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Director, Center for Supreme Court AdvocacyNational Association of Attorneys General
May 1, 2024 | Volume 31, Issue 10
This Report summarizes opinions issued on April 12, 16, and 17, 2024 (Part I).
Opinion
DeVillier v. Texas, 22-913.
The Court had granted certiorari to resolve whether the Takings Clause creates by its own force a cause of action authorizing suits for just compensation, but held unanimously that it need not decide that question because here “Texas law provides a cause of action that allows property owners to vindicate their rights under the Takings Clause.” Petitioner Richard DeVillier and 120 others owned property north of U.S. Interstate Highway 10 between Houston and Beaumont, Texas. Texas used a portion of that highway as a flood-evacuation route by installing a three-foot-tall barrier along the highway median to act as a dam to prevent stormwater from covering the south side of the road. During two significant storms in 2017 and 2019, the median functioned as designed, keeping the south side of the highway open. But it also led to flooding on petitioners’ land, resulting in the displacement of residents from their homes, damage to businesses, destruction of crops, and loss of livestock and family heirlooms. The median barrier is expected to continue causing flooding on petitioners’ land during future storms. DeVillier filed suit in state court arguing that he was entitled to just compensation under both the United States and Texas Constitutions because Texas had effected a taking of his property by building the median barrier and using his property to store stormwater. Other property owners filed similar suits. Texas removed the cases to federal court and moved to dismiss, claiming (among other things) that the Takings Clause does not give rise to a cause of action. The district court denied Texas’s motion, but the Fifth Circuit disagreed and held that the Takings Clause “does not provide a right of action for takings claims against a State.” In an opinion by Justice Thomas, the Court vacated and remanded.
The Court explained that “a property owner acquires an irrevocable right to just compensation immediately upon a taking [b]ecause of the self-executing character of the Takings Clause with respect to compensation. Knick [v. Township of Scott, 588 U.S. 180, 192 (2019)] (quoting First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Glendale v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 315 (1987))” (internal quotation marks omitted.) Thus, the only question before it was the “procedural vehicle by which a property owner may seek to vindicate that right.” The Court then noted that “[c]onstitutional rights do not typically come with a built-in cause of action to allow for private enforcement in courts. Instead, constitutional rights are generally invoked defensively in cases arising under other sources of law, or asserted offensively pursuant to an independent cause of action designed for that purpose, see, e.g., 42 U.S.C. §1983.” (Citations omitted.) Petitioners argued that the Takings Clause is an exception based on First English and other takings cases that did not rely on §1983. The Court found, however, that First English relied on a state-law cause of action, and the property owners in the other takings cases sought injunctions. The Court reasoned that “the mere fact the Takings Clause provided the substantive rule of decision for equitable claims in those cases does not establish that it creates a cause of action for damages.”
While acknowledging that the lack of cases relying on the Takings Clause for a cause of action did not prove there is no cause of action, the Court concluded that this case did not require it to resolve the question of “what would happen if a property owner had no cause of action to vindicate his rights under the Takings Clause.” That is because “Texas state law provides a cause of action by which property owners may seek just compensation against the State.” Thus, this case did not “present the circumstances in which a property owner has no cause of action to seek just compensation.”
NAAG Center for Supreme Court Advocacy Staff
- Dan Schweitzer, Director and Chief Counsel
- Melissa Patterson, Supreme Court Fellow
- Amanda Schwartz, Supreme Court Fellow
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