Also known as: vested rights · vested legal rights · vested right
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A fixed property or legal interest that the law protects against subsequent impairment or revocation.
Viola Volkov has operated a mobile home park on her land for forty years under the original zoning. After the city rezones the area for luxury condos, she continues the park without interruption. The city cannot force immediate closure because her established use created a vested legal right protected against abrupt elimination.
Victor Vargas obtained a valid building permit and spent over eight hundred thousand dollars installing infrastructure for new units on his property. The city later rezones the area and revokes the permit. His substantial expenditures in good-faith reliance on the prior permit create a vested legal right that prevents the revocation from defeating his expectations.
Violet Vidal receives a signed and sealed commission for a five-year federal office under a statute that makes the position nonremovable at will. The President attempts to withhold the commission after the appointment. The completed appointment gives her a vested legal right that the law must protect against executive revocation.
In December 1801, William Marbury, Dennis Ramsay, Robert Townsend Hooe, and William Harper petitioned the Supreme Court for a rule requiring Secretary of State James Madison to show cause why a writ of mandamus should not issue commanding delivery of their commissions as justices of the peace in the District of Columbia. The applicants had been nominated by outgoing President John Adams. The Senate had advised and consented to the appointments. Commissions in due form were signed by the President with the seal of the United States affixed by the Secretary of State. During the proceedings the Court heard testimony from Department of State clerks Jacob Wagner and Daniel Brent, who described the preparation and handling of the commissions. Wagner recalled that two commissions had been signed but could not confirm whether those of the applicants were recorded. Brent believed Marbury's and Hooe's commissions were made out. Ramsay's was omitted by mistake. None of the Adams-signed commissions for District justices were recorded. Attorney General Levi Lincoln, who had acted as Secretary of State, testified that he had seen signed and sealed commissions but did not know whether any for the applicants were ever sent out. James Marshall's affidavit stated that on March 4, 1801, he received and later returned several commissions from the Secretary of State's office, including those for Hooe and Harper. The applicants also submitted the affidavit of Hazen Kimball confirming that commissions for Marbury and Hooe were in the office on March 3, 1801. Madison did not appear or show cause after the rule was served. The motion for the writ itself was heard in the February 1803 term.
View caseVito Villarreal sues a former president for damages arising from official acts taken years earlier. The former president claims absolute immunity bars the suit. The plaintiff's vested legal right to seek a remedy for the alleged injury survives because immunity does not retroactively destroy an already accrued cause of action.
In January 1970 respondent A. Ernest Fitzgerald lost his job as a management analyst with the Department of the Air Force when his position was eliminated during a departmental reorganization and reduction in force. One year earlier, on November 13, 1968, Fitzgerald had testified before the Subcommittee on Economy in Government of the Joint Economic Committee that cost overruns on the C-5A transport plane could approximate $2 billion. Concerned that the dismissal might constitute retaliation for the congressional testimony, the subcommittee held public hearings. At a December 8, 1969 news conference President Richard Nixon promised to look into the matter and directed White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman to arrange for Fitzgerald's reassignment to another administration position. An internal White House memorandum from aide Alexander Butterfield recommended that Fitzgerald "bleed, for a while at least" because of perceived disloyalty, and no further White House efforts to reemploy him occurred. Fitzgerald complained to the Civil Service Commission alleging unlawful retaliation. The Examiner held that Fitzgerald's dismissal had offended applicable civil service regulations based on a finding that the departmental reorganization was motivated by reasons purely personal to respondent. The Examiner recommended Fitzgerald's reappointment to his old position or to a job of comparable authority. The Commission explicitly found that the evidence did not support Fitzgerald's allegation of retaliation for his 1968 testimony. At a January 31, 1973 news conference President Nixon stated that he had approved Fitzgerald's dismissal. A day later the White House press office issued a retraction of the President's statement. In 1978 Fitzgerald filed a second amended complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia naming Nixon as a defendant and alleging violations of the First Amendment and two federal statutes. The District Court denied Nixon's motion for summary judgment on absolute immunity grounds. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the collateral appeal. Shortly after Nixon petitioned for certiorari the parties agreed that Nixon would pay Fitzgerald $142,000 immediately and an additional $28,000 if the Supreme Court ruled he was not entitled to absolute immunity.
View caseVivian Vaughn holds a contract right to supply materials under a city program that later imposes a new minority set-aside requirement. The city applies the requirement to her existing contract. Her vested legal right under the original agreement prevents the retroactive imposition of the new condition without compensation.
On April 11, 1983, the Richmond City Council adopted the Minority Business Utilization Plan requiring prime contractors awarded city construction contracts to subcontract at least 30% of the dollar amount of each contract to one or more Minority Business Enterprises defined as businesses at least 51% owned and controlled by black, Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut citizens with no geographic limit. The Plan was enacted after a public hearing at which council members relied on a study showing that although the city's population was 50% black, minority-owned businesses had received only 0.67% of the city's prime construction contracts from 1978 to 1983, and noted that local contractors' associations had virtually no minority members. No direct evidence was presented that the city had discriminated in letting contracts or that its prime contractors had discriminated against minority subcontractors. On September 6, 1983, the city issued an invitation to bid on plumbing fixtures for the city jail. J. A. Croson Company, a mechanical plumbing and heating contractor owned by a white person, submitted the sole bid of $126,530 on October 13, 1983. Croson contacted multiple minority firms but received no timely, competitive bid for the fixtures, which represented 75% of the contract value. Croson submitted a request for a waiver of the 30% set-aside requirement. The city denied Croson's waiver request, indicating that Croson had 10 days to submit an MBE Utilization Commitment Form, and warned that failure to do so could result in its bid being considered unresponsive. The city informed Croson that it had decided to rebid the project. Croson filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia alleging that the Plan violated the Equal Protection Clause. The District Court upheld the Plan in all respects. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit initially affirmed the Plan. We granted the writ, vacated the opinion of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of our intervening decision in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U. S. 267 (1986). On remand, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals struck down the Richmond set-aside program as violating both prongs of strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We noted probable jurisdiction of the city's appeal, 484 U. S. 1058 (1988), and we now affirm the judgment.
View caseValerie Viera obtains a final judgment against a defendant in a contract dispute. Congress later enacts a statute that would reopen the judgment and alter the outcome. The vested legal right embodied in the final judgment prevents the new statute from operating retroactively to disturb the adjudication.
In 1987 petitioners filed a civil action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky against respondents. The complaint alleged that respondents had committed fraud and deceit in the sale of stock in 1983 and 1984 in violation of section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5. The District Court dismissed the action as time barred under the then-applicable Kentucky statute of limitations. While petitioners' appeal was pending in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Supreme Court decided Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson on June 20, 1991. The next day the Court applied that decision to dismiss another pending appeal. The Sixth Circuit remanded petitioners' case to the District Court for further proceedings in light of Lampf. On August 13, 1991, the District Court dismissed the action with prejudice under the Lampf statute of limitations. Petitioners filed no appeal, and the judgment became final thirty days later on December 18, 1991. On December 19, 1991, the President signed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991. Section 476 of that Act added section 27A to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Subsection (b) provides that any private civil action under section 10(b) commenced on or before June 19, 1991, which was dismissed as time barred after that date and which would have been timely under the limitation period provided by the laws applicable in the jurisdiction as such laws existed on June 19, 1991, shall be reinstated on motion by the plaintiff not later than sixty days after December 19, 1991. Petitioners promptly filed a motion under section 27A(b) to reinstate their action. The District Court denied the motion. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseA landowner acquires a vested right to continue a nonconforming use when the use was lawful when established. The right protects the owner against immediate elimination by later zoning changes. The right can be lost only through abandonment, statutory discontinuance, or a reasonable amortization period.
Supporting sources
Substantial good-faith expenditures or other changes in position made in reliance on a valid permit or existing zoning create the right. Jurisdictions differ on whether substantial construction is required or whether a balancing test applies. The right prevents a later rezoning from defeating those reasonable expectations.
Supporting sources
A purely contingent interest does not create a vested legal right until the contingency is satisfied and the interest becomes fixed. Courts distinguish between interests that have ripened through reliance or final action and those that remain conditional on future events.
Supporting sources
A final judgment embodies a vested legal right that later statutes cannot retroactively alter. Separation of powers principles prevent Congress from reopening concluded cases and changing their outcomes.
…the office gave the officer a right to hold for five years independent of the Executive, the appointment was not revocable and vested legal rights protected by the laws. To withhold his commission is therefore an act not warranted by law and violative of a vested legal right. Second, if he has a right and that right has been violated…