground. The only human use authorized by this new plan? Temporary camping.

Having thus destroyed any productive use of the property, the city owed the Beyers just compensation for the taking. Instead, the city offered the Beyers only something akin to, but not even as legitimate as, so-called transferable development rights – what the government calls points toward possible purchase of a development permit elsewhere. These points were useless to the Beyers so they sued to force the city to compensate them with actual dollars. After bouncing up and down the state court ladder on procedural matters for several years, a state trial court eventually ruled that the city did not owe the Beyers a penny, because they did not show that they had “reasonable investment-backed expectations” for the property. A split appellate court affirmed and the Florida Supreme Court refused to review the case. With the U.S. Supreme Court providing the last opportunity for justice in this case, PLF filed a petition for a writ certiorari on behalf of Charles Ganson, the Beyers’ estate’s personal representative.