Support Pours in for Ranchers’ Supreme Court Battle with Pipeline Company Wielding Eminent Domain Power

ARLINGTON, Va.—With the U.S. Supreme Court poised to consider a case with massive implications for property owners across the country, support poured in for a group of North Dakota ranchers’ fight with a gas pipeline company over the value of their land. Should the Court rule against the ranchers, property owners across the country could lose state law protections that make sure they get fair compensation in eminent domain proceedings. The ranchers, led by Len Hoffmann, are represented by the Institute for Justice (IJ).

“This case is about protecting property rights nationwide,” said IJ Deputy Litigation Director Bob McNamara. “There is no better illustration of that than the fact that thousands of property owners and multiple national advocacy groups have rallied to these ranchers’ side.”

Using eminent domain, the government can force property owners to sell. That power comes with the responsibility to pay just compensation but figuring out what that means is not straightforward. In the case of the ranchers’ home state, North Dakota ensures that when property owners successfully contest in court the price offered for their land, they have their attorneys’ fees paid. Many states similarly have detailed laws protecting property owners to ensure that at the end of the day they are made whole. Most federal courts nationwide had held that those laws apply when determining how much a private pipeline company owes for the land it takes. 

But the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took a different view and said that the company, as a federal certificate-holder, was immune from state law in the same way that the federal government itself would be. In Len’s case, the Supreme Court will resolve that dispute. 

And the amicus briefs submitted in support of the ranchers make clear how much property owners could lose if the Supreme Court sides with the pipeline company. The Owners’ Counsel of America highlights a particularly egregious case where a gas company offered a Florida property owner just 1.4% of what a jury ultimately found to be the land’s value.

Many of the briefs come from landowners directly, like property owners in Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as a coalition of thousands of landowners across seven western states, all of whom have already lost land to pipelines and who warn the Court against expanding private companies’ ability to run roughshod over private landowners and the state laws that are meant to protect them. 

National advocacy groups weighed in as well. In addition to the Owners’ Counsel of America, the National Association of Realtors and American Farm Bureau Federation warned the Court that adopting the Eighth Circuit’s rule would have consequences for takings nationwide. And the Pacific Legal Foundation explained that private companies using the power of eminent domain have historically been treated differently from the government itself and argued that abandoning this tradition would expand private condemnations at the expense of the rights of private property owners.

Oral argument in Hoffmann v. WBI will be held on November 9.