Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas

VILLAGE OF BELLE TERRE ET AL. v. BORAAS ET AL.

Appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

No. 73-191. Argued February 19-20, 1974 — Decided April 1, 1974.

476 F. 2d 806, reversed.

DOUGLAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and STEWART, WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., post, p. 10, and MARSHALL, J., post, p. 12, filed dissenting opinions.

Bernard E. Gegan argued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief was James J. Von Oiste. Lawrence G. Sager argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were Melvin L. Wulf and Burt Neuborne.

The report occupies pages 1 through 20 of volume 416 of the United States Reports. The syllabus occupies pages 1 and 2; the opinion of the Court runs from page 2 to page 10, where the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed; the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan begins at page 10 and the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Marshall begins at page 12, the report closing at page 20.

[416 U.S. 1] “A New York village ordinance restricted land use to one-family dwellings, defining the word ‘family’ to mean one or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, or not more than two unrelated persons, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit and expressly excluding from the term lodging, boarding, fraternity, or multiple-dwelling houses. After the owners of a house in the village, who had leased it to six unrelated college students, were cited for violating the ordinance, this action was brought to have the ordinance declared unconstitutional as violative of equal protection and the rights of association, travel, and privacy. The District Court held the ordinance constitutional, and the Court of Appeals reversed. Held:”

[416 U.S. 1] “1. Economic and social legislation with respect to which the legislature has drawn lines in the exercise of its discretion will be upheld if it is ‘‘reasonable, not arbitrary,’’ and bears ‘a rational relationship to a [permissible] state objective,’ Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 76, and here the ordinance — which is not aimed at transients and involves no procedural disparity inflicted on some but not on others or deprivation of any ‘‘fundamental’’ right — meets that constitutional standard and must be upheld as valid land-use legislation addressed to family needs. Berman v. Parker, 348 U. S. 26. Pp. 7-9.”

[416 U.S. 2] “2. The fact that the named tenant appellees have vacated the house does not moot this case as the challenged ordinance continues to affect the value of the property. Pp. 9-10.”

[416 U.S. 7] “The present ordinance is challenged on several grounds: that it interferes with a person's right to travel; that it interferes with the right to migrate to and settle within a State; that it bars people who are uncongenial to the present residents; that it expresses the social preferences of the residents for groups that will be congenial to them; that social homogeneity is not a legitimate interest of government; that the restriction of those whom the neighbors do not like trenches on the newcomers' rights of privacy; that it is of no rightful concern to villagers whether the residents are married or unmarried; that the ordinance is antithetical to the Nation's experience, ideology, and self-perception as an open, egalitarian, and integrated society.”

[416 U.S. 7] “We find none of these reasons in the record before us. It is not aimed at transients. . . . It involves no procedural disparity inflicted on some but not on others such as was presented by Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12. It involves no ‘fundamental’ right guaranteed by the Constitution, such as voting, . . . the right of association, . . . the right of access to the courts, . . . or any rights of privacy . . . .”

[416 U.S. 8] “We deal with economic and social legislation where legislatures have historically drawn lines which we respect against the charge of violation of the Equal Protection Clause if the law be ‘‘reasonable, not arbitrary’’ . . . and bears ‘a rational relationship to a [permissible] state objective.’ Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71, 76.”

[416 U.S. 8] “It is said, however, that if two unmarried people can constitute a ‘family,’ there is no reason why three or four may not. But every line drawn by a legislature leaves some out that might well have been included. That exercise of discretion, however, is a legislative, not a judicial, function.”

[416 U.S. 8] “It is said that the Belle Terre ordinance reeks with an animosity to unmarried couples who live together. There is no evidence to support it; and the provision of the ordinance bringing within the definition of a ‘family’ two unmarried people belies the charge.”

[416 U.S. 9] “The ordinance places no ban on other forms of association, for a ‘family’ may, so far as the ordinance is concerned, entertain whomever it likes.”

[416 U.S. 9] “The regimes of boarding houses, fraternity houses, and the like present urban problems. More people occupy a given space; more cars rather continuously pass by; more cars are parked; noise travels with crowds.”

[416 U.S. 9] “A quiet place where yards are wide, people few, and motor vehicles restricted are legitimate guidelines in a land-use project addressed to family needs. This goal is a permissible one within Berman v. Parker, supra. The police power is not confined to elimination of filth, stench, and unhealthy places. It is ample to lay out zones where family values, youth values, and the blessings of quiet seclusion and clean air make the area a sanctuary for people.”

[416 U.S. 9] “The suggestion that the case may be moot need not detain us. A zoning ordinance usually has an impact on the value of the property which it regulates. . . . Here we are a step closer to the impact of the ordinance on the value of the lessor's property. He has not only lost six tenants and acquired only two in their place; it is obvious that the scale of rental values rides on what we decide today.”

[416 U.S. 9] “When Mr. Justice Holmes said for the Court in Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135, 155, ‘property rights may be cut down, and to that extent taken, with[416 U.S. 10]out pay,’ he stated the issue here. As is true in most zoning cases, the precise impact on value may, at the threshold of litigation over validity, not yet be known.”

[416 U.S. 10] “Reversed.”

Editorial note. The dissent, beginning at page 10, would not have reached the merits. In the dissenting view the departure of the named student tenants and the expiration of their lease deprived the tenant appellees of a live stake, and the lessor's claim of injury to rental value was too speculative on this record to sustain the Court's jurisdiction, so the appeal should have been dismissed rather than decided.

Editorial note. The dissent accepted that a village may regulate density, noise, traffic, and the physical characteristics of its housing stock, but objected that Belle Terre had chosen instead to regulate who may live together. In the dissenting view the ordinance's definition of family burdened freedom of association and the privacy of the household, since it permitted a large related household while forbidding three unrelated adults, and could not be sustained on the deferential standard applied to ordinary economic legislation.

Editorial note. The separate opinion urged that the village's legitimate objectives — limiting density, congestion, and noise — could be achieved by regulations addressed to those harms directly, without reference to the kinship of the occupants, and that on any standard requiring a closer fit the ordinance was unconstitutional.

Editorial note. This record is a research edition, not a substitute for the official reporter. It reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus and reproduces the Court's own text in extended verbatim passages arranged in the Court's own sequence of analysis, each bracketed with the official United States Reports page on which the passage appears. Passages set without quotation marks are Society prose; every quotation mark encloses the Court's or the Reporter's words.

Editorial note. The Court-authored sections are SELECTED EXCERPTS, not the complete opinion. Three limitations are declared. First, the numbered footnotes of all three opinions are not reproduced, including the Court's footnote quoting Mr. Justice Holmes in Louisville Gas Co. v. Coleman on the drawing of legislative lines. Second, the Court's recitation of the ordinance, of the citation issued to the lessor, and of the proceedings below at pages 2 through 7 is summarised rather than quoted at length. Third, both dissenting opinions are presented as Real Law Society editorial summaries rather than reproduced; they are not judicial text.

Editorial note. Obvious optical-recognition defects in the digitised bound volume have been silently corrected against the surrounding text; no substantive word has been altered inside a quotation. For the complete official text, including the dissents in full, consult the bound volume through the canonical source recorded with this authority.

Editorial note. Belle Terre is a small village on the north shore of Long Island. Its ordinance restricted land use to one-family dwellings and defined “family” as one or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit, or not more than two unrelated persons doing so; lodging houses, boarding houses, fraternity houses, and multiple dwellings were expressly excluded. The owners of a house in the village leased it to six unrelated students at a nearby state university and were served with a notice of violation. The owners and three tenants then sued to have the ordinance declared unconstitutional as a violation of equal protection and of the rights of association, travel, and privacy.

Editorial note. The District Court sustained the ordinance. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, one judge dissenting, 476 F. 2d 806. The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, first rejecting the suggestion that the departure of the named tenants had mooted the controversy because the ordinance continued to affect the value of the lessor's property.

Editorial note. The question was whether a one-family zoning ordinance may define family so as to exclude households of more than two unrelated persons. The Court held that it may. Such a measure is economic and social legislation, tested only for reasonableness and a rational relationship to a permissible state objective; it implicates no fundamental right and is not directed at transients; and the objectives of limiting congestion, traffic, noise, and density in a quiet residential village are permissible ends within the police power as described in Berman v. Parker.

Editorial note. Justice Douglas began from Euclid and from the line of cases sustaining comprehensive zoning, and then addressed each asserted constitutional interest in turn, concluding that the ordinance neither burdened travel or migration, nor imposed a procedural disparity, nor invaded any recognised zone of privacy. That conclusion set the standard of review: rationality, not heightened scrutiny.

Editorial note. On that standard the ordinance survived. The line between two and three unrelated occupants is a legislative line, and every legislative line leaves out cases that might have been included. The presence of unmarried pairs within the permitted definition refuted the charge of animus. Boarding and fraternity houses generate distinctly urban burdens — more occupants per unit, more traffic, more parked cars, more noise — and a village may lawfully seek instead the wide yards and quiet seclusion of a residential sanctuary, the police power reaching beyond filth and stench to the character of a community.

Editorial note. Belle Terre marks the outer reach of deference in modern land-use law and supplies the treatise's authority for the proposition that zoning may regulate the composition of households as well as the use of structures. It is the leading case on single-family definitions and on the constitutional treatment of unrelated occupants, and it is the decision against which Moore v. City of East Cleveland measures the limits of that deference three years later. Read together, the pair fixes the boundary: restrictions on unrelated persons receive rational-basis review, while restrictions selecting among relatives receive careful examination of the governmental interests advanced.

Editorial note. Distinguished and confined. Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977), held that Belle Terre does not govern an ordinance that selects which relatives may live together, because the Belle Terre ordinance “affected only unrelated individuals” and had been sustained precisely as promoting family needs and family values. Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255 (1980), cited Belle Terre among the decisions recognising the legitimacy of the governmental purposes served by residential land-use regulation.

Editorial note. Read with Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926), and Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26 (1954), on the scope of the police power in land use, and with Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977), which limits this decision.