626
Opinion of the Court
ment permitted, and neither the agency nor a reviewing state court has cited noncompliance with reasonable state-law exhaustion or pre-permit processes, see Felder v. Casey, 487 U. S. 131, 150-151 (1988), federal ripeness rules do not require the submission of further and futile applications with other agencies.
B
We turn to the second asserted basis for declining to address petitioner's takings claim on the merits. When the Council promulgated its wetlands regulations, the disputed parcel was owned not by petitioner but by the corporation of which he was sole shareholder. When title was transferred to petitioner by operation of law, the wetlands regulations were in force. The state court held the postregulation acquisition of title was fatal to the claim for deprivation of all economic use, 746 A. 2d, at 716, and to the Penn Central claim, 746 A. 2d, at 717. While the first holding was couched in terms of background principles of state property law, see Lucas, 505 U. S., at 1015, and the second in terms of petition-er's reasonable investment-backed expectations, see Penn Central, 438 U. S., at 124, the two holdings together amount to a single, sweeping, rule: A purchaser or a successive title holder like petitioner is deemed to have notice of an earlier-enacted restriction and is barred from claiming that it effects a taking.
The theory underlying the argument that postenactment purchasers cannot challenge a regulation under the Takings Clause seems to run on these lines: Property rights are created by the State. See, e. g., Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156, 163 (1998). So, the argument goes, by prospective legislation the State can shape and define property rights and reasonable investment-backed expectations, and subsequent owners cannot claim any injury from lost value. After all, they purchased or took title with notice of the limitation.
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