## Facts

- A nonprofit developer planned to build Pleasant Meadows, a multifamily low-income housing complex, on land zoned for apartments in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
- The city planning commission unanimously approved the developer’s site plan after the developer agreed to certain conditions, and forwarded it to the city council for final authorization.
- During the approval process, residents publicly opposed the project, including statements associating the development with crime, drug activity, families with children, and a neighborhood identified as the city’s only African-American neighborhood.
- The city council passed an ordinance authorizing the site plan.
- Citizens invoked the city charter’s referendum procedure by filing a petition to repeal the ordinance or submit it to a popular vote; under the charter, the petition stayed implementation pending the election.
- During the stay and related state-court proceedings, city officials denied building permits; voters approved the referendum, repealing the ordinance.
- The Ohio Supreme Court later held the referendum unconstitutional under state law; the city then issued permits and construction began.
- While state litigation was pending, the developer and others sued the city and officials in federal court, seeking injunctive, declaratory, and monetary relief for delay based on equal protection, substantive due process, and the Fair Housing Act (FHA).
- After the referendum was invalidated and the federal case effectively became a damages action for delay, the district court granted summary judgment to the city; the Sixth Circuit reversed on all claims.

## Issues

1. Whether the developer produced sufficient evidence that the city acted with racially discriminatory intent, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, by processing and honoring a citizen referendum petition.
2. Whether the city’s conduct in following the charter’s referendum mechanism and resulting stay of the ordinance was so arbitrary or irrational as to violate substantive due process.
3. Whether the FHA disparate-impact claim based on race and family status could proceed given the state-court invalidation of the referendum and the resulting posture of the case.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit on equal protection, holding the developer’s claim could not survive summary judgment.
- The Court reversed the Sixth Circuit on substantive due process, holding the developer failed to show a constitutional violation.
- The Court vacated and remanded the Sixth Circuit’s FHA ruling for further consideration in light of a subsequently raised issue tied to the Ohio Supreme Court’s invalidation of the referendum.

## Legal Principles

- An Equal Protection Clause violation requires proof of racially discriminatory intent or purpose by government decisionmakers.
- Statements by private citizens during a citizen-driven petition campaign, without more, do not constitute state action attributable to the government.
- A municipality’s compliance with a facially neutral, presumptively valid referendum process set out in its charter does not, by itself, support an inference of discriminatory intent.
- Substantive due process in land-use contexts requires more than delay or adverse effects resulting from ordinary administrative and judicial processes; the challenged conduct must be constitutionally arbitrary or irrational.
- When an intervening state-court ruling alters the practical operation of the challenged measure and the nature of the alleged injury, appellate treatment of related statutory claims (including FHA theories) may require reconsideration on remand.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the city’s administration of a facially neutral referendum process—despite racially charged public opposition—did not establish discriminatory intent or arbitrary government action, and it sent the FHA issues back for reconsideration given the later state-court invalidation of the referendum.


City of Cuyahoga Falls v. Buckeye Cmty. Hope Found., 538 U.S. 188 (2003)