More than a dozen red and blue states have banded together to urge the Supreme Court to let states exhaust all local avenues for sorting out land disputes before letting federal courts weigh in.
A wide variety of states — including blue states like California and Massachusetts and red states like Indiana and Utah — are supporting Pennsylvania as it pushes to ensure that the Supreme Court upholds their right to handle their own land use fights without federal interference.
The Supreme Court in its next term is expected to take up an appeals court ruling known as Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania. That decision held that every possible statewide remedy relating to a land dispute should be explored before being considered by a federal court, and 17 states and the District of Columbia want the Supreme Court to affirm that ruling.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes told the Deseret News late Tuesday that “local self-governance, especially on land use issues, is an American principle of federalism we need to preserve.”
California this week filed a friend of the court brief in support of Pennsylvania, on behalf of the coalition.
“Federal courts, which are removed from the day-to-day workings of state government, have different priorities, naturally designed to serve federal goals,” the states wrote. “Channeling takings cases that arise from state regulation to state courts allows States to resolve such challenges as part of a comprehensive system for managing important issues of regulation, development, and private property rights that could not be more integral to the complex business of state and local governance.”
The case has gained nationwide attention because the Supreme Court’s decision will provide guidance for how landowners can go about asserting their rights on their own properties, and at which point federal judges can be dragged into the process.
The dispute arose when Pennsylvania resident Rose Mary Knick fought a 2012 Scott Township ordinance that governs public access to private cemeteries. The ordinance was introduced after another Scott Township resident accused Knick of not permitting him to visit graves of his family members he said are on her 90-acre property, according to the Times-Tribune. Knick denied that such a burial site exists on her land.
Knick brought an action before a federal district court in 2014 after her 2013 state lawsuit in front of a Lackawanna County court was dismissed on procedural grounds. Her federal suit was also thrown out in 2016 for being premature, and that ruling was confirmed by a federal appeals court.
The appeals court relied on the 1985 Supreme Court decision in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, which prohibited relief being sought at the federal level until compensation had been denied from a state-based court. That ruling will now be reviewed by the highest court in the land.
“All of this has taken five years, and tremendous resources, without any court ever giving Ms. Knick a hearing on whether the ordinance is unconstitutional,” Pacific Legal Foundation’s J. David Breemer, an attorney representing Knick, wrote in an email to the Times-Tribune in March shortly after the Supreme Court agreed to hear her case.
“A ruling in favor of our client will allow her and landowners nationwide to seek the swiftest relief from unconstitutional government intrusion,” Breemer continued in a press release of the upcoming Supreme Court appearance, per the Times-Tribune.
Carl Ferraro, the Scott Township code enforcement officer named as a respondent in the matter, did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment but told the Times-Tribune in March he was surprised the case had reached the Supreme Court. Ferraro, however, added that he understood its importance.
“It has very little to do with the cemetery and more to do with general land rights and ironing out differences of opinion in the law,” he said.
Knick will be heard by the Supreme Court on Oct. 3.
