Notes
Supreme Court Ruling - No you cannot do with your property as you please
Zoning and the Supreme Court
Description:A common land-use regulation process in the United States which divides urban areas into different sectors or zones with different uses and regulations, and requirements.
Significance: Most contested zoning legal issues were handled by one of the fifty state court systems and received final judgment in the state supreme courts; however, a few significant land-use cases have found their way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The police power, which is the right of the government to regulate public health, safety, and welfare, is what gives zoning its legitimacy. State constitutions and statutes enable local governments to create their own zoning ordinances. Some states also created state zoning laws. The exact limits of the zoning power may seem fluid in time and place. The extent of the authority to zone is ultimately determined by the courts of the United States. Conservative courts tend to limit the zoning authorities, while liberal courts are prone to expand it.
Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. (1926) was one of the most significant legal decisions by the Supreme Court in the history of zoning. Chief Justice George Sutherland concluded that each community had the right and responsibility to determine its own character. Zoning was a valid use of police power as long as it did not disturb the orderly growth of the region or the nation. Justice Sutherland wrote, “But this village, though physically a suburb of Cleveland, is a separate municipality, with powers of its own and authority to govern itself…The will of its people determines, not that industrial development shall cease at its boundaries, but that such development shall proceed between fixed lines.”
The Court made it clear that a municipality may determine the nature of development within its boundaries and plan and regulate the use of land as the people within the community may consider it to be in the public interest. Justice Sutherland introduced the concept that a community must also relate its plans to the area outside its own boundaries. Thus, the Court sustained a village zoning ordinance that prevented Ambler Realty from building a commercial structure in a residential zone. This case first established the constitutionality of all parts of comprehensive zoning.
The courts continued to support the rights of municipalities to zone, and conventional “Euclidean zoning” became almost universal in both urban and suburban areas. The power to zone as well as to use other, more flexible land-use controls, has an ideological dimension because it conflicts with the ability of property owners to use their property as they see fit. Typically, zones have been devoted to commercial, industrial, and residential uses, with different density requirements and other regulations.