US Supreme Court declines to hear El Dorado County fee dispute. Here’s why
El Dorado County resident George Sheetz wanted to take his Fifth Amendment case to the U.S. Supreme Court once again. That endeavor became less likely after the justices denied his petition for review Monday.
Sheetz faced a more than $23,400 fee to help fund road work when he built his rural El Dorado County home around 2016, according to his petition and the Pacific Legal Foundation. He challenged the fee, ultimately leading to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024, when the court’s majority ruled the county could not impose certain conditions on land-use permits.
“The Takings Clause applies equally to both — which means that it prohibits legislatures and agencies alike from imposing unconstitutional conditions on land-use permits,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the 2024 decision.
That clause states that private property cannot be taken for public use. Sheetz and his legal team argue he is being held financially responsible for public infrastructure because the fee helps pay for public roadways. The latest legal dispute centers on whether fees should be proportionally related to a development’s direct traffic impacts or based on another formula.
Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, the California Court of Appeal decided the roughly $23,000 fee could stand. Sheetz’s attorney, Brian Hodges of the Pacific Legal Foundation, said the county’s rationale for the fee is that new housing projects spark commercial development and increase the need for road work, justifying a different fee structure for each development type.
“By putting it on a permit-by-permit basis, they’re making George pay for the ongoing impacts that preexisting residents have on traffic that should be maintained by everybody who uses (the roads),” Hodges said.
The county, in a filing opposing Sheetz’s latest petition, argued that commercial fee rates vary by size because that can affect the number of trips generated. As a result, commercial spaces are charged per square foot. However, all single-family homes at the time were charged a flat fee because the number of trips generated by a single-family home is relatively low. El Dorado County also created different rate zones based on projected traffic demands.
Because of this policy, Sheetz’s petition states, residential development paid for 84% of projected traffic mitigation costs, while commercial development paid 16%. According to the petition, residential development directly accounted for 60% of traffic increases.
El Dorado County declined to comment on the case.
