652
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
ble development. For a floor value was all the State needed to defeat Palazzolo's simple Lucas claim.
Furthermore, Palazzolo's argument is unfair: The argument transforms the State's legitimate defense to the only claim Palazzolo stated below into offensive support for other claims he states for the first time here. Casting away fairness (and fairness to a State, no less), the Court indulges Palazzolo's bait-and-switch maneuver. The Court concludes that "there is no genuine ambiguity in the record as to the extent of permitted development on . . . the uplands." Ante, at 623. Two theories are offered to support this conclusion.
First, the Court asserts, it is "too late in the day" for the State to contend the uplands give the property more than $200,000 in value; Palazzolo "stated" in his petition for certiorari that the property has "an estimated worth of $200,000," and the State cited that contention "as fact" in its Brief in Opposition. Ante, at 622. But in the cited pages of its Brief in Opposition, the State simply said it "would" approve a "single home" worth $200,000. Brief in Opposition 4, 19. That statement does not foreclose the possibility that the State would also approve another home, adding further value to the property.
To be sure, the Brief in Opposition did overlook Palazzolo's change in his theory of the case, a change that, had it been asserted earlier, could have rendered insufficient the evidence the State intelligently emphasized below. But the State's failure to appreciate that Palazzolo had moved the pea to a different shell hardly merits the Court's waiver finding. The only precedent cited for the waiver, a footnote in Lucas, is not remotely on point. Ante, at 622. The landowner in Lucas had invoked a "finding" of fact by the state court, and this Court deemed the State's challenge to that finding waived because the challenge was not timely raised. 505 U. S., at 1020-1022, n. 9. There is nothing extraordinary about this Court's deciding a case on the findings made by a
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