CHARLOTTESVILLE — A federal judge has dismissed two lawsuits from Virginia landowners that claimed the state’s survey permission law violated the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Elizabeth K. Dillon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia ruled in favor of motions to dismiss the lawsuits from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, (ACP) LLC.

“The court concludes that plaintiffs’ facial challenges to the statute fail because the statute does not deprive a landowner of a constitutionally-protected property right and that plaintiffs’ as-applied challenges fail because they are not ripe,” Dillon wrote in her opinion on the dismissal.

She concluded that “a landowner has no constitutionally-protected property right to exclude an authorized utility from entering his property for survey purposes.”

The suit was filed by landowners in Nelson County against Dominion — the firm leading a joint venture to build a 550-mile natural gas pipeline across three states — in an attempt to stop the utility from surveying for the proposed project.

ACP, LLC has several civil suits pending in Buckingham, Cumberland and Prince Edward seeking landowner access to survey.