Claim under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause; “Regulatory taking”; Due process claims; Ripeness; Constitutional ripeness; Prudential ripeness; Distinct rule for “land-use cases”; Catholic Healthcare Int’l, Inc v Genoa Charter Twp; Finality requirement; Pakdel v City & Cnty of San Francisco

Holding that plaintiff-SW Nashville’s takings and due process claims were ripe, the court reversed the district court’s dismissal order and remanded. Plaintiff wants “to develop an uninhabited parcel that it owns in” Nashville. Defendant-Metropolitan Government (Metro) has refused to process its building-permit “application in the normal course[,]” maintaining a development hold on the property while evaluating broader area infrastructure plans. What was at issue on appeal was “the district court’s threshold dismissal of” plaintiff’s claims on ripeness grounds. The court held that the claims were “both constitutionally and prudentially ripe.” As to the former, “Metro’s decision to impose the development hold—a hold that in turn precluded SW Nashville’s desired development of its property— occurred years ago. SW Nashville also has no trouble showing that it is ‘threatened with imminent injury in fact.’ Indeed, it has already suffered a ‘classic pocketbook injury,’ in the form of sunk carrying costs, ‘sufficient to give [it] standing.’” As to prudential ripeness, “‘land-use cases’ come with their own distinct rule for addressing ripeness” – the necessity of a definitive land-use decision, referred to as the “finality requirement.” Applying that framework, the court concluded “that Metro’s development hold on SW Nashville’s property is sufficiently final for ripeness purposes.” As to definitiveness, in “2022, Metro ‘committed to a position’ on SW Nashville’s permit application. That decision was to block SW Nashville from ‘undertaking any construction or development’ by ‘prohibit[ing] review’ of [its] application indefinitely.” And Metro has continued to adhere to this “definitive” decision. The court found that plaintiff showed “Metro’s commitment to a decision that bars SW Nashville from developing its property. And SW Nashville now seeks to challenge that decision. ‘[N]othing more’ is required for ‘de facto finality.’” The court noted that plaintiff had “no means to alter Metro’s no-development decision[,]” which it asserted had “rendered its property ‘undevelopable and unsellable.’ Metro’s affirmative choice to freeze any development of SW Nashville’s parcel was thus a property-use decision made, not a decision delayed. That is all prudential ripeness requires.”