Sheetz v. County of El Dorado, California

The County of El Dorado, California, has a Traffic Impact Mitigation (TIM) Fee Program that imposes a traffic-impact fee on any property owner applying for a building permit. The fee consists of two components: the “Highway 50 Component” and the “Local Road Component,” and is determined by the geographic zone in which the project is located and the type of construction proposed. The fee is mandatory regardless of the actual impact the project may have on existing or future roads. The TIM Fee Program stipulates that new developments bear the full cost of road construction and widening, even though these roads are used and benefitted from by existing residents and non-residents alike. In 2012, the County Board passed a resolution establishing new TIM Fee rates, which were subsequently applied to George Sheetz’s project. Sheetz applied for a building permit in July 2016 to construct a 1,854-square-foot manufactured house for his family. The County required him to pay $23,420 in traffic-mitigation fees based on the type and location of his project, even though no individualized assessment was made to correlate the fee with the project’s actual impact on local or state roads. Sheetz paid the fee under protest and later filed a legal action against the County, alleging the fee was an unconstitutional condition under the Nollan and Dolan standards and seeking a refund of the fee paid. Under the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine, “the government may not deny a benefit to a person because he exercises a constitutional right.” The U.S. Supreme Court in Nollan (1987) and Dolan (1994) recognized that land-use permit applicants “are especially vulnerable to the type of coercion that the unconstitutional conditions doctrine prohibits.” Under those cases, the government may condition approval of a land-use permit on the owner’s dedication of property to public use if the government can prove that an “essential nexus” and “rough proportionality” exist between the demanded property and the impacts of the owner’s project. The superior court ruled against Sheetz, concluding that legislative exactions are exempt from Nollan/Dolan review. The California Court of Appeal affirmed.