Respondent Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) imposed two moratoria, totaling 32 months, on development in the Lake Tahoe Basin while formulating a comprehensive land-use plan for the area. Petitioners, real estate owners affected by the moratoria and an association representing such owners, filed parallel suits, later consolidated, claiming that TRPAs actions constituted a taking of their property without just compensation. The District Court found that TRPA had not effected a "partial taking" under the analysis set out in Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U. S. 104; however, it concluded that the moratoria did constitute a taking under the categorical rule announced in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, because TRPA temporarily deprived petitioners of all economically viable use of their land. On appeal, TRPA successfully challenged the District Courts takings determination. Finding that the only question in this facial challenge was whether Lucas rule applied, the Ninth Circuit held that because the regulations had only a temporary impact on petitioners fee interest, no categorical taking had occurred; that Lucas applied to the relatively rare case in which a regulation permanently denies all productive use of an entire parcel, whereas the moratoria involved only a temporal slice of the fee interest; and that First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U. S. 304, concerned the question whether compensation is an appropriate remedy for a temporary taking, not whether or when such a taking has occurred. The court also concluded that Penn Centrals ad hoc balancing approach was the proper framework for analyzing whether a taking had occurred, but that petitioners had not challenged the District Courts conclusion that they could not make out a claim under Penn Centrals factors.

Held: The moratoria ordered by TRPA are not per se takings of property requiring compensation under the Takings Clause. Pp. 16-39.

(a) Although this Courts physical takings jurisprudence, for the most part, involves the straightforward application of per se rules, its regulatory takings jurisprudence is characterized by "essentially ad hoc, factual inquiries," Penn Central, 533 U. S. 606, 636 (OConnor, J., concurring). The longstanding distinction between physical and regulatory takings makes it inappropriate to treat precedent from one as controlling on the other. Petitioners rely on First English and Lucas--both regulatory takings cases--to argue for a categorical rule that whenever the government imposes a deprivation of all economically viable use of property, no matter how brief, it effects a taking. In First English, 480 U. S. 470, 497. To sever a 32-month segment from the remainder of each fee simple estate and then ask whether that segment has been taken in its entirety would ignore Penn Centrals admonition to focus on "the parcel as a whole," 364 U. S. 40, 49, justifies creating a new categorical rule. Pp. 17-29.

(b) "Fairness and justice" will not be better served by a categorical rule that any deprivation of all economic use, no matter how brief, constitutes a compensable taking. That rule would apply to numerous normal delays in obtaining, e.g., building permits, and would require changes in practices that have long been considered permissible exercises of the police power. Such an important change in the law should be the product of legislative rulemaking not adjudication. More importantly, for the reasons set out in Justice OConnors concurring opinion in Palazzolo, 533 U. S., at 636, the better approach to a temporary regulatory taking claim requires careful examination and weighing of all the relevant circumstances--only one of which is the le