369 U.S. 590 (U.S. Supreme Court 1962)
Goldblatt v. Town of Hempstead is a foundational case on the breadth of municipal police power to regulate land uses that pose safety risks, even when such regulation severely diminishes—indeed, effectively ends—an ongoing business.
Does a municipal ordinance that prohibits further excavation below the water table and imposes safety measures on an existing sand and gravel pit—effectively ending the operator's business—violate the Fourteenth Amendment as an unreasonable exercise of the police power or as an uncompensated taking?
A land-use regulation is a valid exercise of the police power if it is reasonably related to a legitimate public purpose—such as health, safety, morals, or general welfare—and is not arbitrary, unreasonable, or unduly oppressive. The government need not compensate for regulations that curtail harmful or dangerous uses of property, even if such regulations significantly diminish economic value. The burden is on the challenger to demonstrate that the regulation is arbitrary or lacks a reasonable relation to the asserted public end. See, e.g., Mugler v. Kansas; Hadacheck v. Sebastian; Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty; Lawton v. Steele.
The ordinance is a valid exercise of the Town's police power to protect public safety and does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment; it is neither an unconstitutional deprivation of property without due process nor an uncompensated taking.
Goldblatt is a cornerstone case illustrating robust judicial deference to municipal safety regulations and clarifying that dramatic economic loss does not, by itself, transform a regulation into a taking. It teaches that: (1) safety-driven land-use controls are evaluated under a lenient due process framework; (2) the challenger bears the burden to show unreasonableness; (3) governments may regulate preexisting uses when circumstances change; and (4) pre-Penn Central regulatory takings analysis often collapsed into a police-power reasonableness inquiry. The case remains central to understanding the limits of substantive due process and the evolution of regulatory takings doctrine.