(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2001 1 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus TAHOE-SIERRA PRESERVATION COUNCIL, INC., ET AL. v. TAHOE REGIONAL PLANNING AGENCY ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT No. 00–1167. Argued January 7, 2002—Decided April 23, 2002 Respondent Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) imposed two moratoria, totaling 32 months, on development in the Lake Tahoe Basin while formulating a comprehensive land-use plan for the area. Petitioners, real estate owners affected by the moratoria and an asso-ciation representing such owners, filed parallel suits, later consoli-dated, claiming that TRPA’s actions constituted a taking of their property without just compensation. The District Court found that TRPA had not effected a “partial taking” under the analysis set out in Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104; however, it concluded that the moratoria did constitute a taking under the categori-cal rule announced in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, because TRPA temporarily deprived petitioners of all eco-nomically viable use of their land. On appeal, TRPA successfully chal-lenged the District Court’s takings determination. Finding that the only question in this facial challenge was whether Lucas’ rule applied, the Ninth Circuit held that because the regulations had only a tempo-rary impact on petitioners’ fee interest, no categorical taking had oc-curred; that Lucas applied to the relatively rare case in which a regula-tion permanently denies all productive use of an entire parcel, whereas the moratoria involved only a temporal slice of the fee interest; and that First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304, concerned the question whether compensation is an appropriate remedy for a temporary taking, not whether or when such a taking has occurred. The court also concluded that Penn Cen-tral’s ad hoc balancing approach was the proper framework for analyz-ing whether a taking had occurred, but that petitioners had not chal-2 TAHOE-SIERRA PRESERVATION COUNCIL, INC. v. TAHOE REGIONAL PLANNING AGENCY Syllabus lenged the District Court’s conclusion that they could not make out a claim under Penn Central’s factors. Held: The moratoria ordered by TRPA are not per se takings of property requiring compensation under the Takings Clause. Pp. 16–39. (a) Although this Court’s physical takings jurisprudence, for the most part, involves the straightforward application of per se rules, its regulatory takings jurisprudence is characterized by “essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries,” Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124, designed to allow “careful examination and weighing of all the relevant circum-stances,” Palazzolo v. Rhode Island, 533 U. S. 606, 636 (O’CONNOR, J., concurring). The longstanding distinction between physical and regulatory takings makes it inappropriate to treat precedent from one as controlling on the other. Petitioners rely on First English and Lucas—both regulatory takings cases—to argue for a categorical rule that whenever the government imposes a deprivation of all economi-cally viable use of property, no matter how brief, it effects a taking. In First English, 482 U. S., at 315, 318, 321, the Court addressed the separate remedial question of how compensation is measured once a regulatory taking is established, but not the different and prior question whether the temporary regulation was in fact a taking. To the extent that the Court referenced that antecedent question, it recognized that a regulation temporarily denying an owner all use of her property might not constitute a taking if the denial was part of the State’s authority to enact safety regulations, or if it were one of the normal delays in ob-taining building permits, changes in zoning ordinances, variances, and the like. Thus, First English did not approve, and implicitly rejected, petitioners’ categorical approach. Nor is Lucas dispositive of the ques-tion presented. Its categorical rule—requiring compensation when a regulation permanently deprives an owner of “all economically benefi-cial uses” of his land, 505 U. S., at 1019—does not answer the question whether a regulation prohibiting any economic use of land for 32 months must be compensated. Petitioners attempt to bring this case under the rule in Lucas by focusing exclusively on the property during the moratoria is unavailing. This Court has consistently rejected such an approach to the “denominator” question. See, e.g., Keystone Bitumi-nous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, 480 U. S. 470, 497. To sever a 32-month segment from the remainder of each fee simple estate and then ask whether that segment has been taken in its entirety would ignore Penn Central’s admonition to focus on “the parcel as a whole,” 438 U. S., at 130–131. Both dimensions of a real property interest—the metes and bounds describing its geographic dimensions and the term of years de-scribing its temporal aspect—must be considered when viewing the in-terest in its entirety. A permanent deprivation of all use is a taking of the parcel as a whole, but a temporary restriction causing a diminutionCite as: 535 U. S. ____ (2002) 3 Syllabus in value is not, for the property will recover value when the prohibi-tion is lifted. Lucas was carved out for the “extraordinary case” in which a regulation permanently deprives property of all use; the default rule remains that a fact specific inquiry is required in the regulatory taking context. Nevertheless, the Court will consider petitioners’ argu-ment that the interest in protecting property owners from bearing pub-lic burdens “which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole,” Armstrong v. United States, 364 U. S. 40, 49, justifies creating a new categorical rule. Pp. 17–29. (b) “Fairness and justice” will not be better served by a categorical rule that any deprivation of all economic use, no matter how brief,