Advancing American Freedom led a coalition of 12 other amici filing amicus briefs in Walls v. Prince George’s County and Tedford’s Tenancy, LLC v. City of New York.
Both of these cases effectively take private property for public use without the compensation required by the Fifth Amendment. Property rights are a fundamental pillar of liberty that has been recognized in the Western legal tradition for millennia. Yet, lower courts in both of these cases did not even allow the plaintiffs to proceed with their cases, finding that because the plaintiffs had not jumped through regulatory and legislative hoops, their claims were not ripe.
In Walls, after Petitioner Garner Walls spent $40,000 obtaining the requisite permits and inspections on land on which he intended to build a retirement home, Prince George’s County, Maryland refused to grant him permission to install a private well and septic system. Because connecting his property to the public sewer and water system would cost over $2 million, the county's denial of a permit for the septic system renders Wall's property effectively unusable.
In Tedford’s Tenancy, Petitioners Lynette and Richard Ciner are challenging New York City’s rent control law. The Ciners inherited a building in Manhattan that includes six apartment units, but the city's rent control law limits the rent they can charge for those apartments to $430 a month, far below the apartments' operating costs and thus insufficient to recuperate the estimated $1,000,000 in repairs needed before the apartments would be rentable. The rent control law thus renders the Ciners' property effectively unusable.
The Supreme Court should take up these cases and affirm that Americans need not waste time on pointless legal procedures before they can seek judicial relief.
“When government regulations make it impossible to do something as basic as building a home or leasing apartments in an apartment building, there is grave danger that those regulations unconstitutionally restrict the right to property,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “For rights so fundamental to the system of ordered liberty, Americans should have the benefit of timely judicial review. The Court should grant the petition for certiorari and ensure that courts provide a venue for Americans to vindicate these most fundamental of rights.”