Whether the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause requires a per se taking analysis when a government action impairs a contractual right to draw on a pool of assets without a specific property interest in the underlying assets

No question identified. : certiorari would be due on November 17, 2025. This application is being filed more than 10 days in advance of that date, and no prior application for an extension of time has been made in this case. This Court’s jurisdiction would be invoked under 28 U.S.C. § 1254(1). 2. The petition will seek the Court’s review of a new rule of Takings law announced by the Federal Circuit for the first time in this case—a misinterpretation of the Fifth Amendment that squarely conflicts with the precedent of this Court and numerous federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort, disrupts long settled principles of Takings jurisprudence, and places at risk a wide range of commercial relationships at the heart of the U.S. economy. Applicants, who were the Plaintiffs below, are retirees who earned a vested pension by working for multiple decades at a private trucking company. After they retired, the U.S. Department of the Treasury authorized their private pension fund to cut their vested pensions by more than $1,000 per month even though this reduction directly conflicted with the trust documents that governed their pension. Plaintiffs sued the United States, alleging (inter alia) that this authorization of their vested pensions constitutes a per se taking under well-established precedent including Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist., 570 U.S. 595 (2013), Brown v. Legal Found. of Wash., 538 U.S. 216 (2003), and Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419 (1982). The Federal Circuit held that the Plaintiffs could not make out a per se taking for this seizure of their vested pensions for a lone reason—that there is no per se taking under the Takings Clause when the plaintiff has a property interest in a contractual right to make a demand on a pool of assets, but does not have a property interest in the underlying pool of assets itself. See, e.g., App. at 25 (“[Plaintiffs] possess only a contract right to demand payment from the Plan, not a specific, identifiable property interest in the Plan’s underlying assets.”); see also App. at 3 (“[MJost importantly, the pension beneficiary does not have a property interest in the assets held by the trust underlying the pension plan”); App. at 16 (“[N]o plan member has a claim to any particular asset that composes a part of the plan’s general asset pool.”) (quotations omitted). The Federal Circuit thus applied the balancing test of Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978) and concluded that no taking occurred. The Federal Circuit’s new rule would enable the United States to rewrite and reallocate a wide range of commercial relationships at the center of U.S. economic life, ranging from bank transactions to insurance policies to bonds to water rights— each of which involves a contract right to draw on a pool of assets without an interest in any particular part of that pool. For decades, the Supreme Court has recognized that the appropriation of these property interests give rise to a per se taking. See, e.g., Koontz, 570 U.S. at 614 (““[W]hen the government commands the relinquishment of funds linked to a specific, identifiable property interest such as a bank account or parcel of real property, a per se takings approach is the proper mode of analysis under the Court’s precedent.”) (quotations and alterations omitted); Brown, 538 U.S. at 235 (government authorizing transfer of interest out of private bank account is a per se taking); U.S. v. Winstar Corp., 518 U.S. 839, 8738, 912 (1996) (affirming that government’s appropriation of a “Government bond’s promises to pay principal and interest in gold” is a per se taking) (citing Perry v. United States, 294 U.S. 330, 352 (1935)); California v. United States, 438 U.S. 645, 684 (1978) (“The United States would be obliged to pay for any water rights which were vested under state law and which it took... .”). Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571, 579 (1934) (voiding war risk insu