Facts: The Village of Belle Terre is located on Long Island’s north shore and is inhabited by 700 people. Belle Terre restricts land use to one-family dwellings and Boraas became a colessee with five other college students. The Village of Belle Terre defines “family” as “One or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit, exclusive of household servants. A number of persons but not exceeding two (2) living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit though not related by blood, adoption, or marriage shall be deemed to constitute a family.”
Issue: Whether the zoning ordinance interferes with certain fundamental rights such as the right to travel, immigrate to and settle within a State, barring people who are uncongenial to the present residents…and that the ordinance is antithetical to the Nation’s experience, ideology and self-perception as an open, egalitarian, and integrated society.
Holding: The zoning ordinance is upheld.
Reasoning: Zoning ordinances are legitimate police powers of the state, there is no fundamental right involved, and therefore, the zoning ordinance only needs to be “reasonable, not arbitrary” and bear a “rational relationship to a permissible state objective.”
Dissent (Justice Marshall): The classification burdens the students’ fundamental rights of association and privacy guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Therefore, the ordinance should not just be subjected to a rational basis review. Also, the Village of Belle Terre is free to limit the density of occupancy but cannot limit the density only in homes occupied by unrelated persons – the Village is then regulating the way people choose to associate with each other within the privacy of their own homes.