SAN REMO HOTEL, L. P., ET AL. v. CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, ET AL.
No. 04-340
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 28, 2005—Decided June 20, 2005
545 U.S. 323
Seth P. Waxman argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Andrew W. Schwartz, Fran M. Layton, Ellison Folk, Edward C. DuMont, and Therese M. Stewart.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for Defenders of Property Rights et al. by Robert P. Parker, Nancie G. Marzulla, Roger J. Marzulla, and Michael E. Malamut; for Equity Lifestyle Properties, Inc.,
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the State of New Jersey et al. by Peter C. Harvey, Attorney General of New Jersey, Patrick DeAlmeida, Assistant Attorney General, and Brian Weeks, Deputy Attorney General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: John W. Suthers of Colorado, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Mark J. Bennett of Hawaii, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Mike McGrath of Montana, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, and Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., of West Virginia; for the State of New York et al. by Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York, Caitlin J. Halligan, Solicitor General, Peter H. Lehner, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gregory Klass, Assistant Solicitor General, and John J. Sipos and Susan L. Taylor, Assistant Attorneys General, Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General of Connecticut, and William H. Sorrell, Attorney General of Vermont; for the Community Rights Counsel et al. by Timothy J. Dowling; for the Conference of Chief Justices by John D. Echeverria; and for the National Association of Counties et al. by Richard Ruda and James I. Crowley.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the National Association of Home Builders by Kenneth B. Bley, Mary V. DiCrescenzo, Duane J. Desiderio, and Thomas J. Ward; for the Pacific Legal Foundation et al. by Meriem L. Hubbard and R. S. Radford; for the Honorable Steve Chabot by Timothy S. Hollister; for Franklin P. Kottschade by Michael M. Berger; and for Evandro S. Santini et al. by Everett E. Newton.
JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether federal courts may craft an exception to the full faith and credit statute,
Petitioners, who own and operate a hotel in San Francisco, California (hereinafter City), initiated this litigation in response to the application of a city ordinance that required them to pay a $567,000 “conversion fee” in 1996. After the California courts rejected petitioners’ various state-law takings claims, they advanced in the Federal District Court a series of federal takings claims that depended on issues identical to those that had previously been resolved in the state-
Petitioners’ argument is predicated on Williamson County Regional Planning Comm‘n v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U. S. 172 (1985), which held that takings claims are not ripe until a State fails “to provide adequate compensation for the taking.” Id., at 195. Unless courts disregard
I
The San Remo Hotel is a three-story, 62-unit hotel in the Fisherman‘s Wharf neighborhood in San Francisco. In December 1906, shortly after the great earthquake and fire destroyed most of the City, the hotel—then called the “New California Hotel“—opened its doors to house dislocated individuals, immigrants, artists, and laborers. The City officially licensed the facility to operate as a hotel and restaurant in 1916, and in 1922 the hotel was given its current
In 1979, San Francisco‘s Board of Supervisors responded to “a severe shortage” of affordable rental housing for elderly, disabled, and low-income persons by instituting a moratorium on the conversion of residential hotel units into tourist units. San Francisco Residential Hotel Unit Conversion and Demolition Ordinance (hereinafter Hotel Conversion Ordinance or HCO) §§ 41.3(a)-(g), App. to Pet. for Cert. 195a-197a. Two years later, the City enacted the first version of the Hotel Conversion Ordinance to regulate all future conversions. San Francisco Ordinance No. 330-81, codified in § 41.1 et seq. Under the 1981 version of the HCO, a hotel owner could convert residential units into tourist units only by obtaining a conversion permit. And those permits could be obtained only by constructing new residential units, rehabilitating old ones, or paying an “in lieu” fee into the City‘s Residential Hotel Preservation Fund Account. See §§ 41.12-41.13, App. to Pet. for Cert. 224a-231a. The City substantially strengthened the HCO in 1990 by eliminating several exceptions that had existed in the 1981 version and increasing the size of the “in lieu” fee hotel owners must pay when converting residential units. See 145 F. 3d 1095, 1099 (CA9 1998).
The genesis of this protracted dispute lies in the 1981 HCO‘s requirement that each hotel “file an initial unit usage report containing” the “number of residential and tourist units in the hotel[s] as of September 23, 1979.” § 41.6(b)(1), App. to Pet. for Cert. 206a. Jean Iribarren was operating the San Remo Hotel, pursuant to a lease from petitioners, when this requirement came into effect. Iribarren filed the initial usage report for the hotel, which erroneously reported
After the HCO was revised in 1990, petitioners applied to convert all of the rooms in the San Remo Hotel into tourist use rooms under the relevant HCO provisions and requested a conditional use permit under the applicable zoning laws. In 1993, the City Planning Commission granted petitioners’ requested conversion and conditional use permit, but only after imposing several conditions, one of which included the requirement that petitioners pay a $567,000 “in lieu” fee.3 Petitioners appealed, arguing that the HCO requirement was unconstitutional and otherwise improperly applied to their hotel. See id., at 656, 41 P. 3d, at 95. The City Board of Supervisors rejected petitioners’ appeal on April 19, 1993.
Petitioners filed in federal court for the first time on May 4, 1993. Petitioners’ first amended complaint alleged four counts of due process (substantive and procedural) and takings (facial and as-applied)4 violations under the
On appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, petitioners took the unusual position that the court should not decide their federal claims, but instead should abstain under Railroad Comm‘n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496 (1941), because a return to state court could conceivably moot the remaining federal questions. See App. 67-68; see also 145 F. 3d, at 1101. The Court of Appeals obliged petitioners’ request with respect to the facial challenge, a request that respondents apparently viewed as an “outrageous act of chutzpah.” Id., at 1105. That claim, the court rea-
At the conclusion of the Ninth Circuit‘s opinion, the court appended a footnote stating that petitioners would be free to raise their federal takings claims in the California courts. If, however, they wanted to “retain [their] right to return to federal court for adjudication of [their] federal claim, [they] must make an appropriate reservation in state court.” Id., at 1106, n. 7.6 That is precisely what petitioners attempted to do when they reactivated the dormant California case. Yet petitioners advanced more than just the claims on which the federal court had abstained, and phrased their state claims in language that sounded in the rules and standards established and refined by this Court‘s takings jurisprudence. Petitioners claimed, for instance, that “imposition of the fee ‘fails to substantially advance a legitimate government interest’ and that ‘[t]he amount of the fee imposed is not roughly proportional to the impact’ of the proposed tourist use of the San Remo Hotel.” 27 Cal. 4th, at 656, 41 P. 3d, at 95 (quoting petitioners’ second amended
The California Supreme Court reversed over the partial dissent of three justices.8 The court initially noted that petitioners had reserved their federal causes of action and had sought no relief for any violation of the Federal Constitution. Id., at 649, n. 1, 41 P. 3d, at 91, n. 1.9 In the portion of its opinion discussing the Takings Clause of the California Constitution, however, the court noted that “we appear to have construed the clauses congruently.” Id., at 664, 41 P. 3d, at 100-101 (citing cases). Accordingly, despite the fact that petitioners sought relief only under California law, the state court decided to “analyze their takings claim under the
The principal constitutional issue debated by the parties was whether a heightened level of scrutiny applied to the claim that the housing replacement fee “does not substantially advance legitimate state interests.” Ibid. (quoting Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U. S. 1003, 1016 (1992)). In resolving that debate the court focused on our opinions in Nollan v. California Coastal Comm‘n, 483 U. S. 825 (1987), and Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U. S. 374 (1994). Rejecting petitioners’ argument that heightened scrutiny should apply, the court emphasized the distinction between discretionary exactions imposed by executive officials on an ad hoc basis and “‘generally applicable zoning regulations’ involving ‘legislative determinations.‘” 27 Cal. 4th, at 666-668, 41 P. 3d, at 102-104 (quoting, e. g., Dolan, 512 U. S., at 385, 391, n. 8). The court situated the HCO within the latter category, reasoning that the ordinance relied upon fixed fees computed under a formula that is generally applicable to broad classes of property owners.11 The court concluded that the less demanding “reasonable relationship” test should apply to the HCO‘s monetary assessments, 27 Cal. 4th, at 671, 41 P. 3d, at 105.
Petitioners did not seek a writ of certiorari from the California Supreme Court‘s decision in this Court. Instead, they returned to Federal District Court by filing an amended complaint based on the complaint that they had filed prior to invoking Pullman abstention.12 The District Court held that petitioners’ facial attack on the HCO was not only barred by the statute of limitations, but also by the general rule of issue preclusion. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 85a-
The Court of Appeals affirmed. The court rejected petitioners’ contention that general preclusion principles should be cast aside whenever plaintiffs “must litigate in state court pursuant to Pullman and/or Williamson County.” 364 F. 3d 1088, 1096 (CA9 2004). Relying on unambiguous Circuit precedent and the absence of any clearly contradictory decisions from this Court, the Court of Appeals found itself bound to apply general issue preclusion doctrine. Given that general issue preclusion principles governed, the only remaining question was whether the District Court properly applied that doctrine; the court concluded that it did. The court expressly rejected petitioners’ contention “that California takings law is not coextensive with federal takings law,” ibid., and held that the state court‘s application of the “reasonable relationship” test was an “‘equivalent determination’ of such claims under the federal takings clause,” id., at 1098.14 We granted certiorari and now affirm.
The general rule implemented by the full faith and credit statute—that parties should not be permitted to relitigate issues that have been resolved by courts of competent jurisdiction—predates the Republic.17 It “has found its way into
the federal claims ... and are based on the same factual allegations.” Ibid. Our limited review in this case does not include the question whether the Court of Appeals’ reading of California preclusion law was in error.
“is demanded by the very object for which civil courts have been established, which is to secure the peace and repose of society by the settlement of matters capable of judicial determination. Its enforcement is essential to the maintenance of social order; for, the aid of judicial tribunals would not be invoked for the vindication of rights of person and property, if, as between parties and their privies, conclusiveness did not attend the judgments of such tribunals in respect of all matters properly put in issue and actually determined by them.” Southern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 168 U. S. 1, 49 (1897).
As this case is presented to us, under our limited grant of certiorari, we have only one narrow question to decide: whether we should create an exception to the full faith and credit statute, and the ancient rule on which it is based, in order to provide a federal forum for litigants who seek to advance federal takings claims that are not ripe until the entry of a final state judgment denying just compensation. See Williamson County, 473 U. S. 172.18
pedigree “[i]n the courts upon the continent of Europe, and in the courts of chancery and admiralty in the United States and Great Britain, where the function of adjudication is performed entire by a tribunal composed of one or more judges...“).
We reject petitioners’ contention. Although petitioners were certainly entitled to reserve some of their federal claims, as we shall explain, England does not support their erroneous expectation that their reservation would fully negate the preclusive effect of the state-court judgment with respect to any and all federal issues that might arise in the future federal litigation. Federal courts, moreover, are not free to disregard
III
England involved a group of plaintiffs who had graduated from chiropractic school, but sought to practice in Louisiana without complying with the educational requirements of the State‘s Medical Practice Act. 375 U. S., at 412. They filed suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the Act. The District Court invoked Pullman abstention and stayed the proceedings to enable the Louisiana courts to
petitioners’ hotel; and that under California law, the “in lieu” fee was imposed evenhandedly and substantially advanced legitimate state interests.
On appeal, we held that when a federal court abstains from deciding a federal constitutional issue to enable the state courts to address an antecedent state-law issue, the plaintiff may reserve his right to return to federal court for the disposition of his federal claims. Id., at 419. In that case, the antecedent state issue requiring abstention was distinct from the reserved federal issue. See id., at 418-419. Our discussion of the “typical case” in which reservations of federal issues are appropriate makes clear that our holding was limited to cases that are fundamentally distinct from petitioners‘. “Typical” England cases generally involve federal constitutional challenges to a state statute that can be avoided if a state court construes the statute in a particular manner.20 In such cases, the purpose of abstention is not to afford state courts an opportunity to adjudicate an issue that is functionally identical to the federal question. To the contrary, the purpose of Pullman abstention in such cases is to avoid resolving the federal question by encouraging a state-law determination that may moot the federal controversy.
Our holding in England does not support petitioners’ attempt to relitigate issues resolved by the California courts. With respect to petitioners’ facial takings claims, the Court of Appeals invoked Pullman abstention after determining that a ripe federal question existed—namely, “the facial takings challenge to the 1990 HCO.” 145 F. 3d, at 1105.23 It did so because “land use planning is a sensitive area of social policy” and because petitioners’ pending state mandamus action had the potential of mooting their facial challenge to the HCO by overturning the City‘s original classification of the San Remo Hotel as a “residential” property. Ibid. Thus, petitioners were entitled to insulate from preclusive effect one federal issue—their facial constitutional challenge
Petitioners, however, chose to advance broader issues than the limited issues contained within their state petition for writ of administrative mandamus on which the Ninth Circuit relied when it invoked Pullman abstention. In their state action, petitioners advanced not only their request for a writ of administrative mandate, 27 Cal. 4th, at 653, 41 P. 3d, at 93, but also their various claims that the HCO was unconstitutional on its face and as applied for (1) its failure to substantially advance a legitimate interest, (2) its lack of a nexus between the required fees and the ultimate objectives sought to be achieved via the ordinance, and (3) its imposition of an undue economic burden on individual property owners. Id., at 672-676, 41 P. 3d, at 106-109. By broadening their state action beyond the mandamus petition to include their “substantially advances” claims, petitioners effectively asked the state court to resolve the same federal issues they asked it to reserve. England does not support the exercise of any such right.
Petitioners’ as-applied takings claims fare no better. As an initial matter, the Court of Appeals did not abstain with respect to those claims. Instead, the court found that they were unripe under Williamson County. The court therefore affirmed the District Court‘s dismissal of those claims. 145 F. 3d, at 1106. Unlike their “substantially advances” claims, petitioners’ as-applied claims were never properly before the District Court, and there was no reason to expect that they could be relitigated in full if advanced in the state proceedings. See Allen, 449 U. S., at 101, n. 17. In short, our opinion in England does not support petitioners’ attempt to circumvent
IV
Petitioners’ ultimate submission, however, does not rely on England alone. Rather, they argue that federal courts simply should not apply ordinary preclusion rules to state-
In Santini, the Second Circuit held that parties “who litigate state-law takings claims in state court involuntarily” pursuant to Williamson County cannot be precluded from having those very claims resolved “by a federal court.” 342 F. 3d, at 130. The court did not rest its decision on any provision of the federal full faith and credit statute or our cases construing that law. Instead, the court reasoned that “[i]t would be both ironic and unfair if the very procedure that the Supreme Court required [plaintiffs] to follow before bringing a Fifth Amendment takings claim ... also precluded [them] from ever bringing a Fifth Amendment takings claim.” Ibid. We find this reasoning unpersuasive for several reasons.
First, both petitioners and Santini ultimately depend on an assumption that plaintiffs have a right to vindicate their federal claims in a federal forum. We have repeatedly held, to the contrary, that issues actually decided in valid state-court judgments may well deprive plaintiffs of the “right” to have their federal claims relitigated in federal court. See, e. g., Migra v. Warren City School Dist. Bd. of Ed., 465 U. S. 75, 84 (1984); Allen, 449 U. S., at 103-104. This is so even when the plaintiff would have preferred not to litigate in state court, but was required to do so by statute or prudential rules. See id., at 104. The relevant question in such cases is not whether the plaintiff has been afforded access to a federal forum; rather, the question is whether the state court actually decided an issue of fact or law that was necessary to its judgment.
In Allen, the plaintiff, Willie McCurry, invoked the
“The actual basis of the Court of Appeals’ holding appears to be a generally framed principle that every person asserting a federal right is entitled to one unencumbered opportunity to litigate that right in a federal district court, regardless of the legal posture in which the federal claim arises. But the authority for this principle is difficult to discern. It cannot lie in the Constitution, which makes no such guarantee, but leaves the scope of the jurisdiction of the federal district courts to the wisdom of Congress. And no such authority is to be found in
§ 1983 itself .... There is, in short, no reason to believe that Congress intended to provide a person claiming a federal right an unrestricted opportunity to relitigate an issue already decided in state court simply because the issue arose in a state proceeding in which he would rather not have been engaged at all.” Id., at 103-104 (footnote omitted).24
As in Allen, we are presently concerned only with issues actually decided by the state court that are dispositive of federal claims raised under
The only distinction between this case and Allen that is possibly relevant is the fact that petitioners here originally invoked the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court, which abstained on Pullman grounds while petitioners returned to state court. But petitioners’ as-applied takings claims were never properly before the District Court because they were unripe. And, as we have already explained, the Court of Appeals invoked Pullman abstention only with respect to petitioners’ “substantially advances” takings challenge, which petitioners then gratuitously presented to the state court. At a bare minimum, with respect to the facial takings claim, petitioners were “in an offensive posture in [their] state-court proceeding, and could have proceeded first in federal court had [they] wanted to litigate [their ‘substantially advances‘] federal claim in a federal forum.” Migra, 465 U. S., at 85, n. 7. Thus, the only distinction between this case and Allen is a distinction of no relevant significance.
The second reason we find petitioners’ argument unpersuasive is that it assumes that courts may simply create exceptions to
The same concerns animate our decision here. Congress has not expressed any intent to exempt from the full faith and credit statute federal takings claims. Consequently, we apply our normal assumption that the weighty interests in finality and comity trump the interest in giving losing litigants access to an additional appellate tribunal. As we explained in Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U. S. 394 (1981):
“[W]e do not see the grave injustice which would be done by the application of accepted principles of res judicata. ‘Simple justice’ is achieved when a complex body of law developed over a period of years is evenhandedly applied. The doctrine of res judicata serves vital public interests beyond any individual judge‘s ad hoc determination of the equities in a particular case. There is simply ‘no principle of law or equity which sanctions the rejection by a federal court of the salutary principle of res judicata.‘” Id., at 401 (quoting Heiser v. Woodruff, 327 U. S. 726, 733 (1946)).
Third, petitioners have overstated the reach of Williamson County throughout this litigation. Petitioners were never required to ripen the heart of their complaint—the claim that the HCO was facially invalid because it failed to substantially advance a legitimate state interest—in state court. See Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519, 534 (1992). Petitioners therefore could have raised most of their facial takings challenges, which by their nature requested relief distinct from the provision of “just compensation,” directly
With respect to those federal claims that did require ripening, we reject petitioners’ contention that Williamson County prohibits plaintiffs from advancing their federal claims in state courts. The requirement that aggrieved property owners must seek “compensation through the procedures the State has provided for doing so,” 473 U. S., at 194, does not preclude state courts from hearing simultaneously a plaintiff‘s request for compensation under state law and the claim that, in the alternative, the denial of compensation would violate the
It is hardly a radical notion to recognize that, as a practical matter, a significant number of plaintiffs will necessarily litigate their federal takings claims in state courts. It was settled well before Williamson County that “a claim that the application of government regulations effects a taking of a property interest is not ripe until the government entity charged with implementing the regulations has reached a
Moreover, this is not the only area of law in which we have recognized limits to plaintiffs’ ability to press their federal claims in federal courts. See, e. g., Fair Assessment in Real Estate Assn., Inc. v. McNary, 454 U. S. 100, 116 (1981) (holding that taxpayers are “barred by the principle of comity from asserting
At base, petitioners’ claim amounts to little more than the concern that it is unfair to give preclusive effect to state-court proceedings that are not chosen, but are instead required in order to ripen federal takings claims. Whatever the merits of that concern may be, we are not free to disregard the full faith and credit statute solely to preserve the availability of a federal forum. The Court of Appeals was correct to decline petitioners’ invitation to ignore the re-
It is so ordered
CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom JUSTICE O‘CONNOR, JUSTICE KENNEDY, and JUSTICE THOMAS join, concurring in the judgment.
I agree that the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be affirmed. Whatever the reasons for petitioners’ chosen course of litigation in the state courts, it is quite clear that they are now precluded by the full faith and credit statute,
In Williamson County, the respondent land developer filed a
It is not clear to me that Williamson County was correct in demanding that, once a government entity has reached a final decision with respect to a claimant‘s property, the claimant must seek compensation in state court before bringing a federal takings claim in federal court. The Court in Williamson County purported to interpret the
The Court today attempts to shore up the state-litigation requirement by referring to Fair Assessment in Real Estate Assn., Inc. v. McNary, 454 U. S. 100 (1981). Ante, at 347.
The Court today makes no claim that any such longstanding principle of comity toward state courts in handling federal takings claims existed at the time Williamson County was decided, nor that one has since developed. The Court does remark, however, that state courts are more familiar with the issues involved in local land-use and zoning regulations, and it suggests that this makes it proper to relegate federal takings claims to state court. Ante, at 347. But it is not apparent that any such expertise matches the type of historically grounded, federalism-based interests we found necessary to our decision in Fair Assessment. In any event, the Court has not explained why we should hand authority over federal takings claims to state courts, based simply on their relative familiarity with local land-use decisions and proceedings, while allowing plaintiffs to proceed directly to federal court in cases involving, for example, challenges to municipal land-use regulations based on the
Finally, Williamson County‘s state-litigation rule has created some real anomalies, justifying our revisiting the issue. For example, our holding today ensures that litigants who go to state court to seek compensation will likely be unable later to assert their federal takings claims in federal court. Ante, at 346-347. And, even if preclusion law would not block a litigant‘s claim, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine might, insofar as Williamson County can be read to characterize the state courts’ denial of compensation as a required element of the
*
*
I joined the opinion of the Court in Williamson County. But further reflection and experience lead me to think that the justifications for its state-litigation requirement are suspect, while its impact on takings plaintiffs is dramatic. Here, no court below has addressed the correctness of Williamson County, neither party has asked us to reconsider it, and resolving the issue could not benefit petitioners. In an appropriate case, I believe the Court should reconsider whether plaintiffs asserting a Fifth Amendment takings claim based on the final decision of a state or local government entity must first seek compensation in state courts.
Cal. Rptr. 2d 324, 338-339 (1998); Melillo v. City of New Haven, 249 Conn. 138, 154, n. 28, 732 A. 2d 133, 143, n. 28 (1999). This precludes litigants from asserting their federal takings claim even in state court. The Court tries to avoid this anomaly by asserting that, for plaintiffs attempting to raise a federal takings claim in state court as an alternative to their state claims, Williamson County does not command that the state courts themselves impose the state-litigation requirement. Ante, at 346. But that is so only if Williamson County‘s state-litigation requirement is merely a prudential rule, and not a constitutional mandate, a question that the Court today conspicuously leaves open.