Facts
- Cambridge, Massachusetts adopted a comprehensive zoning ordinance dividing the city into residential, business, and unrestricted districts.
- Saul Nectow owned a 140,000-square-foot tract; the disputed parcel (“locus”) was about 29,000 square feet within that tract.
- The ordinance placed the locus in a residential district (R-3), limiting permitted uses largely to dwellings and specified institutional uses.
- The locus bordered or lay near areas zoned unrestricted, including industrial and commercial uses; adjacent properties included a major industrial owner and railroad-related uses.
- Nectow alleged the residential classification substantially impaired the locus’s usability and value, including disrupting a planned sale of much of the tract.
- The case was referred to a master who viewed the property and took evidence.
- The master found that no practical use could be made of the locus under the residential restrictions and that the residential classification would not promote public health, safety, or general welfare.
- The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court nevertheless upheld the ordinance as applied and dismissed Nectow’s suit seeking an order requiring action on his building application without regard to the residential restriction.
- Nectow sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming deprivation of property without due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Issues
- Whether applying the residential zoning classification to Nectow’s locus violated the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause because it lacked a substantial relation to public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.
- Whether the record showed the zoning decision was an arbitrary or irrational exercise of police power as applied to the locus.
Decision
- The Supreme Court reversed the Massachusetts judgment.
- The Court held the residential classification was unconstitutional as applied to the locus because it did not promote public health, safety, convenience, or general welfare and seriously damaged the owner.
- The Court accepted the confirmed factual findings that the locus had no practical use under the residential restriction and that the restriction was not necessary to achieve legitimate police-power ends.
- The Court concluded the case was not “fairly debatable” on the record; the restriction lacked a reasonable foundation and was arbitrary as applied.
Legal Principles
- Zoning restrictions, though generally permissible under the police power, cannot be imposed when they do not bear a substantial relation to public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.
- Judicial deference to zoning determinations has a constitutional limit: action may be set aside when it has no foundation in reason and is a merely arbitrary or irrational exercise of power.
- A comprehensive zoning scheme may be valid in general yet violate due process as applied to a particular parcel when uncontroverted facts show serious private harm without a corresponding public-welfare justification.
Conclusion
The Court held that applying a residential zoning classification to Nectow’s parcel violated substantive due process because the restriction caused serious injury and lacked any substantial relation to legitimate public health, safety, morals, or welfare objectives in the affected area.