## Facts

- The City of Hudson, Ohio adopted a Comprehensive Plan after a municipal merger, citing rapid population growth and goals including managing growth to match infrastructure capacity, avoiding new infrastructure costs, and preserving community character.
- To implement those goals, the City enacted Chapter 1207, a residential growth-management ordinance limiting the annual number of residential building permits and phasing residential development over time.
- The ordinance allocated permits through a scoring system tied to planning considerations such as phasing, infrastructure capacity, and plan objectives, and included exemptions for certain categories of development.
- Landowners and developers affected by the permit limits sued the City and officials, seeking to enjoin enforcement of Chapter 1207 on constitutional grounds, principally substantive due process and equal protection.
- After a two-day evidentiary hearing, the federal district court issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of Chapter 1207, finding plaintiffs likely to succeed on the merits.
- The City appealed the preliminary injunction to the Sixth Circuit on interlocutory review.

## Issues

1. Whether the developers showed a substantial likelihood of success on the merits that Chapter 1207 violated substantive due process by arbitrarily restricting development without a legitimate governmental purpose.
2. Whether the developers showed a substantial likelihood of success that Chapter 1207 violated equal protection by irrationally treating similarly situated developers or projects differently through its scoring and exemptions.
3. Whether the district court misapplied the preliminary-injunction standard by insufficiently deferring to municipal legislative judgments in land-use regulation.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit dissolved the district court’s preliminary injunction and remanded.
- The court held the developers failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claims.
- Applying deferential review to land-use regulation, the court concluded Chapter 1207 was rationally related to legitimate municipal objectives stated in the Comprehensive Plan.
- The court rejected the view that judicial disagreement with the ordinance’s design or effectiveness established a constitutional violation.
- A dissent would have affirmed the preliminary injunction based on a more skeptical view of the ordinance’s justification on the existing record.

## Legal Principles

- Zoning and growth-management measures that do not implicate a fundamental right or suspect classification are reviewed under rational-basis standards for substantive due process and equal protection.
- Municipal objectives such as managing the rate of residential growth, protecting infrastructure capacity, avoiding costly new infrastructure, preserving community character, and encouraging balanced development are legitimate governmental interests.
- At the preliminary-injunction stage, challengers must make a strong showing that the ordinance is arbitrary or irrational; demonstrating burdens on development or proposing better policy alternatives is insufficient.
- Courts should not substitute their policy judgments for those of local legislative bodies when a rational relationship to legitimate objectives is fairly debatable.

## Conclusion

The Sixth Circuit dissolved a preliminary injunction against Hudson’s residential slow-growth ordinance because the developers did not show they were likely to prove the ordinance irrational under substantive due process or equal protection, and the ordinance was plausibly tied to legitimate growth-management and infrastructure objectives.


Schenck v. City of Hudson, 114 F.3d 590 (6th Cir. 1997)