Here's the cert petition which has just been filed in a case we've been following since it was instituted in the District Court, Brott v. United States.
The case presents the deceptively simple question of whether property owners who sue the federal government for a taking are entitled to both an Article III forum, and to have the issues determined by a jury.
This is a rails-to-trails case, and as followers of this blog know, these claims, when they exceed $10,000, must be raised in the Article I Court of Federal Claims, where you get the case tried by a judge, and not a jury. The jurisdiction of the CFC was conferred by Congress in the Tucker Act.
Brott is challenging that scheme (complaint here), arguing that the self-executing nature of the Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation Clause requires both an Article III court, and a jury.
Predictably, both the District Court and the Sixth Circuit held otherwise. (We filed an amicus brief in the Sixth Circuit supporting the property owner.) So now, it's off to the Supreme Court.
The Question Presented there is straightforward:
Can the federal government take private property and deny the owner the ability to vindicate his constitutional right to be justly compensated in an Article III Court with trial by jury?
We will be filing an amicus brief in support of the petition. We'll post it here when we do.
Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Brott v. United States, No. 17-___ (Nov. 6, 2017)