## Facts

- The George Washington University (GW) is a private university located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
- Under District zoning rules governing universities operating near residential areas, GW submitted a campus plan covering the years 2000–2010 to the District of Columbia Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA).
- The BZA approved the plan but imposed conditions directed at limiting student spillover into the surrounding residential neighborhood.
- Among the conditions, the BZA required GW to house 70% of its 8,000 undergraduate students on campus (or in university-controlled housing) and required that any undergraduates enrolled above 8,000 be housed either on campus or outside the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.
- The BZA also tied compliance with the housing requirement to other aspects of the university’s development rights, using noncompliance as a basis for restrictions.
- GW challenged the BZA’s order in federal court. In earlier proceedings, the district court ruled in GW’s favor on substantive due process, but on appeal the D.C. Circuit held the BZA’s order was not wholly unconstitutional and rejected the substantive-due-process theory.
- The D.C. Circuit remanded for resolution of GW’s remaining constitutional claims, including claims framed as an unconstitutional taking/unconstitutional conditions, denial of equal protection, and alleged violations of students’ equal protection and due process rights.
- On remand, the District and other defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that the D.C. Circuit’s decision and the summary-judgment record required judgment as a matter of law.
- The record reflected that the conditions did not cause a substantial loss in value to GW’s property and that GW had long been aware its Foggy Bottom property was subject to District zoning ordinances.

## Issues

1. Whether the BZA’s campus-plan conditions—especially the undergraduate housing requirements and related limits—effected a compensable taking or imposed unconstitutional conditions in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
2. Whether the BZA’s conditions denied GW equal protection by treating it differently from similarly situated institutions without a rational basis.
3. Whether the conditions violated GW students’ equal protection and due process rights by restricting housing choices and linking enrollment and housing location to zoning compliance.
4. Whether, in light of the D.C. Circuit’s prior ruling and the absence of a material factual dispute, defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the remaining claims.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment on all remaining claims addressed in the motion.
- The court entered judgment for defendants on GW’s unconstitutional taking/unconstitutional-conditions claims (Claims I and II), concluding the challenged zoning conditions did not amount to a taking on the summary-judgment record and could not succeed given the controlling appellate decision.
- The court entered judgment for defendants on GW’s equal protection claim (Claim VI), holding the challenged conditions satisfied rational-basis review.
- The court entered judgment for defendants on the students’ equal protection and due process claim (Claim VIII), holding that no fundamental right or suspect classification was implicated and that the conditions were rationally related to legitimate zoning objectives.
- The court treated the D.C. Circuit’s earlier decision as binding guidance that effectively resolved the constitutional character of the BZA’s objectives and the rational relationship between the conditions and the District’s land-use goals.

## Legal Principles

- Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
- A regulatory-takings claim generally requires a showing such as a physical occupation, a denial of all economically viable use, or (under multifactor balancing) a sufficiently severe economic impact and interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations; the absence of a substantial loss in value weighs against a taking claim.
- A property owner’s longstanding notice that land is regulated by zoning ordinances bears on reasonable expectations and helps defeat claims that later-applied land-use limits are constitutionally confiscatory.
- Equal protection challenges to land-use regulation that do not involve a suspect class or fundamental right are reviewed under rational-basis scrutiny; the classification stands if it is rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose.
- Claims by students asserting equal protection or due process violations based on housing-location limits likewise trigger rational-basis review absent a fundamental right to live in a particular neighborhood; zoning measures aimed at preserving residential character can satisfy that standard.
- On remand, a district court must apply the appellate court’s mandate and reasoning; parties cannot repackage a theory already rejected on appeal into a different constitutional label when the controlling reasoning defeats the claim on the same record.

## Conclusion

On remand after the D.C. Circuit upheld the general constitutional validity of the BZA’s campus-plan approach, the district court granted summary judgment for the District and related defendants, holding that the housing and related campus-plan conditions did not amount to an unconstitutional taking or unlawful condition and did not violate equal protection or students’ equal protection/due process rights because the measures were rational land-use controls aimed at limiting neighborhood impacts.


George Washington University v. District of Columbia, 391 F. Supp. 2d 109 (2005)