On November 22, 2000, WLF filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to affirm that the Constitution requires the government to pay “just compensation” when a regulation has the effect of taking private property. For more than 40 years Mr. Palazzolo has tried to develop his coastal property. The state government blocked those efforts by denying him permission to build, because it deemed most of his property wetlands. WLF argued that the Court should consider revisiting a major part of its Takings Clause jurisprudence by largely abandoning its reliance on a property owner’s “reasonable investment backed expectations” in determining when a taking has occurred. On June 28, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court handed WLF a victory when it held that a state may not regulate property into uselessness without paying compensation, simply because the owner acquired the property after the regulation became effective.