Opinion ID: 46231
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Remaining Constitutional Claims against the City

Text: 36 Urban Developers also brought claims against the City for violations of procedural due process under the United States and Mississippi Constitutions. These claims focus on the statements that the apartments would be condemned and regarding the failure to approve plans for rebuilding, all without a hearing and without giving notice of deficiencies. We dismiss these remaining constitutional claims under general ripeness principles. 10 37 A court should dismiss a case for lack of ripeness when the case is abstract or hypothetical. New Orleans Pub. Serv., Inc. v. Council of New Orleans, 833 F.2d 583, 586 (5th Cir.1987). The key considerations are `the fitness of the issues for judicial decision and the hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration.' Id. (quoting Abbott Labs. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 1515, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967)). A claim is not ripe for adjudication if it rests upon `contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.' Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 118 S.Ct. 1257, 1259, 140 L.Ed.2d 406 (1998). 38 Urban Developers' federal and state due process claims against the City are unripe because, as discussed above, Urban Developers has yet to suffer a deprivation of property. The City of Jackson has not made a final determination of whether, or under what circumstances, it will issue a building permit, or whether it will condemn the property. These due process claims rest upon a contingent future event and cannot be properly evaluated by this court in the present circumstances. See Bigelow v. Michigan Dep't of Natural Res., 970 F.2d 154, 160 (6th Cir. 1992) (Until the state courts have ruled on the plaintiffs' inverse condemnation claim, this court cannot determine whether a taking has occurred, and thus cannot address the procedural due process claim with a full understanding of the relevant facts.). 39 We reach this conclusion, like Fifth Circuit panels before us, not by direct reference to Williamson County, a case which other circuits have applied to ancillary due-process claims in such circumstances, 11 but rather by reference to principles of ripeness generally. See John Corp. v. City of Houston, 214 F.3d 573, 586 (5th Cir. 2000) ([W]e do not apply Williamson County per se [to the procedural due process claim], but rather the general rule that a claim is not ripe if additional factual development is necessary.); see also Hidden Oaks Ltd., 138 F.3d at 1045 n. 6 (refusing to apply Williamson County to a procedural due process claim because there was no primary takings claim present). But see Smith v. City of Brenham, 865 F.2d 662, 664 (5th Cir.1989) (citing Williamson County and concluding that the plaintiff's due process challenge to landfill permitting procedures was premature because no deprivation of property ... has yet occurred ... and certainly will not occur at least until the permit process . . . has run its course.). 40 We accordingly dismiss as unripe all of Urban Developers' claims on which it prevailed below against the City of Jackson. 41