Fourth Amendment Search Fifth Amendment Taking Ordinance Private Cemetery Article III Standing

Knick v. Twp. of Scott, PICS Case No. 17-1143 (3 Cir. July 6, 2017) Smith, C.J. (35 pages).

District Court properly dismissed appellant's Fourth Amendment and takings challenges to township ordinance relating to inspection of and public access to private cemeteries because appellant lacked article III standing where the search was in an open field that was not a protected area and appellant had no injury and did not exhaust her state law compensation remedies for her takings claim. Affirmed.

Township enacted an ordinance relating to cemeteries that required all cemeteries, including private ones, to be open to the public during daylight hours and authorized the township to enter any property to determine the existence of any cemetery and to ensure compliance with the ordinance. The township enforcement officer entered appellant's property, identified certain stones as grave markers and issued a notice of violation. Appellant disputed that a cemetery existed on her property. Appellant sued, asserting Fourth Amendment claims for entering her property without a warrant and sought invalidation of the ordinance on the grounds of vagueness, improper exercise of police authority and taking private property without just compensation. The court dismissed the claims and appellant appealed.

Appellant asserted the district court erred by dismissing her Fourth Amendment facial and as-applied challenges and by requiring her first to exhaust state-law remedies for her takings claims. The court found that appellant lacked article III standing because she failed to demonstrate an injury-in-fact and redressability. Appellant claimed the she was injured by an unlawful search but the District Court ruled that the search in question was lawful and appellant did not appeal the ruling. The District Court found that the search complied with the Fourth Amendment because the officer searched an open field, which was not a protected area enumerated in the Fourth Amendment. Any "injury" from an open-field search was not legally protected and not redressable. Appellant contended that the ordinance allowed the township to search the curtilage of her home but she did not allege any personal harm from a threatened or actual curtilage search. Simply owning property subject to a hypothetical search was too speculative for article III purposes. Appellant's facial challenge also failed because she made no reasonable allegation that her or anyone else'sFfourth Amendment rights were, or would be, imminently violated. While the court found the ordinance's inspection provisions to be constitutionally suspect, the court could not reach the merits without a plaintiff who had standing.

Appellant also asserted a Fifth Amendment takings claim based on the ordinance's requirement that a private cemetery had to be open to the public. The township argued that appellant had not exhausted her state-law compensation remedies since she had not instituted an inverse-condemnation proceeding. Appellant's argument that she did not need to exhaust such remedies when she made a "facial" challenge to the ordinance was a misapprehension of the law. The court found that County Concrete Corp. v. Town of Roxbury, 442 F.3d 159, was fully compatible with Yee v. City of Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, and the second prong of Williamson Cnty. Reg'l Planning Comm'n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172, applied because appellant's claims were for compensation. Appellant argued that her unsuccessful action in the state court for declaratory and injunctive relief satisfied her exhaustion of remedies requirement but the eminent domain code provided the complete and exclusive procedure to govern all condemnations. The state inverse-condemnation mechanism was better equipped to handle the matter.