Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2003

City of Cuyahoga Falls v. Buckeye Community Hope Foundation

538 U.S. 188 | 123 S. Ct. 1389 | 155 L. Ed. 2d 349 | 2003 U.S. LEXIS 2492 | 71 U.S.L.W. 4213 | 2003 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 2598 | 16 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 167

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a city’s neutral, mandatory administration of a referendum process does not become unconstitutional merely because some private supporters of the referendum may have acted from discriminatory motives.

Background

Buckeye Community Hope Foundation bought land in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, that was zoned for apartments and proposed Pleasant Meadows, a multifamily low-income housing development. After Buckeye accepted several conditions, the planning commission unanimously approved its site plan, and the city council approved it by ordinance. During the approval process, however, residents voiced opposition, including concerns associating the project and its prospective residents with crime, children, and the City’s only predominantly African-American neighborhood.

Citizens then invoked the City Charter’s referendum procedure, which allowed voters to approve or reject council ordinances and automatically stayed a challenged ordinance until voter approval. The city engineer accordingly denied Buckeye’s permit request while the referendum was pending. Voters later approved repeal of the site-plan ordinance, but the Ohio Supreme Court ultimately held that the referendum was invalid under state law because the site-plan approval was an administrative, rather than legislative, act. The City then issued permits, and construction began.

Buckeye brought a federal action for injunctive, declaratory, and monetary relief, alleging violations of equal protection, substantive due process, and the Fair Housing Act. After the state-law ruling made injunctive relief unnecessary, the case concerned damages for construction delay. The District Court granted summary judgment to the City and its officials. The Sixth Circuit reversed, holding that Buckeye had sufficient evidence for trial on equal protection and substantive due process, and that its Fair Housing Act disparate-impact claim could proceed. The Supreme Court reversed the constitutional rulings and vacated the Fair Housing Act ruling after Buckeye abandoned that claim.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the City violated the Equal Protection Clause by placing the site-plan ordinance on the ballot and withholding building permits while the referendum petition was pending.

Holding

No. Buckeye offered no evidence that the City’s own challenged actions were motivated by racial discrimination, and private citizens’ alleged discriminatory motives were not state action.

Reasoning

An equal protection claim requires proof of discriminatory purpose. The Sixth Circuit improperly treated the alleged racial motives of some referendum supporters as though they established discriminatory intent by the City. The decisions cited by the Sixth Circuit involved enacted laws or discretionary government action, whereas Buckeye challenged the petition process and the temporary permit denial, not an operative referendum measure.

The City placed the referendum on the ballot pursuant to a facially neutral, mandatory Charter procedure. In doing so, it did not enact the referendum or adopt the motives of voters who supported it. Buckeye produced no evidence that officials followed the Charter because of racial animus, or that they would have departed from the ordinary Charter process in a comparable case involving different prospective residents.

The city engineer’s refusal to issue permits was likewise ministerial rather than discretionary. Acting on the law director’s advice, the engineer followed the Charter’s express command that a challenged ordinance could not take effect unless approved by voters. Nothing in the record showed that this routine implementation of the Charter was itself racially motivated.

Private statements during a citizen petition drive do not, by themselves, amount to state action. Although statements by decisionmakers or referendum sponsors may be relevant when a plaintiff challenges an enacted measure, Buckeye did not show that officials controlled, coerced, or otherwise caused the voters’ conduct such that private sentiment could fairly be attributed to the City. The City’s compliance with its petition procedure also protected citizens’ First Amendment interests in petitioning and political debate.

Issue #2

Whether the City’s temporary refusal to issue building permits, or its use of a referendum process for an administrative site-plan decision, violated substantive due process.

Holding

No. The permit delay was a rational application of the Charter, and submitting the site-plan ordinance to a referendum was not per se arbitrary in the constitutional sense.

Reasoning

The Court did not need to decide whether Buckeye had a protected property interest in the permits. Even assuming such an interest, substantive due process is violated only by truly egregious and constitutionally arbitrary executive conduct. The law director’s instruction not to issue permits was eminently rational because the Charter made the challenged site-plan ordinance ineffective while the referendum was pending.

Buckeye’s broader argument—that it was inherently arbitrary to subject an administrative land-use decision to referendum—also failed. Federal constitutional law does not recognize the legislative-administrative distinction on which Buckeye relied. Under Eastlake, the people retain authority to govern local matters by referendum, whether those matters are characterized as legislative or administrative.

A referendum’s substantive result might in some circumstances be challenged as arbitrary and capricious. But Buckeye did not challenge an enacted referendum, because the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated this one before it took effect. The mere use of the City’s referendum procedure for the site-plan ordinance therefore did not itself establish a substantive due process violation.

Issue #3

Whether Buckeye’s Fair Housing Act disparate-impact claim could remain before the lower courts.

Holding

No. Because Buckeye abandoned the claim in the Supreme Court, the Court vacated the Sixth Circuit’s contrary ruling and directed dismissal of that portion of the complaint with prejudice.

Reasoning

The Sixth Circuit had held that Buckeye’s Fair Housing Act claim could proceed on a disparate-impact theory based on race and family status. Buckeye expressly abandoned that claim before the Supreme Court, so there was no live basis to preserve the Sixth Circuit’s holding. The Court therefore vacated that holding and remanded with instructions to dismiss the relevant claim with prejudice.

Concurrences

Justice Scalia

Reasoning

Justice Scalia joined the Court’s opinion but wrote to reject the premise that arbitrary governmental conduct alone would establish the substantive due process claim Buckeye asserted. In his view, substantive due process protects only fundamental liberty interests from government infringement absent a narrowly tailored, compelling justification. A delay in obtaining a building permit is not a fundamental liberty interest.

For alleged arbitrary deprivations of nonfundamental interests, Justice Scalia reasoned, plaintiffs ordinarily must rely on a more specific constitutional provision, such as the Equal Protection Clause. He invoked the principle that substantive due process should not be used when another constitutional provision directly governs the claim.

Justice Scalia also characterized Buckeye’s objection to decisionmaking by referendum as procedural rather than substantive. The City Charter validly prescribed the referendum process and the resulting delay in permit issuance, and conditioning the ability to build low-income housing on a referendum was not procedurally defective.