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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 17–647
_________________
ROSE MARY KNICK, PETITIONER
v. TOWNSHIP
OF SCOTT, PENNSYLVANIA, et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the third circuit
[June 21, 2019]
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of
the Court.
The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment states
that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use,
without just compensation.” In
Williamson County Regional
Planning Comm’n v.
Hamilton Bank of Johnson City,
473 U.S.
172 (1985), we held that a property owner whose property has
been taken by a local government has not suffered a violation of
his Fifth Amendment rights—and thus cannot bring a federal
takings claim in federal court—until a state court has denied
his claim for just compensation under state law.
The
Williamson County Court anticipated
that if the property owner failed to secure just compensation under
state law in state court, he would be able to bring a
“ripe” federal takings claim in federal court. See
id., at 194. But as we later held in
San Remo Hotel,
L. P. v.
City and County of San Francisco,
545 U.S.
323 (2005), a state court’s resolution of a claim for
just compensation under state law generally has preclusive effect
in any subsequent federal suit. The takings plaintiff thus finds
himself in a Catch-22: He cannot go to federal court without going
to state court first; but if he goes to state court and loses, his
claim will be barred in federal court. The federal claim dies
aborning.
The
San Remo preclusion trap should tip
us off that the state-litigation requirement rests on a mistaken
view of the Fifth Amendment. The Civil Rights Act of 1871, after
all, guarantees “a federal forum for claims of
unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials,”
and the settled rule is that “exhaustion of state remedies
‘is
not a prerequisite to an action under [42
U. S. C.] §1983.’ ”
Heck v.
Humphrey,
512 U.S.
477, 480 (1994) (quoting
Patsy v.
Board of Regents of
Fla.,
457 U.S.
496, 501 (1982)). But the guarantee of a federal forum rings
hollow for takings plaintiffs, who are forced to litigate their
claims in state court.
We now conclude that the state-litigation
requirement imposes an unjustifiable burden on takings plaintiffs,
conflicts with the rest of our takings jurisprudence, and must be
overruled. A property owner has an actionable Fifth Amendment
takings claim when the government takes his property without paying
for it. That does not mean that the government must provide
compensation in advance of a taking or risk having its action
invalidated: So long as the property owner has some way to obtain
compensation after the fact, governments need not fear that courts
will enjoin their activities. But it does mean that the property
owner has suffered a violation of his Fifth Amendment rights when
the government takes his property without just compensation, and
therefore may bring his claim in federal court under §1983 at
that time.
I
Petitioner Rose Mary Knick owns 90 acres of
land in Scott Township, Pennsylvania, a small community just north
of Scranton. Knick lives in a single-family home on the property
and uses the rest of the land as a grazing area for horses and
other farm animals. The property includes a small graveyard where
the ancestors of Knick’s neighbors are allegedly buried. Such
family cemeteries are fairly common in Pennsylvania, where
“backyard burials” have long been permitted.
In December 2012, the Township passed an
ordinance requiring that “[a]ll cemeteries . . . be
kept open and accessible to the general public during daylight
hours.” The ordinance defined a “cemetery” as
“[a] place or area of ground, whether contained on private or
public property, which has been set apart for or otherwise utilized
as a burial place for deceased human beings.” The ordinance
also authorized Township “code enforcement” officers to
“enter upon any property” to determine the existence
and location of a cemetery. App. 21–23.
In 2013, a Township officer found several grave
markers on Knick’s property and notified her that she was
violating the ordinance by failing to open the cemetery to the
public during the day. Knick responded by seeking declaratory and
injunctive relief in state court on the ground that the ordinance
effected a taking of her property. Knick did not seek compensation
for the taking by bringing an “inverse condemnation”
action under state law. Inverse condemnation is “a cause of
action against a governmental defendant to recover the value of
property which has been taken in fact by the governmental
defendant.”
United States v.
Clarke,
445 U.S.
253, 257 (1980) (quoting D. Hagman, Urban Planning and Land
Development Control Law 328 (1971)). Inverse condemnation stands in
contrast to direct condemnation, in which the government initiates
proceedings to acquire title under its eminent domain authority.
Pennsylvania, like every other State besides Ohio, provides a state
inverse condemnation action. 26 Pa. Cons. Stat. §502(c)
(2009).[
1]
In response to Knick’s suit, the Township
withdrew the violation notice and agreed to stay enforcement of the
ordinance during the state court proceedings. The court, however,
declined to rule on Knick’s request for declara- tory and
injunctive relief because, without an ongoing en- forcement action,
she could not demonstrate the irreparable harm necessary for
equitable relief.
Knick then filed an action in Federal District
Court under 42 U. S. C. §1983, alleging that the
ordinance violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth
Amendment.[
2] The District
Court dismissed Knick’s takings claim under
Williamson
County because she had not pursued an inverse condemnation
action in state court. 2016 WL 4701549, *5–*6 (MD Pa., Sept.
8, 2016). On appeal, the Third Circuit noted that the ordinance was
“extraordinary and constitutionally suspect,” but
affirmed the District Court in light of
Williamson County.
862 F.3d 310, 314 (2017).
We granted certiorari to reconsider the holding
of
Williamson County that property owners must seek just
compensation under state law in state court before bringing a
federal takings claim under §1983. 583 U. S. ___
(2018).
II
In
Williamson County, a property
developer brought a takings claim under §1983 against a zoning
board that had rejected the developer’s proposal for a new
subdivision.
Williamson County held that the
developer’s Fifth Amendment claim was not “ripe”
for two reasons. First, the developer still had an opportunity to
seek a variance from the appeals board, so any taking was therefore
not yet final. 473 U. S., at 186–194. Knick does not
question the validity of this finality requirement, which is not at
issue here.
The second holding of
Williamson County
is that the developer had no federal takings claim because he had
not sought compensation “through the procedures the State
ha[d] provided for doing so.”
Id., at 194. That is the
holding Knick asks us to overrule. According to the Court,
“if a State provides an adequate procedure for seeking just
compensation, the property owner cannot claim a violation of the
[Takings] Clause until it has used the procedure and been denied
just compensation.”
Id., at 195. The Court concluded
that the developer’s federal takings claim was
“premature” because he had not sought compensation
through the State’s inverse condemnation procedure.
Id., at 197.
The unanticipated consequences of this ruling
were not clear until 20 years later, when this Court decided
San
Remo. In that case, the takings plaintiffs complied with
Williamson County and brought a claim for compensation in
state court. 545 U. S., at 331. The complaint made clear that
the plaintiffs sought relief only under the takings clause of the
State Constitution, intending to reserve their Fifth Amendment
claim for a later federal suit if the state suit proved
unsuccessful.
Id., at 331–332. When that happened,
however, and the plaintiffs proceeded to federal court, they found
that their federal claim was barred. This Court held that the full
faith and credit statute, 28 U. S. C. §1738,
required the federal court to give preclusive effect to the state
court’s decision, blocking any subsequent consideration of
whether the plaintiff had suffered a taking within the meaning of
the Fifth Amendment. 545 U. S., at 347. The adverse state
court decision that, according to
Williamson County, gave
rise to a ripe federal takings claim simultaneously barred that
claim, preventing the federal court from ever considering it.
The state-litigation requirement relegates the
Takings Clause “to the status of a poor relation” among
the provisions of the Bill of Rights.
Dolan v.
City of
Tigard,
512 U.S.
374, 392 (1994). Plaintiffs asserting any other constitutional
claim are guaranteed a federal forum under §1983, but the
state-litigation requirement “hand[s] authority over federal
takings claims to state courts.”
San Remo, 545
U. S., at 350 (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring in judgment).
Fidelity to the Takings Clause and our cases construing it requires
overruling
Williamson County and restoring takings claims to
the full-fledged constitutional status the Framers envisioned when
they included the Clause among the other protections in the Bill of
Rights.
III
A
Contrary to
Williamson County, a
property owner has a claim for a violation of the Takings Clause as
soon as a government takes his property for public use without
paying for it. The Clause provides: “[N]or shall private
property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
It does not say: “Nor shall private property be taken for
public use, without an available procedure that will result in
compensation.” If a local government takes private property
without paying for it, that government has violated the Fifth
Amendment—just as the Takings Clause says—without
regard to subsequent state court proceedings. And the property
owner may sue the government at that time in federal court for the
“deprivation” of a right “secured by the
Constitution.” 42 U. S. C. §1983.
We have long recognized that property owners may
bring Fifth Amendment claims against the Federal Government as soon
as their property has been taken. The Tucker Act, which provides
the standard procedure for bringing such claims, gives the Court of
Federal Claims jurisdiction to “render judgment upon any
claim against the United States founded either upon the
Constitution” or any federal law or contract for damages
“in cases not sounding in tort.” 28 U. S. C.
§1491(a)(1). We have held that “[i]f there is a taking,
the claim is ‘founded upon the Constitution’ and within
the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims to hear and
determine.”
United States v.
Causby,
328 U.S.
256, 267 (1946). And we have explained that “the act of
taking” is the “event which gives rise to the claim for
compensation.”
United States v.
Dow,
357 U.S.
17, 22 (1958).
The Fifth Amendment right to full compensation
arises at the time of the taking, regardless of post-taking
remedies that may be available to the property owner. That
principle was confirmed in
Jacobs v.
United States,
290 U.S.
13 (1933), where we held that a property owner found to have a
valid takings claim is entitled to compensation as if it had been
“paid contemporaneously with the taking”—that is,
the compensation must generally consist of the total value of the
property when taken, plus interest from that time.
Id., at
17 (quoting
Seaboard Air Line R. Co. v.
United
States,
261 U.S.
299, 306 (1923)). We rejected the view of the lower court that
a property owner is entitled to interest only when the government
provides a particular remedy—direct condemnation
proceedings—and not when the owner brings a takings suit
under the Tucker Act. “The form of the remedy d[oes] not
qualify the right. It rest[s] upon the Fifth Amendment.” 290
U. S., at 16.
Jacobs made clear that, no matter what
sort of procedures the government puts in place to remedy a taking,
a property owner has a Fifth Amendment entitlement to compensation
as soon as the government takes his prop- erty without paying for
it. Whether the government does nothing, forcing the owner to bring
a takings suit under the Tucker Act, or whether it provides the
owner with a statutory compensation remedy by initiating direct
condemnation proceedings, the owner’s claim for compensation
“rest[s] upon the Fifth Amendment.”
Although
Jacobs concerned a taking by the
Federal Government, the same reasoning applies to takings by the
States. The availability of any particular compensation remedy,
such as an inverse condemnation claim under state law, cannot
infringe or restrict the property owner’s federal
constitutional claim—just as the existence of a state action
for battery does not bar a Fourth Amendment claim of excessive
force. The fact that the State has provided a property owner with a
procedure that may subsequently result in just compensation cannot
deprive the owner of his Fifth Amendment right to compensation
under the Constitution, leaving only the state law right. And that
is key because it is the existence of the Fifth Amendment right
that allows the owner to proceed directly to federal court under
§1983.
Williamson County had a different view of
how the Takings Clause works. According to
Williamson
County, a taking does not give rise to a federal constitutional
right to just compensation at that time, but instead gives a right
to a state law procedure that will eventually result in just
compensation. As the Court put it, “if a State provides an
adequate procedure for seeking just compensation, the property
owner cannot claim a violation of the [Takings] Clause until it has
used the procedure and been denied just compensation.” 473
U. S., at 195. In the absence of a state remedy, the Fifth
Amendment right to compensation would attach immediately. But,
under
Williamson County, the presence of a state remedy
qualifies the right, preventing it from vesting until exhaustion of
the state procedure. That is what
Jacobs confirmed could not
be done.
Just two years after
Williamson County,
in
First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v.
County of Los Angeles,
482 U.S.
304 (1987), the Court returned to the understanding that the
Fifth Amendment right to compensation automatically arises at the
time the government takes property without paying for it. Relying
heavily on
Jacobs and other Fifth Amendment precedents
neglected by
Williamson County,
First English held
that a property owner is entitled to compensation for the temporary
loss of his property. We explained that “government action
that works a taking of property rights necessarily implicates the
‘constitutional obligation to pay just
compensation.’ ” 482 U. S., at 315. Because
of “the self-executing character” of the Takings Clause
“with respect to compensation,” a property owner has a
constitutional claim for just compensation at the time of the
taking.
Ibid. (quoting 6 P. Nichols, Eminent Domain
§25.41 (3d rev. ed. 1972)). The government’s post-taking
actions (there, repeal of the challenged ordinance) cannot nullify
the property owner’s existing Fifth Amendment right:
“[W]here the government’s activities have already
worked a taking of all use of property, no subsequent action by the
government can relieve it of the duty to provide
compensation.” 482 U. S., at 321.[
3]
In holding that a property owner acquires an
irrevocable right to just compensation immediately upon a taking,
First English adopted a position Justice Brennan had taken
in an earlier dissent. See
id., at 315, 318 (quoting and
citing
San Diego Gas & Elec. Co. v.
San Diego,
450 U.S.
621, 654, 657 (1981) (Brennan, J., dissenting)).[
4] In that opinion, Justice Brennan explained
that “once there is a ‘taking,’ compensation
must be awarded” because “[a]s soon as private
property has been taken, whether through formal condemnation
proceedings, occupancy, physical invasion, or regulation, the
landowner has
already suffered a constitutional
violation.”
Id., at 654.
First English embraced that view,
reaffirming that “in the event of a taking, the compensation
remedy is required by the Constitution.” 482 U. S., at
316; see
ibid., n. 9 (rejecting the view that
“the Constitution does not, of its own force, furnish a basis
for a court to award money damages against the government”
(quoting Brief for United States as
Amicus Curiae 14)).
Compensation under the Takings Clause is a remedy for the
“constitutional violation” that “the landowner
has
already suffered” at the time of the uncompensated
taking.
San Diego Gas & Elec. Co., 450 U. S., at
654 (Brennan, J., dissenting); see
First English, 482
U. S., at 315.
A later payment of compensation may remedy the
constitutional violation that occurred at the time of the taking,
but that does not mean the violation never took place. The
violation is the only reason compensation was owed in the first
place. A bank robber might give the loot back, but he still robbed
the bank. The availability of a subsequent compensation remedy for
a taking without compensation no more means there never was a
constitutional violation in the first place than the availability
of a damages action renders negligent conduct compliant with the
duty of care.
In sum, because a taking without compensation
violates the self-executing Fifth Amendment at the time of the
taking, the property owner can bring a federal suit at that time.
Just as someone whose property has been taken by the Federal
Government has a claim “founded . . . upon the
Constitution” that he may bring under the Tucker Act, someone
whose property has been taken by a local government has a claim
under §1983 for a “deprivation of [a] right[ ]
. . . secured by the Constitution” that he may
bring upon the taking in federal court. The “general
rule” is that plaintiffs may bring constitutional claims
under §1983 “without first bringing any sort of state
lawsuit, even when state court actions addressing the underlying
behavior are available.” D. Dana & T. Merrill, Property:
Takings 262 (2002); see
McNeese v.
Board of Ed. for
Community Unit School Dist. 187,
373 U.S.
668, 672 (1963) (observing that it would defeat the purpose of
§1983 “if we held that assertion of a federal claim in a
federal court must await an attempt to vindicate the same claim in
a state court”);
Monroe v.
Pape,
365 U.S.
167, 183 (1961) (“The federal remedy is supplementary to
the state rem- edy, and the latter need not be first sought and
refused before the federal one is invoked.”). This is as true
for takings claims as for any other claim grounded in the Bill of
Rights.
B
Williamson County effectively
established an exhaustion requirement for §1983 takings claims
when it held that a property owner must pursue state procedures for
obtaining compensation before bringing a federal suit. But the
Court did not phrase its holding in those terms; if it had, its
error would have been clear. Instead,
Williamson County
broke with the Court’s longstanding position that a property
owner has a constitutional claim to compensation at the time the
government deprives him of his property, and held that there can be
no uncompensated taking, and thus no Fifth Amendment claim
actionable under §1983, until the property owner has tried and
failed to obtain compensation through the available state
procedure. “[U]ntil it has used the procedure and been denied
just compensation,” the property owner
“ ‘has no claim against the Government’ for
a taking.” 473 U. S., at 194–195 (quoting
Ruckelshaus v.
Monsanto Co.,
467
U.S. 986, 1018, n. 21 (1984)).
Williamson County drew that understanding
of the Clause from
Ruckelshaus v.
Monsanto Co., a
decision from the prior Term.
Monsanto did not involve a
takings claim for just compensation. The plaintiff there sought to
enjoin a federal statute because it effected a taking, even though
the statute set up a special arbitration procedure for obtaining
compensation, and the plaintiff could bring a takings claim
pursuant to the Tucker Act if arbitration did not yield sufficient
compensation. 467 U. S., at 1018. The Court rejected the
plaintiff’s claim because “[e]quitable relief is not
available to enjoin an alleged taking of private property for a
public use, duly authorized by law, when a suit for compensation
can be brought against the sovereign subsequent to the
taking.”
Id., at 1016 (footnote omitted). That much is
consistent with our precedent: Equitable relief was not available
because monetary relief was under the Tucker Act.
That was enough to decide the case. But
Monsanto went on to say that if the plaintiff obtained
compensation in arbitration, then “no taking has occurred and
the [plaintiff] has no claim against the Government.”
Id., at 1018, n. 21. Certainly it is correct that a
fully compensated plaintiff has no further claim, but that is
because the taking has been
remedied by compensation, not
because there was
no taking in the first place. See
First
English, 482 U. S., at 316, n. 9. The statute in
Monsanto simply required the plaintiff to attempt to
vindicate its claim to compensation through arbitration before
proceeding under the Tucker Act. The case offers no support to
Williamson County in this regard, because
Congress—unlike the States—is free to require
plaintiffs to exhaust administrative remedies before bringing
constitutional claims. See
McCarthy v.
Madigan,
503 U.S.
140, 144 (1992) (“Where Congress specifically mandates,
exhaustion is required.”).
Williamson County also relied on
Monsanto when it analogized its new state-litigation
requirement to federal takings practice, stating that
“taking[s] claims against the Federal Government are
premature until the property owner has availed itself of the
process provided by the Tucker Act.” 473 U. S., at 195.
But the Court was simply confused. A claim for just compensation
brought under the Tucker Act is not a prerequisite to a Fifth
Amendment takings claim—it
is a Fifth Amendment
takings claim. A party who loses a Tucker Act suit has nowhere else
to go to seek compensation for an alleged taking.
Other than
Monsanto, the principal case
to which
Williamson County looked was
Parratt v.
Taylor,
451 U.S.
527 (1981). Like
Monsanto,
Parratt did not
involve a takings claim for just compensation. Indeed, it was not a
takings case at all.
Parratt held that a prisoner deprived
of $23.50 worth of hobby materials by the rogue act of a state
employee could not state a due process claim if the State provided
adequate post-deprivation process. 451 U. S., at
543–544. But the analogy from the due process context to the
takings context is strained, as
Williamson County itself
recognized. See 473 U. S., at 195, n. 14. It is not even
possible for a State to provide pre-deprivation due process for the
unauthorized act of a single employee. That is quite different from
the taking of property
by the government through physical
invasion or a regulation that destroys a property’s
productive use.
The poor reasoning of
Williamson County
may be partially explained by the circumstances in which the
state-litigation issue reached the Court. The Court granted
certiorari to decide whether the Fifth Amendment entitles a
property owner to just compensation when a regulation temporarily
deprives him of the use of his property. (
First English
later held that the answer was yes.) As
amicus curiae in
support of the local government, the United States argued in this
Court that the developer could not state a Fifth Amendment claim
because it had not pursued an inverse condemnation suit in state
court. Neither party had raised that argument before.[
5] The Court then adopted the reasoning of
the Solicitor General in an alternative holding, even though the
case could have been resolved solely on the narrower and settled
ground that no taking had occurred because the zoning board had not
yet come to a final decision regarding the developer’s
proposal. In these circumstances, the Court may not have ade-
quately tested the logic of the state-litigation requirement or
considered its implications, most notably the preclusion trap later
sprung by
San Remo. That consequence was totally
unanticipated in
Williamson County.
The dissent, doing what respondents do not even
dare to attempt, defends the original rationale of
Williamson
County—that there is no Fifth Amendment violation, and
thus no Fifth Amendment claim, until the government denies the
property owner compensation in a subsequent proceeding.[
6] But although the dissent makes a
more thoughtful and considered argument than
Williamson
County, it cannot reconcile its view with our repeated holdings
that a property owner acquires a constitutional right to
compensation at the time of the taking. See
supra, at
7–11. The only reason that a taking would automatically
entitle a property owner to the remedy of compensation is that, as
Justice Brennan explained, with the uncompensated taking “the
landowner has
already suffered a constitutional
violation.”
San Diego Gas & Elec. Co., 450
U. S., at 654 (dissenting opinion). The dissent here provides
no more reason to resist that conclusion than did
Williamson
County.
C
The Court in
Williamson County relied
on statements in our prior opinions that the Clause “does not
provide or require that compensation shall be actually paid in
advance of the occupancy of the land to be taken. But the owner is
entitled to reasonable, certain and adequate provision for
obtaining compensation” after a taking.
Cherokee
Nation v.
Southern Kansas R. Co.,
135 U.S.
641, 659 (1890). Respondents rely on the same cases in
contending that uncompensated takings for which compensation is
subsequently available do not violate the Fifth Amendment at the
time of the taking. But respondents read those statements too
broadly. They concerned requests for injunctive relief, and the
availability of subsequent compensation meant that such an
equitable remedy was not available. See
Regional Rail
Reorganization Act Cases,
419 U.S.
102, 107, 149 (1974) (reversing a decision
“enjoin[ing]” the enforcement of a federal statute
because “the availability of the Tucker Act guarantees an
adequate remedy at law for any taking which might occur”);
Hurley v.
Kincaid,
285 U.S.
95, 99, 105 (1932) (rejecting a request to “enjoin the
carrying out of any work” on a flood control project because
the Tucker Act provided the plaintiff with “a plain,
adequate, and complete remedy at law”). Simply because the
property owner was not entitled to injunctive relief at the time of
the taking does not mean there was no violation of the Takings
Clause at that time.
The history of takings litigation provides
valuable context. At the time of the founding there usually was no
compensation remedy available to property owners. On occasion, when
a legislature authorized a particular government action that took
private property, it might also create a special owner-initiated
procedure for obtaining compensation. But there were no general
causes of action through which plaintiffs could obtain compensation
for property taken for public use. Brauneis, The First
Constitutional Tort: The Remedial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century
State Just Compensation Law, 52 Vand. L. Rev. 57, 69–70, and
n. 33 (1999).
Until the 1870s, the typical recourse of a
property owner who had suffered an uncompensated taking was to
bring a common law trespass action against the responsible
corporation or government official. The official would then raise
the defense that his trespass was lawful because authorized by
statute or ordinance, and the plaintiff would respond that the law
was unconstitutional because it provided for a taking without just
compensation. If the plaintiff prevailed, he nonetheless had no way
at common law to obtain money damages for a permanent
taking—that is, just compensation for the total value of his
prop- erty. He could obtain only retrospective damages, as well as
an injunction ejecting the government from his property going
forward. See
id., at 67–69, 97–99.
As Chancellor Kent explained when granting a
property owner equitable relief, the Takings Clause and its analogs
in state constitutions required that “a fair compensation
must, in all cases, be
previously made to the individuals
affected.”
Gardner v.
Newburgh, 2 Johns. Ch.
162, 166 (N. Y. 1816) (emphasis added). If a government took
property without payment, a court would set aside the taking
because it violated the Constitution and order the property
restored to its owner. The Framers meant to prohibit the Federal
Government from
taking property without paying for it.
Allowing the government to
keep the property pending
subsequent compensation to the owner, in proceedings that hardly
existed in 1787, was not what they envisioned.
Antebellum courts, which had no means of
compensating a property owner for his loss, had no way to redress
the violation of an owner’s Fifth Amendment rights other than
ordering the government to give him back his prop- erty. See
Callender v.
Marsh, 18 Mass. 418, 430–431
(1823) (“[I]f by virtue of any legislative act the land of
any citizen should be occupied by the public . . . ,
without any means provided to indemnify the owner of the property,
. . . because such a statute would be directly contrary
to the [Massachusetts takings clause]; and as no action can be
maintained against the public for damages, the only way to secure
the party in his constitutional rights would be to declare void the
public appropriation.”). But in the 1870s, as state courts
began to recognize implied rights of action for damages under the
state equivalents of the Takings Clause, they declined to grant
injunctions because prop- erty owners had an adequate remedy at
law. See,
e.g.,
Stet- son v.
Chicago &
Evanston R. Co., 75 Ill. 74, 78 (1874) (“What injury, if
any, [the property owner] has sustained, may be compensated by
damages recoverable by an action at law.”); see also
Brauneis,
supra, at 97–99, 110–112. On the
federal level, Congress enabled property owners to obtain
compensation for takings in federal court when it passed the Tucker
Act in 1887, and we subsequently joined the state courts in holding
that the compensation remedy is required by the Takings Clause
itself. See
First English, 482 U. S., at 316
(collecting cases).
Today, because the federal and nearly all state
governments provide just compensation remedies to property owners
who have suffered a taking, equitable relief is generally
unavailable. As long as an adequate provision for obtaining just
compensation exists, there is no basis to enjoin the
government’s action effecting a taking. But that is because,
as the Court explained in
First English, such a procedure is
a remedy for a taking that violated the Constitution, not because
the availability of the procedure somehow prevented the violation
from occurring in the first place. See
supra, at
9–11.[
7]
The dissent contends that our characterization
of
Cherokee Nation effectively overrules “a
hundred-plus years of legal rulings.”
Post, at 6
(opinion of Kagan, J.). But under today’s decision every one
of the cases cited by the dissent would come out the same
way—the plaintiffs would not be entitled to the relief they
requested because they could instead pursue a suit for
compensation. The premise of such a suit for compensation is that
the prop- erty owner has already suffered a violation of the Fifth
Amendment that may be remedied by money damages.[
8]
* * *
We conclude that a government violates the
Takings Clause when it takes property without compensation, and
that a property owner may bring a Fifth Amendment claim under
§1983 at that time. That does not as a practical matter mean
that government action or regulation may not proceed in the absence
of contemporaneous compensation. Given the availability of
post-taking compensation, barring the government from acting will
ordinarily not be appropriate. But because the violation is
complete at the time of the taking, pursuit of a remedy in federal
court need not await any subsequent state action. Takings claims
against local governments should be handled the same as other
claims under the Bill of Rights.
Williamson County erred in
holding otherwise.
IV
The next question is whether we should
overrule
Williamson County, or whether
stare decisis
counsels in favor of adhering to the decision, despite its error.
The doctrine of
stare decisis reflects a judgment
“that ‘in most matters it is more important that the
applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled
right.’ ”
Agostini v.
Felton,
521 U.S.
203, 235 (1997) (quoting
Burnet v.
Coronado Oil &
Gas Co.,
285 U.S.
393, 406 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)). The doctrine
“is at its weakest when we interpret the Constitution,”
as we did in
Williamson County, because only this Court or a
constitutional amendment can alter our holdings.
Agostini,
521 U. S., at 235.
We have identified several factors to consider
in deciding whether to overrule a past decision, including
“the quality of [its] reasoning, the workability of the rule
it established, its consistency with other related decisions,
. . . and reliance on the decision.”
Janus
v.
State,
County,
and Municipal Employees, 585
U. S. ___, ___–___ (2018) (slip op., at 34–35).
All of these factors counsel in favor of overruling
Williamson
County.
Williamson County was not just wrong. Its
reasoning was exceptionally ill founded and conflicted with much of
our takings jurisprudence. See
supra, at 12–14. Its
key conclusion, which it drew from unnecessary language in
Monsanto—that a property owner does not have a ripe
federal takings claim until he has unsuccessfully pursued an
initial state law claim for just compensation—ignored
Jacobs and many subsequent decisions holding that a property
owner acquires a Fifth Amendment right to compensation at the time
of a taking. This contradiction was on stark display just two years
later in
First English.
The decision has come in for repeated criticism
over the years from Justices of this Court and many respected
commentators. See
San Remo, 545 U. S., at 348
(Rehnquist, C. J., joined by O’Connor, Kennedy, and
Thomas, JJ., concurring in judgment);
Arrigoni Enter-
prises,
LLC v.
Durham, 578 U. S. ___ (2016)
(Thomas, J., joined by Kennedy, J., dissenting from denial of
certiorari); Merrill, Anticipatory Remedies for Takings, 128 Harv.
L. Rev. 1630, 1647–1649 (2015); McConnell,
Horne and
the Normalization of Takings Litigation: A Response to Professor
Echeverria, 43 Env. L. Rep. 10749, 10751 (2013); Friedman, Under
the Law of Federal Jurisdiction: Allocating Cases Between Federal
and State Courts, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 1211, 1264 (2004); Monaghan,
State Law Wrongs, State Law Remedies, and the Fourteenth Amendment,
86 Colum. L. Rev. 979, 989 (1986). Even the academic defenders of
the state-litigation requirement base it on federalism concerns
(although they do not reconcile those concerns with the settled
construction of §1983) rather than the reasoning of the
opinion itself. See Echeverria,
Horne v.
Department of
Agriculture: An Invitation To Reexamine “Ripeness”
Doctrine in Takings Litigation, 43 Env. L. Rep. 10735, 10744
(2013); Sterk, The Demise of Federal Takings Litigation, 48 Wm.
& Mary L. Rev. 251, 288 (2006).
Because of its shaky foundations, the
state-litigation requirement has been a rule in search of a
justification for over 30 years. We eventually abandoned the view
that the requirement is an element of a takings claim and recast it
as a “prudential” ripeness rule. See
Horne v.
Department of Agriculture,
569 U.S.
513, 525–526 (2013);
Suitum v.
Tahoe Regional
Planning Agency,
520 U.S.
725, 733–734 (1997). No party defends that approach here.
See Brief for Respondents 37; Brief for United States as
Amicus
Curiae 19–20. Respondents have taken a new tack, adopting
a §1983–specific theory at which
Williamson
County did not even hint. See n. 6,
supra. The fact
that the justification for the state-litigation requirement
continues to evolve is another factor undermining the force of
stare decisis. See
Janus, 585 U. S., at ___
(slip op., at 23).
The state-litigation requirement has also proved
to be unworkable in practice.
Williamson County envisioned
that takings plaintiffs would ripen their federal claims in state
court and then, if necessary, bring a federal suit under
§1983. But, as we held in
San Remo, the state
court’s resolution of the plaintiff’s inverse
condemnation claim has preclusive effect in any subsequent federal
suit. The upshot is that many takings plaintiffs never have the
opportunity to litigate in a federal forum that §1983 by its
terms seems to provide. That significant consequence was not
considered by the Court in
Williamson County.
The dissent argues that our constitutional
holding in
Williamson County should enjoy the
“enhanced” form of
stare decisis we usually
reserve for statutory decisions, because Congress could have
eliminated the
San Remo preclusion trap by amending the full
faith and credit statute.
Post, at 17 (quoting
Kimble
v.
Marvel Entertainment,
LLC, 578 U. S. ___, ___
(slip op., at 8)). But takings plaintiffs, unlike plaintiffs
bringing any other constitutional claim, would still have been
forced to pursue relief under state law before they could bring
suit in federal court. Congress could not have lifted that
unjustified exhaustion requirement because, under
Williamson
County, a property owner had no federal claim until a state
court denied him compensation.
Finally, there are no reliance interests on the
state-litigation requirement. We have recognized that the force of
stare decisis is “reduced” when rules that do
not “serve as a guide to lawful behavior” are at issue.
United States v.
Gaudin,
515
U.S. 506, 521 (1995); see
Alleyne v.
United
States, 570 U.S. 99, 119 (2013) (Sotomayor, J., concurring).
Our holding that uncompensated takings violate the Fifth Amendment
will not expose governments to new liability; it will simply allow
into federal court takings claims that otherwise would have been
brought as inverse condemnation suits in state court.
Governments need not fear that our holding will
lead federal courts to invalidate their regulations as
unconstitutional. As long as just compensation remedies are
available—as they have been for nearly 150
years—injunctive relief will be foreclosed. For the same
reason, the Federal Government need not worry that courts will set
aside agency actions as unconstitutional under the Administrative
Procedure Act. 5 U. S. C. §706(2)(B). Federal courts
will not invalidate an otherwise lawful uncompensated taking when
the property owner can receive complete relief through a Fifth
Amendment claim brought under the Tucker Act.
In light of all the foregoing, the dissent
cannot, with respect, fairly maintain its extreme assertions
regarding our application of the principle of
stare
decisis.
* * *
The state-litigation requirement of
Williamson County is overruled. A property owner may bring a
takings claim under §1983 upon the taking of his property
without just compensation by a local government. The judgment of
the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is
vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.