Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 430 U.S. 494 (1977)
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Description
Even though neither the word parent nor family can be found in the U.S. Constitution, the right of family members to live together is a jealously protected constitutional right developed through a long series of Supreme Court cases. In 1977 Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, joined that list. Inez Moore challenged the constitutionality of an East Cleveland zoning ordinance that restricted the right of people to live together in the same household to family relatives within a certain degree of relationship. Moore had been raising two grandchildren who were the offspring of two of her daughters. The ordinance would have allowed her to raise as many grandchildren as she wished, provided they were siblings of each other. But these grandchildren were cousins and were one degree of separation beyond what the local ordinance permitted. Constitutional challenges to zoning ordinances had been difficult to win ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 1926 in Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, that land-use regulations are to be reviewed under the most favorable standard used by courts to uphold challenged laws. Federal courts are loath to second-guess local communities in their efforts to regulate property, believing that local government is in the best position to decide how communities should look. Local zoning ordinances are common throughout the country and usually will be upheld, so long as courts can discern that the ordinance furthers some legitimate public interest. Thus, only a few years before the Court decided Moore, an ordinance that forbid more than three unrelated persons from residing together in the same single-family house easily survived a constitutional challenge brought by college students who wished to live together (Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 [1974]).
Source Publication
Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court of the United States
Source Editors/Authors
David S. Tanenhaus
Publication Date
2008
Volume Number
3: J—O
Recommended Citation
Guggenheim, Martin, "Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 430 U.S. 494 (1977)" (2008). Faculty Chapters. 1264.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1264
