Suitum v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 520 U.S. 725, 15 (1997)

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Cite as: 520 U. S. 725 (1997)

Opinion of the Court

parcel of land, a sound judgment about what use will be allowed simply cannot be made by asking whether a parcel's characteristics or a proposal's details facially conform to the terms of the general use regulations.

The demand for finality is satisfied by Suitum's claim, however, there being no question here about how the "regulations at issue [apply] to the particular land in question." Williamson County, supra, at 191. It is undisputed that the agency "has finally determined that petitioner's land lies entirely within an SEZ," Brief for Respondent 21, and that it may therefore permit "[n]o additional land coverage or other permanent land disturbance" on the parcel, TRPA Code § 20.4. Because the agency has no discretion to exercise over Suitum's right to use her land, no occasion exists for applying Williamson County's requirement that a landowner take steps to obtain a final decision about the use that will be permitted on a particular parcel. The parties, of course, contest the relevance of the TDR's to the issue of whether a taking has occurred, but resolution of that legal issue will require no further agency action of the sort demanded by Williamson County.

B

The agency nonetheless argued below, and the lower courts agreed, see supra, at 732-733, that there remains a "final decision" for the agency to make: action on a possible application by Suitum to transfer the TDR's to which she is indisputably entitled. This is not, however, the type of "final decision" required by our Williamson County precedents. Those precedents addressed the virtual impossibility of determining what development will be permitted on a particular lot of land when its use is subject to the decision of a regulatory body invested with great discretion, which it has not yet even been asked to exercise. No such question is presented here. The parties agree on the particular TDR's to which Suitum is entitled, and no discretionary decision

739

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