SCOTUS Asked to Decide Whether Private Burial Grounds Can Be Opened to Public

A Pennsylvania woman whose home was declared by her township to be situated on an ancestral burial ground has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling forcing her to open up her property to the public. Rose Mary Knick filed her certiorari petition Tuesday, asking the justices to vacate a July 5 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upholding the dismissal of her constitutional claims. Knick’s troubles started when a nearby Lackawanna County family claimed their ancestors were interred under her property. Knick argued the family’s claims were untrue, but a local ordinance says the township has the right to come to Knick’s property to investigate. What started out as an isolated dispute then erupted into a full-blown federal court case over the constitutionality of the local cemetery law. Knick claimed that the Scott Township ordinance requiring owners of private property with cemeteries on-site to open their grounds to the public violates the Constitution by permitting unrestrained searches of private property in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and that it takes private property without compensation, violating the Fifth. But while the case presented potentially impactful constitutional questions, it was ultimately dismissed on procedural grounds by a federal judge in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a decision upheld by the Third Circuit. “The township’s ordinance is extraordinary and constitutionally suspect,” Third Circuit Chief Judge D. Brooks Smith wrote in the court’s July opinion. “However, important justiciability considerations preclude us from reaching the merits. Because Knick concedes that her Fourth Amendment rights were not violated and fails to demonstrate that they imminently will be, Knick lacks standing to advance her Fourth Amendment challenge.” “And as the district court correctly held,” Smith continued, “Knick’s Fifth Amendment claims are not ripe until she has sought and been denied just compensation using Pennsylvania’s inverse-condemnation procedures.” James David Breemer, of the business-focused public interest law firm Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, represents Knick. “Scott Township’s graveyard law forces property owners to allow warrantless searches by government and unbridled trespassing by the public,” Beemer said in a Tuesday statement issued by the foundation. “The Supreme Court should take Ms. Knick’s case to make sure the township does not get away with its flagrant abridgement of constitutionally protected rights.” In that statement, Knick, who lives on 90 acres of farmland and claims the hundred-year-old title chain makes no mention of a cemetery, said, "It was unbelievable that the town would trample all over my rights this way, making it open season for trespassing on my land." She added, “I am very hopeful that the Supreme Court will take a stand for the Constitution, and for everybody’s property rights, by striking down this outrageous law.” The township’s lawyer, Thomas A. Specht of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin’s Scranton office, did not respond to a call seeking comment. While Knick claimed the search of her property by a township official infringed on her rights, the district court held it was lawful. The court held that because the code enforcement officer inspected an open field and not Knick’s house, no harm was done. The question then, Smith said, turned to whether she could pursue the case even though her own rights were not violated. “Knick makes no reasonable allegation that her Fourth Amendment rights (or anyone else’s) were, or will imminently be, violated,” Smith said, “The fact that Knick challenges the ordinance on its face does not relieve her from that fundamental burden.”