Village of Bella Terre v. Borass, 416 U.S. 1 (1974)

In Village of Belle Terre v. Borass, the United States Supreme Court upheld a village zoning ordinance targeting nontraditional residences consisting of more than two unrelated people. The lower courts reached contradictory results based on the challenge to the ordinance under the constitutional right to privacy. After applying the rational basis test, Justice  O. Douglas’s majority opinion found that the ordinance was rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Upholding the ordinance, he determined that it did not infringe upon any constitutionally protected fundamental right.
The village of Bella Terre lay on the north shore of Long Island, New York. At the time of the lawsuit before the Court, the village’s total land mass of less than one square mile held about 220 homes and 700 people. By ordinance, the village restricted land use “to one-family dwellings excluding lodging houses, boarding houses, fraternity houses, or multiple-dwelling houses.” The term “family” included “one or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit, exclusive of household servants. A number of persons but not exceeding two (2) living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit though not related by blood, adoption or marriage shall be deemed to constitute a family.”
The owners of the house, the Dickmans, leased the house to six college students at nearby State University at Stony Brook. None of the six was related to the other through blood, adoption, or marriage, as the ordinance required. Upon finding this out, the village served the Dickmans with an “‘Order to Remedy Violations’ of the Ordinance.” As a result, the Dickmans and three of their six tenants brought an action under 42 U.S.C. 61983 demanding an immediate injunction and judgment to declare the village ordinance unconstitutional.
Upon hearing the challenge, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York upheld the ordinance as constitutional (367 F. Supp. 136), but the Court of Appeals, Second Circuit (476 F.2d 806), reversed that decision. The village appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which heard the case in 1971 and rendered its decision reversing the Court of Appeals.
Justice Douglas’s majority opinion began by examining several recent zoning ordinance cases that had come under scrutiny before the Supreme Court. Because of the importance of remaining consistent with its earlier decision, the Court attempted to analogize the similarities or explain the differences of earlier cases in line with this one. Given that this ordinance was not identical in its restrictions to any other ordinance previously before the Supreme Court, Justice Douglas had to engage in a fresh analysis of the constitutional challenges to the Village of Bella Terre’s housing ordinance.
The majority opinion began by addressing the challenges to the ordinance. Justice Douglas identified the following challenges made against the constitutionality of the ordinance: 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; and that the ordinance is antithetical to the nation’s experience, ideology, and self-perception as an open, egalitarian, and integrated society.
Upon examining each of these challenges, Justice Douglas found that none applied to the ordinance. Citing earlier cases decided by the Supreme Court, he found that the ordinance was not aimed at transients and that it did not target a “fundamental” right guaranteed by the Constitution, such as voting, free association, access to the courts, “or any rights of privacy.”
The majority’s most powerful argument focused on the role of the courts in seeking to invalidate laws enacted by legislative bodies. The Court accepted that the “line drawn” against more than two unrelated people living in a house together might seem arbitrary or random. The Court entertained the question of why not three or four or more people. However, the Court responded that “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.” Thus, the Supreme Court was reluctant to second-guess a legislature in making a judgment call. Although the line drawn seemed arbitrary, the Supreme Court decided that every line had to be drawn somewhere.
Finally, the Court ruled that the ordinance was rationally related to a legitimate government interest. This is the hallmark formulation of the so-called rational basis test. It is the easiest form of constitutional scrutiny for a government regulation to meet, and in this case the Supreme Court upheld the zoning ordinance under this very permissive standard. The majority declared, “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.” Because the Supreme Court did not find that the village’s zoning ordinance infringed upon the right of privacy, the right of freedom of association, or any other constitutionally protected right, the ordinance survived the Court’s scrutiny.