A local case watched closely by both environmentalists and property-rights advocates nationwide has been heard at the nation’s highest court, though a decision isn’t expected until early summer.
The United States Supreme Court heard arguments from both sides last week in the case of Palazzolo versus the Rhode Island Coastal Council.
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Plaintiff Anthony Palazzolo, of Westerly, first filed the case in the Rhode Island courts in 1988, after the Coastal Resource Management Council (CRMC) refused to grant him a permit to fill 18-acres of marsh-land along the Westerly shoreline. Palazzolo is seeking close to $3 million in damages, and lost property value.
But many environmentalists and local leaders fear that the case could have serious implications nationwide in the development of what has long been considered protected wetlands.
“The outcome of this case could have broad implications for the protection of our coastal ecology and our nation’s environment in general,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Attorney General.
Palazzolo, who has solely owned the property since 1978, had hoped to fill the 18-acres and create 74 house lots. But when CRMC denied him the necessary permits, he filed suit claiming it amounted to the taking of his land, and as such a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights.
“Our basic legal theory is when regulations are applied to property and have the effect of destroying the economic value of that property, those regulations aren’t valid under the Takings Clause of the Constitution,” Eric Grant, an attorney with the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation, a non-profit organization representing Palazzolo at the Supreme Court, said in a previous interview. “The central ruling of the courts (in Rhode Island) was that anyone who acquires property after a regulation is put into place is prevented from developing. We think that rule is unfair.”
