Maryland retiree asks the Supreme Court to hear his property rights case

Garnell Walls bought his land in Brandywine, Maryland in 1978. He was a mechanic then, and he spent the decades that followed repairing the police cruisers, fire engines, and ambulances that Prince George's County sent out on emergency calls. His plan for the lot was patient and unremarkable: retire, then build a house on the land he had been paying for since he was a young man.

Walls is retired now, and on disability. The lot is still empty.

Between 2019 and 2021, Walls spent close to $40,000 and two years doing everything the County asked of him. He paid for a hydrological study. He conducted and passed soil percolation tests. He recorded a woodland conservation easement over part of the property. The County approved his site development permit and his single-family dwelling permit, and, according to his complaint, County staff assured him along the way that he would be able to build.

Then came the last step: water and sewer. The nearest public sewer line sits more than half a mile from Walls's property, and the nearest water line roughly 900 feet away. Connecting would cost him between $2.1 million and $2.5 million—to serve one house. So Walls asked the County for permission to install an interim private well and septic system, the same arrangement the County had historically allowed in areas without public utilities, including for two of his neighbors.

The County refused. Under the County's 2018 Water & Sewer Plan, a private well and septic system requires a waiver, and County employees told Walls the agency would not approve one and, at points, that the agency's director had no legal authority to grant one. In February 2022, the County confirmed in writing that his property "does not meet the criteria for a waiver."

That letter left Walls with a single suggested path forward: ask the County Council to amend the water and sewer plan itself—a two-stage legislative process, run through public hearings and committee work sessions, in which the Council is free to say no without giving any reason. The County also raised the possibility that Walls might one day connect to lines built for a nearby planned subdivision. When Walls contacted that project's representatives, court filings state, they told him the development was still a concept, four to five years from breaking ground at the earliest, with no plans to run lines anywhere that would help his lot.

In May 2023, Walls sued Prince George's County in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, arguing that the County had taken his property without paying for it, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. He has never received a ruling on whether that is true. The district court dismissed the case as unripe. On February 23, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed in an unpublished opinion, holding that the County had not yet reached a final decision on Walls's property because Walls had not asked the County Council to change the very regulation that blocked him. Walls filed a petition for rehearing, which the Fourth Circuit subsequently denied on March 23, 2026.

On July 23, 2026, Pacific Legal Foundation, with Justly Prudent serving as co-counsel, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court of the United States to review that decision. The petition asks the Court to answer two questions: whether a property owner must exhaust legislative remedies before an as-applied regulatory takings claim is ripe, and whether a court may dismiss such a claim on prudential ripeness grounds even when the owner has properly pleaded standing.

The consequences reach far beyond one lot in Brandywine. As the petition explains, courts across the country have split on the first question. The Ninth Circuit and the courts of Virginia, California, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Hawaii do not require property owners to seek legislative change before suing. The Fourth Circuit, along with courts in Illinois, Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin, does. The practical effect of that rule is not limited to wells and septic systems: a homeowner denied a zoning variance, or a landowner denied a wetlands permit, would first have to lobby a legislature to rewrite the ordinance or the statute. Because a legislative body can always amend its own enactments, a claim measured by that standard may never become ripe at all.

"Pacific Legal Foundation saw what this ruling means for ordinary property owners, and they stepped in and built a petition worthy of the question," said Jordan D. Howlette, Managing Attorney of Justly Prudent. "Mr. Walls has waited nearly 50 years to build on land he bought and paid for. He is not asking for special treatment. He is asking for a decision—and for a court willing to hear him."

The petition marks the first time a Justly Prudent matter has reached the Supreme Court of the United States. The firm filed the case in 2023 and argued the appeal before the Fourth Circuit in December 2025.

The case is Garnell Walls v. Prince George's County, et al. (Case No. [SCOTUS docket number pending]), filed in the Supreme Court of the United States.