Criminal,
Constitutional Law,
Administrative/Regulatory
May 28, 2025
Excuse for confiscating property?
A small county's revenue-boosting scheme, which involves administratively penalizing property owners for presumed unpermitted cannabis cultivation, raises constitutional concerns about due process and the right to a jury trial.
Michael M. Berger
Senior Counsel
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP
2049 Century Park East
Los Angeles , CA 90067
Phone: (310) 312-4185
Fax: (310) 996-6968
Email: mmberger@manatt.com
USC Law School
Michael M. Berger is senior counsel at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, where he is co-chair of the Appellate Practice Group. He has argued four takings cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Assume that you are a small, rural county that wants to increase its revenue. What if your staff concludes that a clever way to do this is by increasing fines for code violations? And what if you could multiply the fines by assuming that the violations were done in pursuit of a plan to illegally cultivate cannabis? Your only problems might be proving both the underlying violation and the motivation. But what if you could end run the difficulty of proving those items by making...
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