Suitum v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 520 U.S. 725, 16 (1997)

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740

SUITUM v. TAHOE REGIONAL PLANNING AGENCY

Opinion of the Court

must be made by any agency official for her to obtain them or to offer them for sale. The only decision left to the agency is approval of a particular transfer of TDR's to make certain that a given potential buyer may lawfully use them. But whether a particular sale of TDR's may be completed is quite different from whether TDR's are salable; so long as the particular buyer is not the only person who can lawfully buy, the rights would not be rendered unsalable even if the agency were to make a discretionary decision to kill a particular sale. And the class of buyers is not even arguably so limited here, where there is no question so far as the law is concerned that TDR's may be bought and used for the benefit of all sorts of land parcels and lots.

C

The agency's argument that Suitum's case is not ripe because no " 'values attributable to [Suitum's TDR's] are known,' " Brief for Respondent 23 (quoting No. CV-N-91- 040-ECR (D. Nev., Mar. 30, 1994), App. to Pet. for Cert. C-4, is just a variation on the preceding position, and fares no better. First, as to Suitum's rights to receive TDR's that she may later sell, we have already noted that little or no uncertainty remains. Although the value of a Residential Development Right may well be greater if it is offered together with a Residential Allocation, and although Suitum must still enter the lottery for the latter, there is no discretionary decision to be made in determining whether she will get one; in fact, the probability of her getting one is "100 percent" according to the agency, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 40, since there are fewer applications than available allocations, see id., at 39-40. But even if that were not the case, as it probably will not always be, it would be unreasonable to require Suitum to enter the drawing in order to ripen her suit. The agency does not, and surely could not, maintain that if the odds of success in the allocation lottery were low,

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