A Pipeline Company Seized Their Land and Left Them With a $383,000 Bill. What Will the Supreme Court Say?

What is someone owed when their land is seized via government force?

The Supreme Court announced last month that it will weigh in on that question. It is, of course, not the first time the justices have considered a version of the query: Eminent domain, which gives the state the ability to take private property for public benefit, is not novel in 2026. But the latest case before the Court is a reminder that property owners can still get raw deals, despite the legal safeguards meant to prevent that from happening.

In 2018, Leonard Hoffmann and his neighbors in North Dakota heard from WBI Energy Transmission, which builds natural gas pipelines, that it planned to take their land. The company is private, but it holds a certificate of public convenience that confers eminent domain powers. WBI Energy Transmission offered the ranchers the price it would pay: about half of market value, according to the Institute for Justice, the public-interest law firm representing the plaintiffs.

That was a problem, for obvious reasons. The most glaring: The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment promises “just compensation” when private property is usurped for public use, and the Supreme Court has already confirmed that means fair market value. Hoffmann et al. sued, and after a judge confirmed they could introduce evidence corroborating the land’s fair market value, the parties entered into a settlement. The district court also ruled that WBI Energy Transmission was obligated to pay the fees the plaintiffs had incurred in attempting to ensure the company abided by the law, which came out to approximately $383,375.

Yet the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit reversed the latter determination. That was surprising. “For over 40 years, lower courts have consistently held that private companies exercising the federal power of eminent domain under the Natural Gas Act must follow the compensation rules of the states in which the condemned property sits,” the plaintiffs note in their petition to the Court. “The decision…forthrightly acknowledged that it split with published decisions of the Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits.”

North Dakota law allows judges to restore plaintiffs to their original financial position. WBI Energy Transmission, however, argued that the question should be controlled by federal law, which offers no such protection. What might that interpretation mean for others? “The United States currently has some 3 million miles of natural-gas pipelines, with more constantly on the way,” the plaintiffs’ petition says. “These pipelines frequently lead to condemnations nationwide. And the question of just compensation is at issue in every single one of those condemnations—to say nothing of the countless private negotiations that happen in the shadow of a pipeline company’s condemnation power.”

When the Supreme Court reconvenes, it will consider resolving the legal split between the 8th Circuit and its sisters. But the question is also one of common sense. What is the point of vindicating your constitutional right to fair market value if you have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege?