Court Says Cities Can’t Bar Homes for Ex-Addicts

WASHINGTON —  In a victory for recovering alcoholics, former drug users and the mentally ill, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities may not use zoning laws to keep out group homes for persons who are considered disabled under federal law.

The federal Fair Housing Act, as amended in 1988, bars housing discrimination against persons with mental or physical disabilities, including recovering addicts.

On a 6-3 vote, the high court gave the law a liberal interpretation so as to invalidate local ordinances that bar five or more unrelated persons from living together in a neighborhood of single-family homes.

Monday’s ruling does not open the way for group homes that, for example, house college students or the homeless or “halfway houses” for convicted criminals. It also leaves local regulators with the power to set some upper limits on the size of group homes in residential neighborhoods.

However, the decision makes clear that local officials may not use a standard ordinance defining “single-family” homes as a means of excluding some unwanted neighbors, whether ex-drug addicts, the mentally disabled or persons with AIDS.

“The basic issue is that a house with a large nuclear family of eight persons is not different from a group home of eight unrelated persons. It doesn’t change the character of that house,” said Brian W. Blaesser, a Chicago attorney who filed a brief on behalf of the American Planning Assn. in favor of the group homes.

Critics questioned the court’s willingness to throw out traditional laws that protect neighborhoods.

“For 200 years, towns have had the power to zone for single-family residences. If you put in a large home with recovering addicts, it changes the character of the neighborhood,” said Anthony Caso, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento.

The case of City of Edmonds vs. U.S., 94-23, arose when a Seattle suburban community sought to keep out of its neighborhood of single-family homes a residence known as Oxford House, a group home that typically houses eight to 12 recovering addicts.

The city’s zoning law said single-family homes were restricted to family members “or a group of five or fewer [unrelated] persons.”

The legal dispute was complicated by what appeared to be a contradiction written into the law.

On the one hand, Congress made it unlawful “to discriminate in the sale or rental [of] a dwelling . . . because of [the person’s] handicap.” But it also said nothing in the statute invalidates “any reasonable local, state or federal restrictions regarding the maximum number of occupants.”

A federal judge in Seattle upheld the city’s zoning ordinance, citing it as an example of a restriction on the maximum number of unrelated persons in a home.

However, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed that ruling on the grounds that it would perpetuate discrimination against disabled persons who want to reside in group homes.

Speaking for the high court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the courts should give a “broad and . . . generous construction” to civil rights laws.

It is true, she said, that cities can continue to regulate the “maximum number of occupants” in a dwelling so that, for example, 20 persons cannot crowd into a two-bedroom home.

However, the law does not allow a city to exclude eight former addicts from living in a large house if eight family members would be permitted to live there, she said.

In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy faulted the majority for ignoring “the plain language of the statute” that allows “any reasonable” restriction on total occupancy.

Meanwhile, the court made it somewhat easier for prosecutors to fight claims that they discriminated based on race in selecting jurors.

Since 1986, the high court has barred lawyers from excluding potential jurors because of their race. At the same time, it has continued to give lawyers a free hand to exclude a fixed number of possible jurors based on a mere “hunch” they would be unfriendly to their case.

In a Missouri robbery case, a prosecutor said he excluded one black man because “he had long hair hanging down shoulder length, curly, unkempt hair . . . and a goatee-type beard.”

After observing the entire jury selection and listening to the prosecutor’s explanation, the trial judge concluded he had not engaged in racial discrimination. However, a federal appeals court in St. Louis disagreed and ordered a new trial for the defendant.

Reversing that decision in an unsigned 7-2 opinion, the court said the prosecutor had met his “burden of articulating a non-discriminatory reason.”