After Knick knocked out the "state procedures" requirement of the Williamson County ripeness doctrine, we predicted that owners' lawyers better dust off their Federal Courts treatises that have been sitting on our bookshelves for the last three decades.
We said that because we suspected the game was still afoot, and Knick alone would not overcome that old trope of federal judges: "we are the big leagues and not super zoning boards of appeals; these takings and property cases are beneath the dignity of our office," and that the courts would still find ways to knock federal takings claims out of federal court. Federal courts are super employment boards, super school boards, super press grievance boards, and super monkey selfie determiners, but heaven forbid they address so "local" a topic as property. That is why it seems that the federal courts go out of their way to dodge takings and property questions.
Thus, abstention in its many forms is becoming the new Williamson County. If that doesn't ring your bell, remember that under Pullman, a federal court will hold off on exercising its jurisdiction because the resolution of unsettled questions of state law could mean that the federal court will never get to the federal issue. There are other abstention doctrines that could be in play in takings cases, but Pullman is first on the list.
So here's this, an unpublished memorandum from the Ninth Circuit, EHOF Lakeside II, LLC v. Riverside County, No. 19-56451 (Oct. 22, 2020), in which the panel summarily affirmed the district court's grant of Pullman abstention, invoking the Ninth Circuit doctrine that land use law is a "sensitive area of state law," and identifying an unsettled question of California law. The court noted that the plaintiff had earlier filed a state court inverse condemnation action seeking compensation.
But the court never really explains why the California land use issues in the case are "sensitive" (and what are those issues, since the only issue we see in the state court case is a state law takings claim?), and exactly what is unsettled in California land use law that merits the federal court delaying jurisdiction. We could understand, for example if California law was truly unsettled about some land use law issue, but all we can see here is that the federal court is holding off because of some claimed uncertainty in California's takings law. To us, that seems like a bootstrap argument, reminiscent of the Williamson County state litigation requirement (go resolve your state takings claim before you bother us federal judges with your federal takings claim).
And finally, the memorandum concluded with this:
EHOF chose to file its state-court inverse condemnation suit shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court decided Knick v. Township of Scott, 139 S. Ct. 2162 (2019). In this circumstance, we need not decide the precise scope of Pullman in the post-Knick world.
Memo. at 3.
What in the world does that mean? That EHOF should have waited until the Supreme Court resolved Knick, thus Knick doesn't govern this case? Can anyone explain to us what this statement might mean?
EHOF Lakeside II, LLC v. Riverside County, No. 19-56451 (9th Cir. Oct. 22, 2020) (memo.)
