Takings

Billy Binion | 8.6.2025 1:49 PM

The Constitution pledges that the government cannot take your property without "just compensation." So if that happens, and no statute passed by the legislature applies to your specific case, can you sue?

That this is even a question may sound, at a minimum, harebrained. After all, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. But whether or not that promise—as found in the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause—is effectively an empty one when it is not paired with a relevant law is a matter of active legal debate.

A federal court attempted to answer it last week in a case that hinged on, of all things, a local "urban cowboy."

Fulton County, Georgia, seized seven horses from Brandon "Brannu" Fulton in 2017 after he was charged with animal cruelty. (The identical last name here is an unfortunate coincidence for the sake of clarity, but we will persevere.) Those charges were later dropped. But the government still declined to return the animals to Fulton—long ago

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