City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc.

Background

In 1980 a property owner bought a house to lease to a nonprofit that planned a supervised group home for 13 people with mental retardation. The city classified the home as a “hospital for the feeble-minded” and required an annual special use permit. After a public hearing the City Council denied the permit. The District Court found the denial was motivated by the fact that the residents would be mentally retarded but upheld the ordinance under a basic rational-basis test; the Court of Appeals treated retardation as a quasi-suspect class and struck down the ordinance.

Reasoning

The Supreme Court said mental retardation is a broad, diverse, and sometimes relevant characteristic, and federal and state laws already provide special programs and protections for people with such disabilities. For those reasons the Court refused to create a new quasi-suspect class requiring heightened review. The Court nonetheless examined this case’s facts and found the city’s stated reasons — neighborhood hostility or fear, the house’s proximity to a junior high school, floodplain concerns, legal responsibility worries, and the number of residents — were not rationally tied to denying this permit because many similar uses were allowed without permits.

Real world impact

The Court held the denial lacked a rational basis and invalidated the ordinance as applied to this proposed group home. That protects this planned home from exclusion tied to unsubstantiated neighborhood fears. Because the ruling is an as-applied decision, zoning rules might still be upheld in other circumstances when supported by legitimate, fact-based safety or planning reasons; the case was remanded for further proceedings.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Stevens concurred, urging flexible analysis over rigid tiers; Justice Marshall (joined by two others) would have applied heightened scrutiny and favored broader invalidation.