The Accidental Abstention Doctrine: After Nearly 30 Years, the Case for Diverting Federal Takings Claims to State Court Under Williamson County Has Yet to Be Made

Abstract

In Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 185 (1985), the Supreme Court ruled that a property owner must sue for damages in court to ripen a Fifth Amendment takings claim for federal adjudication. Two decades later, in San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco, the Court acknowledged what had long been clear to aggrieved litigants: Far from ripening a federal takings claim, complying with Williamson County’s state procedures rule normally extinguishes such claims, through the operation of ordinary principles of preclusion. Instead of coining a requirement, the Williamson County Court had accidentally created a de facto abstention doctrine.This article traces the origin and history of the Williamson County decision. A sharp conflict had arisen among the circuit courts of appeals over the propriety of abstaining in regulatory takings cases. The Ninth Circuit relegated such claims to court while retaining jurisdiction under Pullman abstention, while the Fourth Circuit dismissed them outright under Burford abstention. Rather than resolving this conflict – of which it did not seem to be aware – the Williamson County Court overlaid it with a new doctrine that allowed federal judges to waive their Article III jurisdiction over Fifth Amendment takings claims without meeting any of the stringent conditions required to abstain under either Pullman or Burford.Ironically, 11 years after Williamson County was handed down, the Court tightened its formal abstention requirements even more, foreclosing the dismissal of claims for damages under any abstention theory. Yet federal takings claimants continue to meet this fate every day, under the guise of Williamson County’s so-called ripeness requirement. This article concludes that the state-procedures rule is a doctrinal anomaly that cannot be justified. The Court has given a series of signals that it is backing away from the accidental abstention doctrine, and may soon jettison this poorly thought out bar to federal jurisdiction over Fifth Amendment takings claims.