What the Pakdel v. Metropolis and County of San Francisco win means for property rights instances shifting ahead

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court announced that the courts will have to deal with our Pakdel v. San Francisco City and County case, which is challenging a San Francisco ordinance requiring landowners to grant tenants lifetime leases. The court found that they removed the barriers to bringing property rights cases to federal courts.

In 2009, Peyman Pakdel and his wife bought an apartment in San Francisco with the intent of making it their future home when they were ready to retire. The apartment was one of six units carved out of a former house, and all six owners had the title of “shared tenants”. Unlike some other owners, the couple decided to rent out their apartment until it was time for them to retire and make it their home.

When the Pakdels bought the unit, they along with the other owners agreed to convert the building into a condominium as soon as possible. But the Pakdels lost the ability to live in their own home because the city passed an ordinance that only allowed condominium conversion if owners offered a lifetime lease to each existing tenant renting the property.

Thanks to the new ordinance, the Pakdels’ much younger tenant could choose to stay for life, effectively stripping them of the couple’s property without compensation, in violation of the Fifth Amendment, and ruining their dreams of retirement.

The Ninth District had ruled that the Pakdels could not even challenge the law in court for failing to appeal the order in the Rube Goldberg-style process preferred by the city of San Francisco. Strangely enough, this process no longer exists

The recent Supreme Court ruling is a huge win for property owners and builds on the previous victory by the Pacific Legal Foundation in Knick against the Township of Scott, Pennsylvania, which removed hurdles that made it nearly impossible to bring property claims in federal court do.

Prior to the 2019 Knick ruling, the Supreme Court held the Williamson County Regional Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City set a precedent generally forbidding landowners from getting their day in federal court unless they first exhausted all other state remedies.

The Williamson County’s ruling stated that “a property owner whose property has been taken over by a local government has not suffered a violation of his rights under the Fifth Amendment – and therefore cannot bring a federal lawsuit in federal court – until a state court dismissed his claim Has”. for fair compensation under state law. “

In essence, Williamson County granted other constitutional rights property rights “second class status”.

But the Knick case, which raised the question of whether Rose Knick could bring her property rights case to federal court without a year-long ordeal of jumping through state courts, reversed Williamson County. Knick also restored the importance of property rights, reiterating that these guarantees were equally important for all other constitutional rights.

Pakdel specified and expanded the kink. The court said: “Given that the Fifth Amendment enjoys’ full constitutional status’, the Ninth District had no basis to classify petitioners’ entitlement to ‘poor relative status’ under the provisions of the Bill of Rights.”

This is not the only recent Fifth Amendment win for PLF. The court also recommended the lower courts to consider the Pakdels’ claims in light of last week’s victory in our Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid case, where the right to exclusion is a fundamental characteristic of property and that the government cannot do that right without compensation path.

It seems that the Court is paying close attention to our property rights cases.

The Pakdel report unceremoniously reversed the ninth circle on the matter without additional briefing or oral argument. It was issued “per curiam”, an unsigned statement on behalf of all judges. This is a rarely used practice and sometimes controversial as the court does not say when it is used and the parties have no further opportunity to submit pleadings or argue. The opinion included a “Grant, Release and Investigation Order” (GVR) ordering the Ninth Ward to overturn its previous decision to continue the Pakdels’ case and examine the merits of their case in light of Cedar Point.

In our petition asking the Supreme Court to hear our case, the court was specifically asked to issue a summary order because the Ninth Ward’s decision was so blatantly at odds with Knick. The summary order of the court achieved exactly this result.

Property rights are one of the most important constitutional rights we have, but since the New Deal the courts have limited their protection.

Fortunately, the Knick ruling has raised the standard when it comes to giving property owners access to federal courts to protect their property, Cedar Point reaffirmed the importance of the right of exclusion, and the Pakdel statement extends the protection of the fifth amendment even further.