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DRAFT FOR ATTORNEY REVIEW — NOT FINAL

Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1 (1988)

Citation
Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1 (1988)
Parent Document
Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1 (1988)
Effective Date
1988-02-24

Other Sections in This Document (112)

Full Text

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*10been relied upon by a hearing officer to reduce a rent below the figure it would have been set at on the basis of the other factors set forth in the Ordinance. In addition, there is nothing in the Ordinance requiring that a hearing officer in fact reduce a proposed rent increase on grounds of tenant hardship. Section 5703.29 does make it mandatory that hardship be considered — it states that “the Hearing Officer shall consider the economic hardship imposed on the present tenant” — but it then goes on to state that if “the proposed increase constitutes an unreasonably severe financial or economic hardship ... he may order that the excess of the increase” be disallowed. §5703.29 (emphasis added). Given the “essentially ad hoc, factual inquir[y]” involved in the takings analysis, Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U. S. 164, 175 (1979), we have found it particularly important in takings cases to adhere to our admonition that “the constitutionality of statutes ought not be decided except in an actual factual setting that makes such a decision necessary.” Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc., 452 U. S. 264, 294-295 (1981). In Virginia Surface Mining, for example, we found that a challenge to the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, 91 Stat. 447, 30 U. S. C. § 1201 et seq., was “premature,” 452 U. S., at 296, n. 37, and “not ripe for judicial resolution,” id., at 297, because the property owners in that case had not identified any property that had allegedly been taken by the Act, nor had they sought administrative relief from the Act’s restrictions on surface mining. Similarly, in this case we find that the mere fact that a hearing officer is enjoined to consider hardship to the tenant in fixing a landlord’s rent, without any showing in a particular case as to the consequences of that injunction in the ultimate determination of the rent, does not present a sufficiently concrete factual setting for the adjudication of the takings claim appellants raise here. Cf. CIO v. McAdory, 325 U. S. 472, 475-476 (1945) (declining to consider the validity of a state statute when the record did not *11show that the statute would ever be applied to any of the petitioner’s members).5