On Friday, the Supreme Court published its opinion in Knick v. Township of Scott and as predicted, the Court overturned Williamson County. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for a five-member majority. As predicted, the majority found the prior standard to be unworkable, causing Takings plaintiffs under §1983 to be effectively barred from bringing constitutional claims in federal court unlike with every other right in the Bill of Rights.
Chief Justice Roberts also spent a great deal of dicta articulating a theory for when a Takings claim becomes properly ripe, espousing a far more plaintiff-friendly standard than most state law currently contemplates. In his view, a plaintiff may bring a Takings claim the moment a government actor takes property without providing complete compensation. If this ripeness standard is to be applied, it will prove to be an interesting challenge for state and local government condemnation programs (to be discussed in depth in a future post).
Justice Kagan filed the principal dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Justice Kagan’s two primary points of dissent concerned the potential impact the decision would have on regulators who must take private property in order to implement a government program, essentially chilling potential regulators into being more cautious before taking private property, and the disregard the majority showed towards stare decisis. Echoing Justice Breyer’s dissent one month earlier in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, Justice Kagan felt that Williamson County was set aside too casually. Court observers have noted that Justices Breyer and Kagan may in fact be signaling their concerns not over the actual precedents in these cases, neither of which were particularly well regarded or particularly long held, but rather over more politically charged precedents such as Roe v. Wade.
Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence responding to Justice Kagan’s point concerning the potential difficulty regulators will face if Takings claims can be brought immediately. In Justice Thomas’ view, the Constitutional rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights cannot be made subordinate to the administrative convenience of bureaucracy.
The majority opinion in Knick does launch a new era for the Takings Clause, one that will be particularly momentous for state and local governments. The next part of this series will focus on the impact this opinion may have on California, beginning with a look at California land use, zoning, and environmental regulation.