Here's the cert petition in a case we've been following from the Third Circuit, Knick v. Township of Scott.
Read more about the case's background here. The short story is that the court concluded the Township's ordinance which requires owners of all cemeteries, public or private, to maintain them was "constitutionally suspect," but also held that the owner had not ripened it under Williamson County.
What's the big deal, you ask? Well, the problem is that apparently many landowners don't know they own a cemetery. So the ordinance allows the Township's code inspectors to enter "any property" to inspect and see if it is in compliance with the ordinance. When zoning inspectors came round and told Ms. Knick to clean up her cemetery, her response was "what cemetery? She sued, claiming among other things a facial takings claim. She did not file a state court inverse condemnation case for just compensation.
Here are the Questions Presented:
Whether the Court should reconsider the portion of Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 194-96 (1985), requiring property owners to exhaust state court remedies to ripen federal takings claims, as suggested by Justices of this Court? See Arrigoni Enterprises, LLC v. Town of Durham, 136 S. Ct. 1409 (2016) (Thomas, J., joined by Kennedy, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); San Remo Hotel, L.P. v. City and County of San Francisco, 545 U.S. 323, 348 (2005) (Rehnquist, C.J., joined by O’Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., concurring in judgment).Alternately, whether Williamson County’s ripeness doctrine bars review of takings claims asserting that a law causes an unconstitutional taking on its face, as the Sixth, Ninth, Tenth and now Third Circuits hold, or whether facial claims are exempt from Williamson County, as the First, Fourth, and Seventh Circuits hold?As always, stay tuned.
Follow along on the Court's docket here.
Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Knick v. Township of Scott, No. 17-547 (Oct. 31, 2017)
