Brandon Fulton is still waiting for answers nearly a decade after Fulton County seized his horses. On Tuesday, a full panel of 12 federal appeals court judges heard oral arguments over whether the county owes him compensation for animals he says vanished after his arrest.
The case dates to 2016, according to WSB-TV. Fulton was accused of animal cruelty, and the county's Animal Services officers arrested him and seized seven of his horses from his property on April 22, 2017, according to Harvard Law Review. The felony charges were dismissed in 2018, a year after the arrest. He was never indicted in the case, the station notes.
What happened next is at the center of the dispute. Fulton told WSB-TV he was stunned to learn his horses were being sold shortly after his arrest, and the county has kept his horses even after the charges were dropped, never paying him just compensation for them, according to the same report. He says he still doesn't know where the animals ended up.
From Animal Seizure to Federal Constitutional Fight
The case didn't start as a landmark constitutional battle. Fulton filed a civil lawsuit against the Fulton County Board of Commissioners on May 5, 2020, seeking compensation after the criminal charges against him were dropped and county officials declined to return the horses or pay him for them, the station's report notes. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia initially dismissed that lawsuit because Fulton could not show the seizure resulted from an official county policy or custom, a threshold required under the Supreme Court's Monell v. Department of Social Services doctrine, according to Justia Law.
After the Board moved to dismiss the lawsuit and before the district court ruled, Fulton moved to amend his complaint to add a different argument: that the county's actions violated the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, which generally requires government to provide just compensation when it takes private property for public use, per the same account. The strategy paid off. On July 31, 2025, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit ruled 2-1 that the Takings Clause is self-executing, meaning property owners can sue local governments directly for compensation without relying on a statute like Section 1983, Reason Magazine reported.
A Question the Supreme Court Left Open
That ruling addressed a major constitutional question the U.S. Supreme Court declined to resolve in its 2024 DeVillier v. Texas decision, when the justices sidestepped whether the Takings Clause creates an independent cause of action without statutory backing, according to the same report. Attorney Brian Williams said the case concerns the Takings Clause and the right to just compensation and could set an important precedent, per WSB-TV's account. During Tuesday's oral arguments before the full 12-judge en banc panel in Atlanta, the county did not concede that it had taken Fulton's property, the station reports, and the county's attorney declined to comment after the hearing.
Fulton told the station he was shocked by how long it has taken to reach a resolution and asked why the animals were never returned. “I’m just looking for compensation now because who knows where the horses are,” he said, according to WSB-TV. Because the horses' whereabouts remain unknown, Fulton is seeking compensation rather than the return of the animals themselves.
Life After the Seizure, and What's Still at Stake
Fulton owns a 27-acre property in South Fulton County that he hopes to turn into Believe Kingdom, a community learning and wellness ranch meant to teach horsemanship and rural skills to urban youth, according to Capital B Atlanta. After the criminal charges were dropped, Fulton acquired five new horses so he could keep riding through Atlanta neighborhoods and along the Atlanta Beltline, Capital B Atlanta reports. His story also became the subject of a 2025 documentary, Brannu: The Urban Horseman, directed by Adelin Gasana, which examines gentrification, eminent domain and Black land ownership in metro Atlanta, per the outlet's reporting.
Under Georgia law, the statute of limitations for personal property takings claims against local governments runs four years from the date of the taking, according to Mercer Law Review. That timeline underscores why the legal question at the heart of Fulton's case carries weight well beyond his own property, since the Eleventh Circuit's ruling could shape how similar takings claims are handled across Georgia, Florida and Alabama.
There's no timeline yet for when the federal appeals court will rule, Fulton's attorneys say, according to WSB-TV. Whichever way the en banc panel decides, either side may seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the case could ultimately return to federal district court in Atlanta, where both sides could present evidence if it gets that far, the station reports. For now, Fulton is left waiting once again, nearly ten years after his horses were first taken.
