Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1977

Moore v. City of East Cleveland

431 U.S. 494 | 97 S. Ct. 1932 | 52 L. Ed. 2d 531 | 1977 U.S. LEXIS 17

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that substantive due process protects the choice of close extended-family members to live together, and a city cannot criminalize that arrangement through an arbitrary, narrowly drawn definition of "family."

Background

Inez Moore lived in her East Cleveland home with her son, Dale Moore, Sr., and two grandsons, Dale, Jr., and John, Jr. The grandsons were first cousins, not brothers. John had come to live with Mrs. Moore after his mother died.

East Cleveland limited each dwelling unit to one "family," but defined family narrowly. The ordinance permitted some specified combinations of relatives while excluding others. Mrs. Moore was charged because John, Jr., lived in the household alongside his uncle and cousin. She was convicted of a criminal offense, sentenced to five days in jail, and fined $25.

Mrs. Moore challenged the ordinance as facially unconstitutional. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed her conviction, relying on Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, and the Ohio Supreme Court denied review. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction and reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Mrs. Moore's failure to seek a discretionary zoning variance barred her from raising the ordinance's constitutional invalidity as a defense to the criminal prosecution.

Holding

No. Her failure to request a variance did not foreclose her constitutional defense.

Reasoning

The Court rejected the Chief Justice's proposed exhaustion rule. Mrs. Moore was defending against a criminal prosecution by contending that the ordinance itself was facially invalid, a constitutional question the local zoning board lacked authority to decide.

No Ohio statute or ordinance required her to seek a variance before asserting a constitutional defense, and the Ohio courts had considered her claims on the merits. The Court distinguished cases in which a statute expressly or implicitly made administrative exhaustion a prerequisite to later defenses.

Issue #2

Whether East Cleveland's restrictive definition of "family" violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by barring Mrs. Moore from living with her grandson.

Holding

Yes. The ordinance unconstitutionally intruded upon protected family living arrangements and bore only a tenuous relationship to the city's asserted interests.

Reasoning

Village of Belle Terre did not control. That case upheld a zoning ordinance directed at unrelated persons while allowing all persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage to live together. East Cleveland's ordinance, by contrast, deliberately divided relatives into permitted and prohibited household combinations and thus regulated the family itself.

The Due Process Clause protects liberty in matters of marriage and family life. Although family relationships remain subject to some governmental regulation, a court must carefully examine both the importance of the government's asserted interests and the extent to which the challenged measure actually advances them when the government intrudes on family living choices.

East Cleveland identified legitimate objectives: preventing overcrowding, reducing traffic and parking congestion, and limiting burdens on schools. But its family classification served those objectives only marginally. It allowed households with many children or drivers while forbidding other, smaller or less burdensome groups of close relatives, including Mrs. Moore's household.

The protected constitutional conception of family is not confined to the nuclear family of parents and their dependent children. American history and tradition include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other close relatives sharing a home, often to provide child care, economic support, and stability after hardship or loss.

The Court acknowledged the need for restraint in substantive due process analysis, but concluded that history and tradition provide a limiting principle. Because the extended family has deep roots in the Nation's history and social practices, East Cleveland could not standardize adults and children into a narrow, city-approved family pattern without an adequate justification.

Concurrences

Justice Brennan

Reasoning

Justice Brennan joined the plurality but wrote separately to stress the ordinance's cultural and economic blindness. In his view, the ordinance's nuclear-family model reflected a suburban preference that government could not impose on families whose economic circumstances and traditions made extended households essential.

Extended-family households were especially significant for poor people, immigrants, and racial and ethnic minorities, including many Black families. Brennan did not suggest that East Cleveland acted with discriminatory purpose, but he emphasized that the ordinance deeply burdened a widespread and vital family form.

Brennan also rejected the suggestion that the variance procedure saved the ordinance. Mrs. Moore was not required to seek discretionary administrative relief before defending a criminal charge on constitutional grounds, and a variance would leave her family arrangement dependent on the uncontrolled discretion of local officials.

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens concurred in the judgment on a property-rights theory rather than principally on the plurality's family-liberty theory. He viewed the central question as whether the ordinance permissibly restricted a homeowner's traditional right to decide who may live in her home.

Under Euclid and Nectow, zoning is constitutional only when it is not clearly arbitrary and unreasonable and has a substantial relation to public health, safety, morals, or general welfare. Single-family zoning may regulate the type of structure, require a single housekeeping unit, and address transiency, but Stevens found no precedent or justification for excluding particular relatives from a homeowner's permanent household.

The city had not explained why two grandchildren could reside with their grandmother if they were brothers but not if they were cousins. Overcrowding and traffic could be addressed directly through occupancy, floor-space, or parking rules rather than through an irrational restriction on which relatives could live together. Stevens therefore concluded that the ordinance deprived the owner of property without due process and without just compensation.

Dissents

Chief Justice Burger

Reasoning

Chief Justice Burger would not have reached the constitutional merits because Mrs. Moore deliberately bypassed an available local variance procedure. The zoning board could grant relief from strict application of the ordinance when practical difficulties or unnecessary hardship existed, and her circumstances appeared well suited to that process.

In his view, exhaustion promotes efficient judicial administration, permits agencies to apply their expertise and develop a factual record, and may provide complete relief without constitutional litigation. A constitutional issue does not eliminate the need for exhaustion when local administrative action could resolve the dispute on nonconstitutional grounds.

Burger also invoked federalism and comity. Because state and local processes offered a simple and potentially adequate remedy without immediate irreparable injury, he believed federal courts should require use of that remedy before undertaking constitutional review.

Justice Stewart

Reasoning

Justice Stewart regarded Village of Belle Terre as largely dispositive. Although East Cleveland's definition of family was narrower than Belle Terre's, Stewart maintained that neither privacy nor associational freedom gave a person a constitutional right to share a residence permanently with whichever relatives she chose.

Constitutional protection for association traditionally serves expressive First Amendment interests, which were not involved here. And while prior cases protect important decisions involving marriage, procreation, contraception, and the upbringing of one's children, Stewart thought living with additional grandchildren was not comparable to interests implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.

Applying ordinary rational-basis review, Stewart found the ordinance rationally related to the city's authority to preserve single-family residential neighborhoods. Legislatures must draw lines, and the fact that another definition of family might be fairer or more effective did not make East Cleveland's choice unconstitutional. The variance process further showed an effort to accommodate difficult cases.

Stewart also rejected the equal protection challenge. Because the ordinance did not burden a fundamental right or classify on a suspect basis, he believed the Court should defer to a reasonable municipal judgment rather than rewrite the city's family definition. Justice Rehnquist joined this dissent.

Justice White

Reasoning

Justice White agreed that the Due Process Clause protects more than procedural interests and that Mrs. Moore's desire to live with her grandchildren implicated liberty. But he distinguished the existence of a liberty interest from the level of substantive protection the Constitution gives that particular interest.

White warned that substantive due process must be used cautiously because its content is largely supplied by judicial interpretation rather than constitutional text. In his view, heightened review should be reserved for especially weighty liberties, and the interest in living with more than one set of grandchildren did not rise to that level.

He would require only that the ordinance be duly enacted and not wholly without purpose or utility. East Cleveland could rationally limit household composition to preserve the character of single-family neighborhoods, even if its chosen line between permitted and prohibited relatives was imperfect.

For the same reason, White rejected the equal protection claim. No fundamental right or suspect classification was involved, and the ordinance could survive so long as a conceivable state of facts rationally justified its distinction among household arrangements.