Speaker
Jeff Guo
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1 episodes
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1
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Portland denied Sarah Bond's permit to remove a 100-foot Douglas fir leaning toward her house, ruling it healthy and citing 'neighborhood character'.
Canton Township passed its tree-protection ordinance in 2006 after leaders grew alarmed at forests disappearing to suburban development.
In fall 2021, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Canton's one-size-fits-all tree permit fee structure was unconstitutional.
After the Douglas fir fell on Sarah Bond's house, Portland told her she owed at least $700 in retroactive tree permit fees.
In Canton, the standard remediation fee for removing a tree is usually a couple hundred dollars per tree, going into the township's tree fund.
Sarah Bond's family lived in fear under the leaning Douglas fir for almost three years before it finally fell on their house.
Sarah Bond sued the city of Portland — not to overturn the tree law, but to be compensated for what her family endured. Portland has since lowered some permit fees and is rewriting its tree laws. The Bonds rebuilt their house and moved back in March 2026.
The Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause prohibits the government from taking private property without just compensation. Courts have ruled that over-regulation can amount to a 'regulatory taking' — and Chance Weldon argued that forcing a homeowner to keep an unwanted tree is exactly that.
In recent years, hundreds of U.S. towns and cities have passed laws requiring permits to remove large trees — even on private property. The laws exist because trees provide air quality, flood control, and cooling benefits to entire neighborhoods, not just individual homeowners.
When Sarah Bond applied to remove a 100-foot Douglas fir leaning toward her house, Portland denied the permit — citing the tree's health and its contribution to 'neighborhood character.' The family was stuck living in fear of a tree they technically owned but couldn't touch.
Canton Township, Michigan passed a tree-protection ordinance in 2006 to stop suburban sprawl from erasing its forests. When property owners secretly clear-cut 16 acres and refused to pay the $500,000 remediation fee, the resulting lawsuits escalated into a landmark constitutional fight.
The Supreme Court has held that permit requirements must be proportional to the harm they prevent. Chance Weldon argued that Canton's flat per-tree fee ignored the actual ecological value of individual trees — and in 2021, the Sixth Circuit agreed, ruling the fee structure unconstitutional.
Rather than appeal to the Supreme Court, Canton Township rewrote its tree law. Developers can now hire an arborist to determine the dollar value of a tree's ecological benefits — and pay that amount instead of the city's flat fee. It's a model other cities may have to follow.
During a January ice storm with 40–50 mph winds, the Douglas fir Sarah Bond had been denied permission to remove came crashing down on her house — directly onto the closet where her daughter JoJo and a friend had gone to look for cats. Everyone survived, but barely.
For over 100 years, cities have had broad powers to restrict what property owners can do with their land through zoning. Tree-protection laws are the latest escalation — and court rulings like the Canton case suggest that pendulum may be swinging back toward property rights.
Chance Weldon, a constitutional attorney at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, had been watching tree-protection ordinances spread across the country and believed they violated property rights. When he found the Canton, Michigan case, he offered to help for free — and it led to a landmark court win.
Sarah Bond's experience exposes a gap between the promise of homeownership and its legal reality. When cities can override your decisions about trees, fences, paint colors, and permits, the question of who really 'owns' a property becomes genuinely complicated.
After the Douglas fir fell and nearly killed her daughter, Portland told Sarah Bond she would need to pay a retroactive permit fee of at least $700 to compensate the community for lost tree benefits. The city that denied her permit then handed her a bill for the tree's removal.
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