The Fifth Amendment promises “just compensation” when the government takes your land. On June 29, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether a private pipeline company gets to write its own definition of “just.”

The case is Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission, and it started with 12 miles of pipe through McKenzie County, North Dakota. In 2018, WBI Energy invoked its federal certificate under the Natural Gas Act and moved to condemn easements across land belonging to Leonard and Denae Hoffmann, Randall Stevenson, and Rocky Prestangen. The company’s opening offer ran to roughly half of fair market value. The ranchers didn’t object to the pipeline. They objected to the price, and the Constitution happens to back them up on that point.

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They sued, spent three years establishing what the land was actually worth, and settled confidentially on the value in 2021. A federal judge then ordered WBI to cover the landowners’ legal fees and costs, a bill of roughly $380,000 they’d run up proving a number the company should have offered honestly the first time. The 8th Circuit Court of........

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