THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160356
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
The Supreme Court made it harder Monday for communities to exclude group homes for recovering addicts and other disabled people from single-family neighborhoods.
A federal law banning housing discrimination against the disabled does not allow an exception for single-family zoning ordinances that bar large groups of unrelated people from living together, the court ruled.
The 6-3 decision focused on an effort by officials in Edmonds, Wash., to force a home for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts to move out of a single-family neighborhood.
``If the decision had gone the other way, it could have led to the exclusion of group homes for the disabled from communities across the nation,'' said William F. Sheehan, lawyer for the group home, Oxford House.
Monday's ruling does not apply to group homes of non-disabled people such as college students or convicted criminals, he said.
Gregory McCracken of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which supported the city's appeal, expressed disappointment. Decisions on where group homes may be located ``should be exclusively within local government decision-making,'' he said. ``For Congress to interfere is particularly irksome.''
The group-home decision was based on the federal Fair Housing Act, which bars bias against the physically and mentally disabled, including recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. The law creates an exception for local limits on the maximum number of people allowed to occupy a home.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court that the anti-bias law does not exempt local limits ``of the family-defining kind . . . provisions designed to foster the family character of a neighborhood.''
``These (Edmonds) provisions do not cap the number of people who may live in a dwelling,'' Ginsburg wrote. ``In plain terms, they direct that dwellings be used only to house families.''
The ruling still lets communities try to keep group homes for the disabled out of some areas. But they would have to show that the location could not reasonably accommodate the group home.
Ginsburg's opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.
Writing in dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the Fair Housing Act allows any reasonable local limit on the number of people who may live in a building. His opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy. ILLUSTRATION: SUPREME COURT RULINGS
In other decisions Monday, the court:
Reinstated a Missouri man's robbery conviction, overturning a
ruling, 7-2, that two potential trial jurors wrongly were excluded
because they are black.
Ruled 6-3 in a Michigan case that people cannot be convicted
under a federal false-statements law for lying in documents filed in
federal courts. The ruling overturned a 1955 decision that people
could be convicted for lying to any branch of the federal
government.
Said a Pennsylvania woman waited too long before suing over a
1984 traffic accident in Ohio. The unanimous ruling said a 1988 high
court decision must be applied retroactively to cases pending at the
time.
KEYWORDS: SUPREME COURT RULINGS by CNB