Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.

VILLAGE OF EUCLID ET AL. v. AMBLER REALTY COMPANY.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

No. 31. Argued January 27, 1926; reargued October 12, 1926 — Decided November 22, 1926.

Decree reversed (272 U.S. 397).

Opinion of the Court by Mr. Justice Sutherland. “Mr. Justice Van Devanter, Mr. Justice McReynolds and Mr. Justice Butler, dissent.” No separate dissenting opinion was filed.

The opinion of the Court occupies pages 379 through 397 of volume 272 of the United States Reports; the arguments of counsel occupy pages 367 through 378.

[272 U.S. 365] “1. A suit to enjoin the enforcement of a zoning ordinance with respect to the plaintiff's land, need not be preceded by any application on his part for a building permit, or for relief under the ordinance from the board which administers it, where the gravamen of the bill is that the ordinance of its own force operates unconstitutionally to reduce the value of the land and destroy its marketability, and the attack is not against specific provisions but against the ordinance in its entirety. P. 386.”

“2. While the meaning of constitutional guaranties never varies, the scope of their application must expand or contract to meet the new and different conditions which are constantly coming within the field of their operation. P. 386.”

[272 U.S. 366] “3. The question whether the power exists to forbid the erection of a building of a particular kind or for a particular use, like the question whether a particular thing is a nuisance, is to be determined by considering the building or the thing, not abstractly but in connection with the circumstances and the locality. P. 387.”

“4. If the validity of the legislative classification for zoning purposes be fairly debatable, the legislative judgment must be allowed to control. P. 388.”

“5. No serious difference of opinion exists in respect of the validity of laws and regulations fixing the height of buildings within reasonable limits, the character of materials and methods of construction, and the adjoining area which must be left open, in order to minimize the danger of fire or collapse, the evils of over-crowding, and the like, and excluding from residential sections offensive trades, industries, and structures likely to create nuisances. P. 388.”

“6. The same power may be extended to a general exclusion from residential districts of all industrial establishments, though some may not be dangerous or offensive; for the inclusion of a reasonable margin to insure effective enforcement will not put upon a law, otherwise valid, the stamp of invalidity. P. 388.”

“7. The power to relegate industrial establishments to localities separate from residential sections is not to be denied upon the ground that its exercise will divert a flow of industrial development from the course which it would follow and will thereby injure the complaining land-owner. P. 389.”

“8. The police power supports also, generally speaking, an ordinance forbidding the erection in designated residential districts, of business houses, retail stores and shops, and other like establishments, also of apartment houses in detached-house sections — since such ordinances, apart from special applications, can not be declared clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, and without substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare. P. 390.”

“9. Where an injunction is sought against such an ordinance, upon the broad ground that its mere existence and threatened enforcement, by materially and adversely affecting values and curtailing the opportunities of the market, constitute a present and irreparable injury, the court, finding the ordinance in its general scope and dominant features valid, will not scrutinize its provisions, sentence by sentence, to ascertain by a process of piecemeal dissection whether there may be, here and there, provisions of a minor character, or relating to matters of administration, or not shown” to contribute to the injury complained of, which, if attacked separately, might not withstand the test of constitutionality.

[272 U.S. 379] “The Village of Euclid is an Ohio municipal corporation. It adjoins and practically is a suburb of the City of Cleveland. Its estimated population is between 5,000 and 10,000, and its area from twelve to fourteen square miles, the greater part of which is farm lands or unimproved acreage.”

The Court then set out the ordinance of 1922 in detail — the six classes of use districts, the four classes of height districts, and the three classes of area districts — and described the appellee's sixty-eight acres lying partly in the U-2, U-3, and U-6 classes. It rejected the contention that the suit was premature, holding that no application for a permit was required where the attack was upon the ordinance in its entirety.

[272 U.S. 387] “Regulations, the wisdom, necessity and validity of which, as applied to existing conditions, are so apparent that they are now uniformly sustained, a century ago, or even half a century ago, probably would have been rejected as arbitrary and oppressive. Such regulations are sustained, under the complex conditions of our day, for reasons analogous to those which justify traffic regulations, which, before the advent of automobiles and rapid transit street railways, would have been condemned as fatally arbitrary and unreasonable. And in this there is no inconsistency, for while the meaning of constitutional guaranties never varies, the scope of their application must expand or contract to meet the new and different conditions which are constantly coming within the field of their operation.”

[272 U.S. 387] “The ordinance now under review, and all similar laws and regulations, must find their justification in some aspect of the police power, asserted for the public welfare. The line which in this field separates the legitimate from the illegitimate assumption of power is not capable of precise delimitation. It varies with circumstances and conditions. A regulatory zoning ordinance, which would be clearly valid as applied to the great cities, might be clearly invalid as applied to rural communities. In solving doubts, the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, which lies at the foundation of so much of the common law of nuisances, ordinarily will furnish a fairly helpful clew.”

[272 U.S. 388] “Thus the question whether the power exists to forbid the erection of a building of a particular kind or for a particular use, like the question whether a particular thing is a nuisance, is to be determined, not by an abstract consideration of the building or of the thing considered apart, but by considering it in connection with the circumstances and the locality. Sturgis v. Bridgman, L. R. 11 Ch. 852, 865. A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place, — like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard. If the validity of the legislative classification for zoning purposes be fairly debatable, the legislative judgment must be allowed to control. Radice v. New York, 264 U. S. 292, 294.”

[272 U.S. 388] “Here, however, the exclusion is in general terms of all industrial establishments, and it may thereby happen that not only offensive or dangerous industries will be excluded, but those which are neither offensive nor dangerous will share the same fate. But this is no more than happens in respect of many practice-forbidding laws which this Court has upheld although drawn in general terms so as to include individual cases that may turn out to be innocuous in themselves. . . . The inclusion of a reasonable margin to insure effective enforcement, will not put upon a law, otherwise [272 U.S. 389] valid, the stamp of invalidity.”

[272 U.S. 389] “But the village, though physically a suburb of Cleveland, is politically a separate municipality, with powers of its own and authority to govern itself as it sees fit within the limits of the organic law of its creation and the State and Federal Constitutions. Its governing authorities, presumably representing a majority of its inhabitants and voicing their will, have determined, not that industrial development shall cease at its boundaries, but that the course of such development shall proceed within definitely fixed lines.”

[272 U.S. 390] “We find no difficulty in sustaining restrictions of the kind thus far reviewed. The serious question in the case arises over the provisions of the ordinance excluding from residential districts, apartment houses, business houses, retail stores and shops, and other like establishments. This question involves the validity of what is really the crux of the more recent zoning legislation, namely, the creation and maintenance of residential districts, from which business and trade of every sort, including hotels and apartment houses, are excluded. Upon that question this Court has not thus far spoken.”

[272 U.S. 394] “The matter of zoning has received much attention at the hands of commissions and experts, and the results of their investigations have been set forth in comprehensive reports. These reports, which bear every evidence of painstaking consideration, concur in the view that the segregation of residential, business, and industrial buildings will make it easier to provide fire apparatus suitable for the character and intensity of the development in each section; that it will increase the safety and security of home life; greatly tend to prevent street accidents; especially to children, by reducing the traffic and resulting confusion in residential sections; decrease noise and other conditions which produce or intensify nervous disorders; preserve a more favorable environment in which to rear children, etc.”

[272 U.S. 394] “With particular reference to apartment houses, it is pointed out that the development of detached house sections is greatly retarded by the coming of apartment houses, which has sometimes resulted in destroying the entire section for private house purposes; that in such sections very often the apartment house is a mere parasite, constructed in order to take advantage of the open spaces and attractive surroundings created by the residential character of the district. . . . [272 U.S. 395] Under these circumstances, apartment houses, which in a different environment would be not only entirely unobjectionable but highly desirable, come very near to being nuisances.”

[272 U.S. 395] “If these reasons, thus summarized, do not demonstrate the wisdom or sound policy in all respects of those restrictions which we have indicated as pertinent to the inquiry, at least, the reasons are sufficiently cogent to preclude us from saying, as it must be said before the ordinance can be declared unconstitutional, that such provisions are clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.”

[272 U.S. 395] “It is true that when, if ever, the provisions set forth in the ordinance in tedious and minute detail, come to be concretely applied to particular premises, including those of the appellee, or to particular conditions, or to be considered in connection with specific complaints, some of them, or even many of them, may be found to be clearly arbitrary and unreasonable. But where the equitable remedy of injunction is sought, as it is here, not upon the ground of a present infringement or denial of a specific right . . . the court will not scrutinize its provisions, sentence by sentence, to ascertain by a process of piecemeal dissection whether there may be, here and there, provisions of a minor character . . . which, if attacked separately, might not withstand the test of constitutionality.”

[272 U.S. 397] “Under these circumstances, therefore, it is enough for us to determine, as we do, that the ordinance in its general scope and dominant features, so far as its provisions are here involved, is a valid exercise of authority, leaving other provisions to be dealt with as cases arise directly involving them.”

[272 U.S. 397] “And this is in accordance with the traditional policy of this Court. In the realm of constitutional law, especially, this Court has perceived the embarrassment which is likely to result from an attempt to formulate rules or decide questions beyond the necessities of the immediate issue. It has preferred to follow the method of a gradual approach to the general by a systematically guarded application and extension of constitutional principles to particular cases as they arise, rather than by out of hand attempts to establish general rules to which future cases must be fitted.”

[272 U.S. 397] “Decree reversed.”

Editorial note. This edition reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus at 272 U.S. 365–366 and extended verbatim passages of the opinion of the Court from 272 U.S. 379–397, each marked with the official page on which it begins.

Editorial limitations, declared under Authority Library § 09.4: (1) the reproduction is selective — the arguments of counsel at 272 U.S. 367–378, the Court's detailed recital of the ordinance at 379–386, and its survey of the state decisions at 390–393 are summarised in Society prose outside quotation marks rather than quoted; (2) the ninth paragraph of the syllabus is completed from page 366 of the bound volume, where the sentence runs past the page break, and the concluding words stand outside quotation marks; (3) three Justices are recorded in the bound volume as dissenting without opinion, so no separate opinion exists to reproduce; and (4) obvious scanning defects in the digitised volume have been corrected against the surrounding text.

Editorial note. Metadata verified against the bound volume: the docket number (No. 31), the two argument dates (argued January 27, 1926; reargued October 12, 1926), and the bare dissent notation of Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Butler were absent from the prior record and are now recorded.

Editorial note. Ambler Realty owned sixty-eight acres in the Village of Euclid held for industrial development. The village's 1922 ordinance placed portions of the tract in residential and restricted classes, excluding industry and apartment houses and limiting height and lot area. The owner sued in equity, alleging the classification destroyed a substantial part of the tract's market value and deprived it of property without due process.

Editorial note. The District Court for the Northern District of Ohio enjoined enforcement of the ordinance as unconstitutional. On direct appeal the Supreme Court, after hearing argument twice, reversed the decree without reaching any as-applied question.

Editorial note. Comprehensive zoning by use, height, and area districts is within the municipal police power and is not facially invalid under the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. An ordinance of that character is presumed valid, and the challenger must show that its provisions are clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, bearing no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.

Editorial note. Justice Sutherland grounded zoning in the law of nuisance, observing that the character of a locality determines what uses are offensive — a nuisance may be merely the right thing in the wrong place. Legislative judgment about the segregation of uses is entitled to the same deference accorded other police-power classifications; courts do not substitute their own view of desirable planning. Because the challenge was directed at the ordinance in gross rather than at a concrete application, diminution in the value of the tract did not establish invalidity.

Editorial note. Euclid legitimated the district-based zoning ordinance and supplied the presumption of validity under which land-use regulation has been administered ever since. It also fixed the mode of attack: facial challenges rarely succeed, and litigants must instead show that the ordinance as applied to a particular parcel bears no substantial relation to a legitimate public end.

Editorial note. Nectow v. City of Cambridge, 277 U.S. 183 (1928), sustained an as-applied challenge on the standard Euclid announced. Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 (1974), applied Euclidean deference to household-composition restrictions, while Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977), and the Fair Housing Act supply the civil-rights limits that the police power does not itself impose.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (due process; equal protection) and with the regulatory-takings line beginning at Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922).