The protection of private property rights is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution: "No person shall be . . . deprived of . . . property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."1 The Fifth Amendment is made applicable to the states by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Article I, section 19 of the California Constitution similarly provides that compensation is required when property is "taken or damaged."2
Since the demise of the Lochner3 era, property rights have received considerably less constitutional protection than have personal liberty rights, such as freedom of speech and free exercise of religion, which receive preferential treatment through strict judicial scrutiny of restrictive governmental actions. When regulations of property are challenged under the due process clause, courts generally defer to legislatures, finding such regulations invalid uses of the police power only if they are not rationally related to a legitimate public purpose.4
The Supreme Court first upheld rent control decades ago as a temporary, emergency response to the housing shortages and rent increases that followed the two world wars. The subject has remained controversial, however, as housing shortages have persisted well into the post-war period and as more and more cities have adopted rent control ordinances.5
This growing judicial scrutiny of rent control schemes parallels a broader trend in constitutional law towards heightened protection of what some commentators have called "dominion interests": property interests premised on the right to control the use of one's property.6
When evaluating a takings claim, courts consider several factors, including the economic impact of the regulation, the interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations, and the character of the regulation, in particular whether it "c...