Section 1983 Takings Claims and Williamson County (1985)

In 1985, the Supreme Court held in Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172 (1985), that a section 1983 takings claim for damages cannot be brought in federal court, and is not ripe, unless the challenged local government conduct is final and the local government has denied compensation. This result was thought to be required by the language of the Fifth Amendment which states that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” In effect, Williamson County ruled that the takings claim was not complete until just compensation was denied. This result was also thought to promote the values of federalism and comity.

Accordingly, such a takings plaintiff would first have to go to state court and seek just compensation there–a so-called inverse condemnation action. Only after such a claim failed in state court could the plaintiff proceed in federal court with a “ripe” section 1983 takings claim.

The “Preclusion Trap”

A major problem with Williamson County, which took some years to emerge at the Supreme Court but soon became obvious to takings litigators, was preclusion. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 1738, the preclusive effect of a state court decision on a subsequent federal court action is determined by the law of the forum state. And in San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco, 545 U.S. 323 (2005), the Court indeed held that the resolution of a claim for just compensation by a state court can have preclusive effect on a subsequent federal court action alleging a takings claim. Consequently, where the property owner lost in state court, issue preclusion under state law would typically sound the death knell for the federal court takings claim, or at the very least make it extremely difficult for the federal plaintiff to prevail. Indeed, several justices (Rehnquist, O’Connor, Kennedy and Thomas) questioned Williamson County because of this “preclusion trap.”

The Knick Decision (2019): Williamson County Overruled

On June 21, 2019, the Supreme Court, in Knick v. Township of Scott, No. 17-647, overruled Williamson County. Dealing with a case in which the district court had dismissed a property owner’s section 1983 takings claim against a local government because she had not pursued an inverse condemnation action in state court, the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, declared:

We now conclude that the state-litigation requirement imposes an unjustifiable burden on takings plaintiffs, conflicts with rest of our takings jurisprudence, and must be overruled. A property owner has an actionable Fifth Amendment takings claims when the government takes his property without paying for it. … [This means] that the property owner has suffered a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights when the government takes his property without just compensation, and may therefore bring his claim in federal court under [section] 1983 at that time.

Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor, dissented. They accused the majority of not only misreading the Court’s takings precedents but also of improperly basing its decision simply on its view that Williamson County was wrong.

Comments

First and foremost, Knick is a game-changer and will likely bring about a revolution in takings litigation. This also includes claims of temporary takings, as in First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304 (1987). No longer will property owners with takings claims against local governments have to exhaust their state judicial remedies as a condition precedent to filing in federal court. They will thus be able to avoid the “preclusion trap” and, moreover, avoid the duplication of litigation and judicial costs.

Second, by eliminating the requirement that section 1983 takings plaintiffs may go directly to federal court, the Court soundly aligned section 1983 takings claims with the ruling in the seminal decision in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1965), that, as a matter of statutory interpretation, section 1983 plaintiffs need not exhaust state judicial remedies before filing section 1983 claims in federal court. Knick reached the same conclusion as a matter of constitutional interpretation.

The Court also aligned section 1983 takings claims with what it asserted was the same rule for Fifth Amendment takings claims against the federal government, namely, that “the right to full compensation arises at the time of the taking, regardless of post-taking remedies that may be available to the property owner.”

Perhaps the Court in now-overruled Williamson County was influenced by the then-recent decision in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981), holding that the existence of an adequate state post-deprivation remedy could defeat certain section 1983 procedural due process claims. Parratt for a time was viewed as a potentially effective vehicle for promoting federalism and comity by removing many procedural due process cases from federal court and sending them to state court where they belonged. It took a while for the Court to narrow the scope of Parratt and to make clear that the Parratt post-deprivation remedy approach was limited to certain procedural due process cases–where the challenged conduct was random and unauthorized–and that it did not apply to other constitutional provisions. See generally ch 3, Nahmod, CIVIL RIGHT AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (4th ed. 2018).

Third, as the Court correctly noted, there was no good reason to treat takings claims as constitutional outliers. Other constitutional violations–the Court used the Fourth Amendment as an example–are complete once the challenged conduct is over. The ability to recover damages is not part of the constitutional violation itself : the constitutional merits are separate from the remedy. The rule should always have be the same for takings claims. Knick therefore does not privilege property owners with section 1983 takings claims over other section 1983 plaintiffs. It treats them the same as other section 1983 plaintiffs with different constitutional claims for damages.

Fourth, in my view the underlying issue in dispute among the justices in Knick was stare decisis. The four dissenting justices were concerned with what they view as the current majority’s predisposition to overrule precedents such as Williamson County just because it doesn’t like those precedents. Knick and other recent decisions that have overruled precedents, and that have been fought over by the justices, may really be a rehearsal for challenges to, and the possible overruling of, Roe v. Wade.

Fifth, coming so soon after the Court’s accrual decision in McDonough v. Smith (No. 18-485), Knick itself may be viewed as a kind of accrual decision. From this perspective, Knick holds that the section 1983 takings claim is complete, and thus accrues, when the taking occurs, and not later when the state or local government denies just compensation.

(See my post on McDonough here: https://nahmodlaw.com/2019/06/21/mcdonough-v-smith-the-supreme-court-answers-an-important-section-1983-fabrication-of-evidence-accrual-question/)

Finally, while I think the Court got Knick right, the Court’s approach–simplifying section 1983 takings claims–is inconsistent with its May 28, 2019, section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest decision in Nieves v. Bartlett, No. 17-1174. In Nieves, the Court unsoundly imposed unduly burdensome procedural and substantive requirements on section 1983 plaintiffs who sue law enforcement officers for damages for allegedly arresting them in violation of the First Amendment. Among other things, the Court ruled that probable cause is a defense to such claims. Why such solicitude for section 1983 takings plaintiffs in Knick and so little concern for section 1983 First Amendment plaintiffs in Nieves? Probable cause should be as irrelevant to the First Amendment as it is to takings.

(See my post criticizing Nieves here: https://nahmodlaw.com/2019/06/04/nieves-v-bartlett-and-retaliatory-arrests-protecting-law-enforcement-at-the-expense-of-the-first-amendment-and-section-1983/)



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