Professor Dylan Malagrinò | Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development/Professor of Law 

The second volume of the Integrating Doctrine & Diversity series, Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion & Equity Beyond the First Year (Carolina Academic Press 2024) is now available.  Professor Dylan Malagrinò contributed to the chapter on Administrative Law, with an article titled, Discriminatory Zoning: City of Edmonds v. Oxford House.  A Case Study on Dismantling City-Imposed Family Composition Mandates.

This article introduces zoning laws that try to define “family” and that try to restrict occupancy.  In City of Edmonds, the U.S. Supreme Court makes a clear distinction between rules designed to be exclusionary by focusing on the zoned nature of a neighborhood (single-family homes, for example) and rules that limit total occupancy for public health and safety reasons.  The point of this article is to describe this distinction, while also appreciating the limits of local zoning efforts by federal laws such as the Fair Housing Act, to prevent zoning from resulting in discrimination derived from city-imposed family composition mandates.  As many as thirty percent of American families have a family member with a disability that affects accessibility.  Making communities accessible requires attention to design, planning, and zoning.  We not only need to remove physical barriers to access, but we also need to address the coordination of permissible uses, including the location of such uses as group homes, senior housing, drug rehabilitation centers, and medical marijuana dispensaries, among others.  These uses often raise conflicts with current property owners, who also will be upset with the politicians if they were to sanction these uses in otherwise restricted districts.  Consequently, discussions of accessibility must go beyond design matters and focus on the coordination of uses within a community.