PEACE AND QUIET. That’s all Rose Knick—heroine of our 12th and most recent victory at the U.S. Supreme Court—wanted when she purchased her homestead in Eastern Pennsylvania nearly five decades ago. No matter how you ask Rose to describe her land and the memories it’s provided over the years, she always returns to that most basic concept.
But it’s exactly that peace and quiet that her local government thwarted when it required landowners like Rose to open their property permanently for the public to traipse through looking for old cemeteries—taking away her right to privacy without paying her for it.
Rose didn’t expect to fight her government. But as a farm girl, it wasn’t in her to back down.
“I never imagined that I would be in this situation, and that the township would do this to private property,” she said while explaining why she pursued the case. “They are very well familiar with eminent domain. They know the procedure. To me they are just playing games. I’m sticking to it. I’m not going anywhere till this is resolved one way or another.”
Rose first heard rumors swirling in 2008 that the township would force her to make her land accessible to the public. It took another four years for the township to make it official, also marking the official beginning of Rose’s quest to upend the ordinance. For the past seven years, Rose has been on an odyssey to vindicate her rights under the Fifth Amendment by challenging the ability of government to take property without paying compensation to the landowner.
She started in state court, but the local government withdrew its complaint that she was violating the cemetery ordinance, and that case ended. Eager to have her constitutional rights addressed, Rose then went to federal trial court, which bounced her lawsuit for not following the rules laid out by an obscure but consequential 1985 case called Williamson County that prevents federal courts from hearing all Fifth Amendment property rights claims until a state court has weighed in. That didn’t make sense to Rose.
“I never heard of Williamson County,” she said. “I didn’t know any of this stuff. I just knew about the Constitution—I knew that it wasn’t right.”
Another setback came in the federal appellate court, which was constrained by the older Supreme Court case.
Despite the earlier obstacles, and against significant odds, Rose finally received her own day at the Supreme Court (well, days actually—her case was argued a second time in early 2019 to allow now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh to participate). The momentous 5-4 decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, definitively overturned the Williamson County doctrine and allowed property owners around the country to do exactly what any other American can do—get immediate access to a federal judge to determine the constitutionality of state and local government action.
For almost 35 years, property owners around the country have been stuck in legal limbo, unable to have a neutral arbiter—especially one disconnected from the provincial legal scene—hear their case. No longer.
Rose understood the significance of her battle, even if she never imagined stepping on the field.
“I think it will be the best thing that ever happened now that I’ve read all of these briefs and got familiar with this,” she said. “[but] I had no reason to be involved in any of it.”
The implications of this win for Rose are deep and far-reaching. Now, when faced with the unconstitutional shenanigans of local land-use regulators, the American property owner can escape the clutches of the local system, where they’d been relegated for so long, and file in federal court.
Or as Rose puts it: “Private property owners will finally be respected.”
There’s peace returning to Scott Township for Rose, but when we told her about the historic victory, there wasn’t much quiet. Her response was classic Rose.
“It just takes my breath away,” she explained after the decision. “I’m just elated. Elated for everybody, everybody. To think that finally they’re following and doing the Constitution the way it’s supposed to be. Finally. It’s just thrilling. Thrilling for everybody. Thank God. Thank God that finally everybody in the United States is going to have a fair chance.”
Yes, and thanks as well to Rose, a Pennsylvania farm girl who wouldn’t back down—and who now joins the pantheon of Supreme Court winners who changed our nation’s course for the better.