## Facts

- A developer owned a residential development site primarily in one town, with a three-acre adjacent parcel in another town needed for part of an access road.
- The primary town granted final subdivision approval for the larger project, conditioned on the neighboring town’s approval of the access road and subdivision activity within its borders.
- The developer applied to the neighboring town’s planning board to subdivide the three-acre parcel into residential lots and to approve access roads serving the larger development.
- The planning board denied the application, citing environmental concerns tied largely to the broader development.
- The developer challenged the denial in a CPLR article 78 proceeding; the trial court ordered approval, finding the denial arbitrary and improperly influenced by community opposition, and the intermediate appellate court affirmed.
- After securing approvals and proceeding with the project, the developer filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action seeking money damages for delay, alleging procedural due process, substantive due process, equal protection, and an uncompensated taking.

## Issues

1. Whether the developer had a constitutionally protected property interest in subdivision approval sufficient to support § 1983 procedural or substantive due process claims.
2. Whether the planning board’s arbitrary denial and delay, later corrected through state proceedings, constituted substantive due process misconduct actionable under § 1983.
3. Whether the denial and delay supported § 1983 claims for equal protection or an uncompensated taking when the project ultimately proceeded.

## Decision

- The state high court affirmed dismissal of the § 1983 complaint.
- The developer lacked a constitutionally protected property interest in the subdivision approval because the permitting decision involved governmental discretion.
- An arbitrary or improper decision under state administrative law, even if reversible in an article 78 proceeding, did not by itself amount to a federal constitutional violation.
- The equal protection and takings theories failed where the developer did not show differential treatment of similarly situated applicants without a rational basis and where the alleged harm was delay rather than a permanent deprivation of property use.

## Legal Principles

- A § 1983 due process claim based on denial or delay of a land-use approval requires a “legitimate claim of entitlement,” not a unilateral expectation; discretionary approvals generally do not create a federal property interest.
- Success in state judicial review of a land-use decision (including an order compelling approval) does not retroactively convert a discretionary local permit interest into a constitutionally protected entitlement for § 1983 damages.
- State-law arbitrariness does not automatically satisfy federal substantive due process standards; land-use disputes do not become federal constitutional cases absent exceptionally egregious governmental conduct.
- Delay in obtaining approvals, later remedied through available state procedures, ordinarily does not constitute an uncompensated taking absent a permanent or sufficiently severe deprivation of property use.
- Equal protection liability in this setting requires proof of disparate treatment of similarly situated parties without a rational basis (or another recognized equal protection theory), not merely an unlawful or mistaken denial.

## Conclusion

The court held that, although the developer obtained state-law relief compelling approval of the subdivision, it had no federal entitlement to approval and could not recover § 1983 damages for delay based on due process, equal protection, or takings theories.


Bower Assocs. v. Town of Pleasant Valley, 814 N.E.2d 410 (N.Y. 2004)