Nine years later, California court saga over $23,420 housing fee remains unsettled

Nine years ago, in preparation for his retirement, engineer George Sheetz bought a plot of rural land in El Dorado County and applied for a county permit to place a manufactured home on his parcel.

Little did he know that what he thought would be a routine administrative transaction would turn into a legal dispute that would wind its laborious way through California courts, reach the U.S. Supreme Court — where he won a unanimous ruling — and is now back in California’s judicial system with the eventual outcome still uncertain.

El Dorado County was willing to give Sheetz his permit but only if he paid a $23,420 fee to offset the home’s supposed traffic effects along county roads and Highway 50. The levy resulted from a general plan adopted by county supervisors in 2004 and amended two yea