Village Communities, LLC, et al. v. San Diego County, California, et al.

Respondent County of San Diego, et al. (County), a California land use agency, denied the land use permits for Village Communities et al. (Village) to develop a much-needed residential and mixed-use community in North San Diego County, California. The County denied the Project solely because Village “failed” to satisfy the County’s condition requiring Village to pay money to acquire offsite easements from 100 percent of the 50 property owners along a public road near Village’s property site in spite of the fact that the County made no individualized determination that the monetary exaction, a sum of approximately $2.5 million, bore an “essential nexus” and “rough proportionality” to the purported impacts associated with Village’s project as required by Nollan v. California Coastal Comm’n, 483 U.S. 825 (1987) and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994). The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Ninth Circuit’s holding that a land use permit applicant/landowner must show the government’s permit condition would coerce the applicant to give up both its own property and money to establish a Fifth Amendment takings claim under the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, conflicts with this Court’s decision in Koontz v. St. Johns River Management District, 570 U.S. 595 (2013)?

2. Whether the Ninth Circuit’s decision is contrary to Koontz, which imposes on the land use permit applicant/landowner only the burden to show that the government imposed an unconstitutional condition that required the applicant to give up property/money for which the Fifth Amendment would otherwise require just compensation under Koontz, Dolan, and Nollan?