The world is filled with legendary antagonists. Cats and dogs come to mind. Yankees and Red Sox, Greeks and Trojans, farmers and ranchers — the list runs on. Now pending in the Supreme Court is a case involving foes as familiar as the players in the first act of ''La Boheme,'' i.e., property owners and college students. Shall we take sides?
The case at hand comes from Ames, Iowa, home of Iowa State University and its 26,000 students. Seven years ago the city adopted a zoning ordinance. Its key provision defined "single family dwellings" as dwelling units designed for and occupied exclusively by one "family." The law defined "family" in familiar terms of blood, marriage and adoption. Then it went on to say that for purposes of occupancy, a "family" also means "no more than three unrelated people."
To make its purpose even more self-evident, the ordinance pointedly added a definition: "The term 'family' does not include any group of individuals whose association is temporary or seasonal in nature." Translation: Ames will not allow no Animal Houses in here.
The city's policy did not attract universal support. The Ames Rental Property Association went to court with a challenge based primarily upon the due-process clauses of both the Iowa state and the U.S. constitutions. Unimpressed, an Iowa trial court granted the city's motion for summary judgment. Five months ago four members of the Supreme Court of Iowa affirmed; three justices dissented. Now the association's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court awaits a decision in Washington.
Will the high court hear the case? Maybe yes, more probably no.
Like the pending case from Ames, Iowa, the Belle Terre case from Long Island involved an ordinance adopted by townspeople whose bucolic tranquility had been ravished by the rites of resident undergraduates. Here the problem arose from the town's proximity to the New York State University at Stony Brook. The burghers of Belle Terre (220 homes, 700 people) sought to limit occupancy of the town's relatively old and relatively palatial homes.
In December 1971 one such residence had been rented to Michael Truman and Bruce Boraas. They were living there with Anne Parish and three other students — six in all. Eventually the owners and the three plaintiff students joined in a suit challenging the ordinance as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Speaking for the court, Justice William O. Douglas stoutly upheld the law.
"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. A quiet place where yards are wide, people few, and motor vehicles restricted are legitimate guidelines in a land-use addressed to family needs. This goal is a permissible one ..."
In the case at hand, four members of the Iowa Supreme Court agreed that Ames' zoning ordinance "is rationally related to the government's interest in providing quiet neighborhoods." Three justices dissented. They concluded that the ordinance "regulates where no regulation is needed and fails to regulate where regulation is needed." Thus the law is both overinclusive and underinclusive.
It is irrational, said the dissenters, to relate a peaceful neighborhood with a neighborhood populated solely by families, or by three or fewer unrelated persons. As another court has said, 20 male cousins could live together, with their motorcycles parked outside, while more than three unrelated ministers would be barred. Further, "it is irrational to suppose this ordinance promotes a quiet and peaceful neighborhood. It does not distinguish between a raucous family that plays loud music and has large parties, and a house of four quiet homebodies whose only knowledge of wild parties comes from watching television ..."
The city of Ames has filed a brief in opposition in which it urges the court simply to deny an appeal and thus reaffirm the Belle Terre opinion of 1974: "Although society may be different in some respects today than when Belle Terre was decided, the reasons and goals behind the ordinances in Belle Terre and Ames remain." We will know in a few weeks if the Supremes will hear the case.
(Letters to Mr. Kilpatrick should be sent by email to kilpatjj@aol.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
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