42 U.S.C. § 1983 | Civil Rights

This just in: in Leone v. County of Maui, No. 29696 (June 22, 2012), the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals held that a plaintiff alleging a regulatory taking is not required to seek an amendment to a Community Plan in order to ripen her claim. A CP amendment is a legislative act, and plaintiffs…

Every now and then, there’s a cert petition which those who generally support the petitioner’s side of the equation secretly hope is not granted, and breathe a sigh of relief when the Court denies review. Today, we’re sure that those on the regulatory side of the table are doing just that, because the Court declined…

Recently, in Intellectual Laziness on the Supreme Court, a short essay about the Supreme Court’s recent Equal Protection decision about unequal property assessments, Professor Richard Epstein wrote, “[i]t’s time to scrap the irrational ‘rational basis test.'” Decisions like the Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in Samson v. City of Bainbridge Island, No. 10-35352…

Here’s the cert petition in a case we’ve been following that presents a question that has divided the lower courts – do the nexus and rough proportionality tests for whether a land use exaction works a taking apply to exactions of cash, or are they limited to land exactions? In St. Johns River Water Management …

This just in: the Ninth Circuit has issued an opinion in Kaahumanu v. State of Hawaii Dep’t of Land and Natural Resources, No. 10-15645 (June 6, 2012), the case challenging the State’s regulation of commercial weddings on state beaches under the First Amendment. The court mostly upheld the regulations, but struck down the…

The federal government has filed its invitation brief in Corboy v. Louie, No. 11-336 (cert. petition filed Sep. 15, 2011), the cert petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Hawaii Supreme Court’s dismissal of a challenge to the property tax exemptons conferred on lessees of Hawaiian Homesteads.

Only “native Hawaiians” are eligible…

Update: the latest in the latest Williamson County-related cert petition here.

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If you tried to explain the practical results of Williamson County‘s ripeness requirements to someone not familiar in the last 30 years of regulatory takings jurisprudence, they would probably think you were joking.

As we’ve explained many times, under Williamson…

Here is the final brief (the Plaintiffs’ reply to the Chief Election Officer and Reapportionment Commission’s Memorandum in Opposition to the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction) in the federal court lawsuit challenging Hawaii’s use of “permanent resident” as its reapportionment population basis. Kostick v. Nago, No. 12-00184 (complaint filed Apr. 6, 2012).…

How hard is it for the government to obtain a Williamson County dismissal that a federal takings claim is not ripe for federal court reivew? Not too hard, says Justice Souter.

Justice Souter? But wait, didn’t he retire, you ask? Recall that Supreme Court justices who retire from the Court don’t really “retire” in the…