It is correct that many of our prior opinions have suggested that “harmful or noxious uses” of property may be proscribed by government regulation without the requirement of compensation. For a number of reasons, however, we think the South Carolina Supreme Court was too quick to conclude that that principle decides the present case. The “harmful or noxious uses” principle was the Court’s early attempt to describe in theoretical terms why government [505 U.S. 1003, 1023] may, consistent with the Takings Clause, affect property values by regulation without incurring an obligation to compensate - a reality we nowadays acknowledge explicitly with respect to the full scope of the State’s police power. See, e.g., Penn Central Transportation Co., 438 U.S., at 125 (where State “reasonably conclude[s] that the health, safety, morals, or general welfare' would be promoted by prohibiting particular contemplated uses of land," compensation need not accompany prohibition); see also Nollan v. California Coastal Comm., 483 U.S., at 834 -835 ("Our cases have not elaborated on the standards for determining what constitutes a legitimate state interest[,]’ [but] [t]hey have made clear . . . that a broad range of governmental purposes and regulations satisfy these requirements”). We made this very point in Penn Central Transportation Co., where, in the course of sustaining New York City’s landmarks preservation program against a takings challenge, we rejected the petitioner’s suggestion that Mugler and the cases following it were premised on, and thus limited by, some objective conception of “noxiousness”:
"[T]he uses in issue in Hadacheck, Miller, and Goldblatt were perfectly lawful in themselves. They involved no blameworthiness, . . . moral wrongdoing or conscious act of dangerous risk-taking which induce[d society] to shift the cost to a pa[rt]icular individual. Sax, Takings and the Police Power, 74 Yale L.J. 36, 50 (1964). These cases are better understood as resting not on any supposed “noxious” quality of the prohibited uses, but rather on the ground that the restrictions were reasonably related to the implementation of a policy - not unlike historic preservation - expected to produce a widespread public benefit and applicable to all similarly situated property. 438 U.S., at 133 -134, n. 30.
“Harmful or noxious use” analysis was, in other words, simply the progenitor of our more contemporary statements that [505 U.S. 1003, 1024] “land use regulation does not effect a taking if it `substantially advance[s] legitimate state interests’. . . .” Nollan, supra, 483 U.S., at 834 , (quoting Agins v. Tiburon, 447 U.S., at 260 ); see also Penn Central Transportation Co., supra, 438 U.S., at 127 ; Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 387 -388 (1926).
The transition from our early focus on control of “noxious” uses to our contemporary understanding of the broad realm within which government may regulate without compensation was an easy one, since the distinction between “harm-preventing” and “benefit-conferring” regulation is often in the eye of the beholder. It is quite possible, for example, to describe in either fashion the ecological, economic, and esthetic concerns that inspired the South Carolina Legislature in the present case. One could say that imposing a servitude on Lucas’ land is necessary in order to prevent his use of it from “harming” South Carolina’s ecological resources; or, instead, in order to achieve the “benefits” of an ecological preserve. 11 Compare, e.g., Claridge v. New Hampshire [505 U.S. 1003, 1025] Wetlands Board, 125 N.H. 745, 752, 485 A.2d 287, 292 (1984) (owner may, without compensation, be barred from filling wetlands because landfilling would deprive adjacent coastal habitats and marine fisheries of ecological support), with, e.g., Bartlett v. Zoning Comm’n of Old Lyme, 161 Conn. 24, 30, 282 A.2d 907, 910 (1971) (owner barred from filling tidal marshland must be compensated, despite municipality’s “laudable” goal of “preserv[ing] marshlands from encroachment or destruction”). Whether one or the other of the competing characterizations will come to one’s lips in a particular case depends primarily upon one’s evaluation of the worth of competing uses of real estate. See Restatement (Second) of Torts 822, Comment 9, p. 112 (1979) (“[P]ractically all human activities unless carried on in a wilderness interfere to some extent with others or involve some risk of interference”). A given restraint will be seen as mitigating “harm” to the adjacent parcels or securing a “benefit” for them, depending upon he observer’s evaluation of the relative importance of the use that the restraint favors. See Sax, Takings and the Police Power, 74 Yale L.J. 36, 49 (1964) (“[T]he problem [in this area] is not one of noxiousness or harm-creating activity at all; rather, it is a problem of inconsistency between perfectly innocent and independently desirable uses.”). Whether Lucas’ construction of single-family residences on his parcels should be described as bringing “harm” to South Carolina’s adjacent ecological resources thus depends principally upon whether the describer believes that the State’s use interest in nurturing those resources is so important that any competing adjacent use must yield. 12 [505 U.S. 1003, 1026]
When it is understood that “prevention of harmful use” was merely our early formulation of the police power justification necessary to sustain (without compensation) any regulatory diminution in value; and that the distinction between regulation that “prevents harmful use” and that which “confers benefits” is difficult, if not impossible, to discern on an objective, value-free basis; it becomes self-evident that noxious-use logic cannot serve as a touchstone to distinguish regulatory “takings” - which require compensation - from regulatory deprivations that do not require compensation. A fortiori, the legislature’s recitation of a noxious-use justification cannot be the basis for departing from our categorical rule that total regulatory takings must be compensated. If it were, departure would virtually always be allowed. The South Carolina Supreme Court’s approach would essentially nullify Mahon’s affirmation of limits to the noncompensable exercise of the police power. Our cases provide no support for this: none of them that employed the logic of “harmful use” prevention to sustain a regulation involved an allegation that the regulation wholly eliminated the value of the claimant’s land. See Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn., 480 U.S., at 513 -514 (REHNQUIST, C.J., dissenting). 13 [505 U.S. 1003, 1027]
