New Life for Takings Claims
By far, the most important recent development in land use law is
the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2019 decision in Knick v.
Township of Scott, in which the Court held, essentially, that if
government imposes a regulation that renders land totally or nearly
economically undevelopable, the property owner can proceed directly
in federal court for a violation of the Takings Clause. The Knick
decision erased a 1985 ruling that property owners must first go to
state court with their taking claims, and lose, before their
federal taking claim was "ripe for adjudication." The
unintended consequence of the 1985 ruling was that after owners
went to state court and lost, the federal courts turned away their
federal claim, holding that the property owners had "had their
day in court." Put another way, the Knick decision restores
the Takings Clause as a federal civil right, on par with the rest
of the Bill of Rights. Equally important, this change allows
