Okay, here's a little quiz. Identify the person who said this: "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."
Well, any time someone starts out talking about "family values" and "youth values," one has to assume that it might be . . . Ronald Reagan, perhaps? The late Pat Robertson? Or perhaps a different occupant of the White House, George W. Bush? No, not at all. (That part about the "police power," by the way, has nothing to do with folks who wear badges and blue uniforms; it refers to a municipality's authority to adopt things like zoning laws and building codes.)
In fact, the passage is from one of the last opinions written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, a man who in his time was a lightning rod for those came to despise the court as both "liberal" and "activist." Douglas, for example, made history when he became the only federal judge ever to intervene in a war, briefly ordering a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam in 1973.
Along with Chief Justice Earl Warren, Douglas was the justice whom the right wing in the U.S. wanted most to impeach during the 1960s. Many unsuccessful attempts to do just that were led by the House Minority Leader, Gerald R. Ford. Ironically, when a series of strokes finally forced Douglas to resign from the Supreme Court in 1975, the choice of his successor fell on the then-President . . . Gerald R. Ford.
Bravo for life's little ironies.
The case that moved Douglas to use such "family values"-sounding rhetoric began in 1971 when a couple who owned a house in the Long Island, New York community of Belle Terre leased it to three students at nearby State University at Stony Brook. As one might expect, three random students who happened to share a house were not related to one another by blood or marriage.
But Belle Terre, a village of only 700 people living in 220 houses, was well-aware of the efforts of local college students to save on rent -- and of property owners trying to make money by doing just what the homeowners in this case did. So the village passed an ordinance forbidding more than two persons unrelated by blood or marriage to share the same dwelling.
The village tried to evict the three students but they fought back, eventually appealing all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided the case in 1974. Douglas ordinarily favored the individual over the government, especially at this late stage of his career -- and could have been expected to side with the students in a case involving something as intimate as personal association.
But this was not an ordinary contest between individual and government. Douglas was also an ardent outdoorsman, and these were the early years of the environmental movement. Land use regulation is one way governments can protect the environment -- including that elusive thing known as "the qualify of life." So, Douglas eloquently praised "family values" and "the blessings of quiet seclusion." And laws like Belle Terre's cut down on parking problems, too.
Predictably, the rule is different in California. Six years after the Belle Terre case, the California Supreme Court interpreted its own state constitution -- which specifically protects "the right to privacy" -- much differently from Douglas' reading of the federal constitution.
A "family" of 12 adults shared a 24-room, 10-bedroom, 6-bathroom house in the City of Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara (perhaps not coincidentally, also a college town) had a similar ordinance, although it was more generous than Belle Terre's, allowing up to 5 unrelated persons, "excluding servants," to share a single-family dwelling.
But the California Supreme Court, unlike Justice Douglas, thought it was no business of the city to decide what constituted a "family," and seized on the state constitution's explicit protection of "privacy" in its ruling. Thus, in California, people aren't required to be related by blood or marriage to share a rental.
So -- sometimes it's hard to predict what a court will do. First there was the liberal William O. Douglas siding with the government in a case involving individual privacy. And then there was perhaps the even more-liberal California Supreme Court (at least during the tenure of Chief Justice Rose Bird) making California a little friendlier for the real estate rental market.
Though perhaps overlooking "family values, youth values, and the blessings of quiet seclusion."
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.
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