Property Rights Claims Against Local Governments Gain Clearer Path to Federal Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned a precedent that has pushed many of the cases into state-level proceedings.

Lawsuits alleging that local governments have unconstitutionally taken private property now have a more direct path to federal court, after a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Friday scrapped a 34-year-old legal precedent.

The 5-4 ruling, with the court’s conservative bloc in the majority, comes in Knick v. Township of Scott. Rose Knick challenged a local ordinance the Pennsylvania township enacted in 2012 requiring her to grant daytime public access to a small cemetery plot on her land.

The legality of the ordinance and how it was enforced was not at the center of the Supreme Court case. It instead focused on a legal precedent that the high court established in 1985 in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City.

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Route Fifty

By Bill Lucia,
Senior Reporter

June 21, 2019



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