Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid

Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving eminent domain and labor relations.

The nursery owner sued for a declaratory judgment and an injunction barring future visits by labor organizers, arguing that the regulation results in a physical taking of property and an unreasonable seizure under the U.S. Constitution.

Both the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit[3] rejected the request for an injunction and the nursery's and fruit packer's arguments that state authorization of union organizer visits under the state regulation is a taking of property or an unreasonable seizure.

The United States filed an amicus brief in support of petitioners on January 7, 2021, 13 days before the end of the Trump administration.

[5] The basic issue before the justices was whether the union organizer visits to the petitioners' facilities is a physical taking of property and therefore automatically subject to an injunction or mandatory compensation under the 1982 case of Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp. or, instead, whether the petitioners' claim should be evaluated under the various factors outlined in the 1978 case of Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City.

Breyer wrote that the access granted to union organizers was only temporary and not permanent and thus should not be considered a taking, since the agricultural worked are not "forever denied" use of the property, and thus the law was "not functionally equivalent to the classic taking in which government directly appropriates private property or ousts the owner from his domain".

[2] Breyer also expressed concern that the majority opinion may be used broadly by landowner to block access from inspectors such as those "to verify proper preservation of wetlands or the habitat enjoyed by an endangered species, or for that matter, the safety of inspected meat".