Court Opinion

ID: 9493208
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:01:13.161109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:42.775361
License: Public Domain

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
My distinguished colleagues’ lead opinion finds that the plaintiff has no protected property interest for purposes of asserting a procedural due process claim, but assumes that he has one for purposes of a substantive due process claim. This seems to suggest that there is one kind of property interest protected under the notion of procedural due process and another under the notion of substantive due process. How can this be? In my judgment, it cannot be.
There is considerable confusion in the federal courts, and indeed in this circuit, regarding the property interest a plaintiff must assert in order to sustain a claim under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment — confusion the Supreme Court has thus far not dispelled. See Silver v. Franklin Township, 966 F.2d 1031, 1036 (6th Cir.1992); Pearson v. City of Grand Blanc, 961 F.2d 1211, 1218 n. 29 (6th Cir.1992). A number of circuits, including our own, seem to recognize a distinction between the kind of property interest afforded substantive due process protection and that afforded procedural due process protection. See G.M. Eng’rs and Assocs., Inc. v. West Bloomfield Township, 922 F.2d 328, 331-32 (6th Cir.1990). In my view, there is no logical basis for making such a distinction, at least in connection with real property zoning cases.
For purposes of leveling a Fourteenth Amendment due process challenge to government action affecting the use and enjoyment of privately owned real estate, there can be no greater “property interest” to provide standing to make the challenge than fee simple ownership of the affected land. The idea expressed in Silver, 966 F.2d at 1036, that a property owner, in order to establish a protected property interest sufficient to maintain a due process claim, must demonstrate an “entitlement” or absolute right to the permit or similar instrument the property owner requests of the zoning body, is a test devoid of intelligibility and indeed a model of circular reasoning. The lead opinion seems to repute that test with respect to the plaintiffs substantive due process claim, and I agree, because the only property interest that need be shown for any due process claim is fee simple ownership and the plaintiff has alleged such ownership. Still, my colleagues reject Richardson’s procedural due process claim on the grounds that he has not alleged a sufficient property interest while assuming he has shown such property in*519terest for purposes of his substantive due process claim;
I cannot imagine any principled basis for applying a different test for finding a protected property interest sufficient to justify a procedural due process claim than is required to sustain a substantive due process claim; the text of the Due Process Clause certainly makes no such distinction. If one has a property interest in his real estate that is protected under any aspect of the Due Process Clause, surely it must be protected under all aspects. Despite the logical shambles in which the federal courts have left the procedural/substantive distinction in the law of due process, surely it remains true, at least as respects the existence of a property intérest in' zoning matters, that a landowner cannot have and not have a protected property at the same time. In my judgment, fee simple ownership is sufficient to sustain both procedural and substantive due process claims in zoning matters.
This very different understanding of the nature of the property interest protected by the Due Process Clause than my colleagues brings me, nevertheless, to the same result they have reached. In order to maintain a due process claim, whether procedural or substantive, a plaintiff must demonstrate both a protected property interest and governmental action that has in some way deprived the plaintiff of a property right. See Pearson, 961 F.2d at 1216 n. 16. While I have no doubt that Richardson’s fee simple ownership of his land is a property -interest sufficient to assert a due process claim, whether procedural or substantive, his inability to demonstrate any governmental action that deprived him of any protected property right is fatal to his lawsuit. Richardson purchased his property long after the defendant enacted the zoning ordinance Richardson challenges. Therefore, there has been no action by the defendant that deprived Richardson of anything; rather, this case is about nothing more than Richardson’s unfulfilled desire that the defendant act in a manner favorable to Richardson’s business interests. The Due Process Clause is not offended when such aspirations are unrealized. Further, this court needeth not say! I agree that the plaintiffs claims were properly dismissed.