No, it's not a takings claim, so Williamson County ripeness isn't a part of the opinion. In Potrero Hills Landfill, Inc. v. County of Solano, No. 10-15229 (Sep. 13, 2011), the Ninth Circuit held that the Younger abstention doctrine did not prevent the district court from considering a § 1983 claim for declaratory and injunctive relief in a land use case involving an initiative ordinance that regulated the amount of solid waste that could be imported into the county.
After the county concluded the ordinance was unconstitutional under the dormant Commerce Clause and refused to enforce it, one of the county landfills began to reach its limits and its owner sought an expansion permit. Environmental groups eventually brought suit in state court to require the county to enforce the ordinance. Shortly thereafter, the landfill and other waste and recycling businesses filed a federal court action to invalidate the ordinance under the federal civil rights enforcement statute. The district court dismissed under Younger.
Read the opinion to find out the details of why the Ninth Circuit vacated and held that Younger abstention was not applicable. Among other factors, the court considered the "important state interest" involved and concluded that federal-state comity does not require the federal court to forego an exercise of jurisdiction even though:.
Potrero Hills concedes it was not prevented from raising its constitutional argument in state court, and state judicial proceedings were indisputably "ongoing" at the time Potrero Hills filed this federal action.
Slip op. at 17306 (footnote omitted). The Ninth Circuit concluded:
Mindful that a federal court’s obligation to exercise its jurisdiction is "'particularly weighty'" when the federal plaintiffs before it seek relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violation of their civil rights, Miofsky, 703 F.2d at 338 (quoting Tovar v. Billmeyer, 609 F.2d 1291, 1293 (9th Cir. 1980)), we decline to expand the "extraordinary and narrow exception"created by Younger and its progeny to the circumstances presented here, id. (quoting Frank Mashuda, 360 U.S. at 188). Because the state mandamus actions brought by private interest groups did not involve any uniquely state interests in protecting the state’s vital executive, judicial, or legislative functions, Younger abstention was not available and did not excuse the district court from its duty to adjudicate this federal constitutional claim.
Slip op. at 17318. The court remanded the case for consideration of whether the nonmandatory Pullman doctrine might result in abstention.
But what is interesting to us about this case is the opinion's statement that the federal courts have an "obligation" to exercise jurisdiction to consider § 1983 claims (here, a claim under the Commerce Clause), even if a state court could hear the claim. The same is not true when a plaintiff raises a claim under the Takings Clause (and in some cases, the Due Process Clause) under § 1983. Under Williamson County, the plaintiff is barred from federal court until she has both obtained a final determination applying the regulation to the property and has sought and been denied just compensation in state court. At that point, of course, the property owner will be caught up in a mobius strip when San Remo Hotel kicks in and the preclusion rules bar her claim in federal court, resulting in a federal constitutional right having no ablility to be heard in federal court.
What's this about an "obligation?"
