A Stitch in Haste

"Ours is by no means a tradition limited to respect for the bonds uniting the members of the nuclear family. The tradition of uncles, aunts, cousins, and especially grandparents sharing a household along with parents and children has roots equally venerable and equally deserving of constitutional recognition."
--Moore v. East Cleveland

Another activist legislature is flagrantly ignoring a clear Supreme Court precedent:

[A] zoning ordinance adopted this month by the city of Manassas [Virginia] redefines family, essentially restricting households to immediate relatives, even when the total is below the occupancy limit.

The rule, which has alarmed civil libertarians and housing activists, is among a series of attempts by municipalities across the nation to use zoning powers to deal with problems they associate with immigrants, often illegal, who have settled in suburbs, typically in shared housing to help with the rent or mortgage.
...
Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said the new rule is "constitutionally questionable" and pointed to a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a similar law defining family passed by the city of East Cleveland, Ohio.

The 1977 case is Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977). The facts were, as far as I can tell, identical to the Manassas ordinance: a city passed an ordinance, nominally to curb overcrowding, limiting the size of households. The ordinance exempted large families, however, and then promptly set about defining what "family" meant.

The Supreme Court struck down the East Cleveland law, holding that even if "curbing overcrowding" is a legitimate government interest, it was not legitimate enough to justify discrimination based on family status. The Court's dictate is unambiguous: Either limit how many people can live in the house or not. (That libertarians would reflexively say "not" is a whole other blogpost.) As Justice Brennan noted in his concurrence:

"[T]he zoning power is not a license for local communities to enact senseless and arbitrary restrictions which cut deeply into private areas of protected family life."

No libertarian could have said it any better.

But I guess legislative memories fade after almost 30 years. In the new insolence expressed toward precedent and the worship of unbridled majoritarianism (i.e., mob rule), binding precedent ceases to be binding and that which ignores "the will of the majority" is summarily ignored as invalid.

In any case, isn't it amazing how the activists who seek to "defend marriage" and "protect the traditional family" are often the same activists who will try to keep such traditional families out of their neighborhood when they get too big (or just happen to be immigrants or Hispanics or some form of "others")?

Hat tip to Hit & Run. Here's a Manassas blogger's take on the ordinance.