Opinion ID: 697702
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 Claims

Text: 25 Pro-Eco next alleges that it has a cause of action against the Board under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. According to Pro-Eco, the Board, in enacting the invalid moratorium, deprived Pro-Eco of its rights to procedural due process, substantive due process, and equal protection, all guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
26 The 14th Amendment protects persons from state governmental deprivations of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. U.S. CONST.AMEND. 14. Pro-Eco asserts that the Board deprived it of a property interest and argues as if it had a property interest in the land at the time the Board acted. As our discussion above noted, Pro-Eco had no property interest in the land or in its option to buy the land for purposes of the Takings Clause. But, property as contemplated by the Takings Clause and property as contemplated by the Due Process Clause cannot be coterminous. If they were, we would end up with former welfare recipients whose benefits the state had otherwise properly ended claiming that the state must pay them the fair market value of their benefits. See Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 255, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 1013, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970) (holding that welfare benefits may not be taken away without giving the recipient notice and an opportunity to be heard); Schroeder v. City of Chicago, 927 F.2d 957, 961 (7th Cir.1991) (concluding that the Takings Clause does not apply to allegedly improper removal of welfare benefits). The Due Process Clause, then, recognizes a wider range of interests as property than does the Takings Clause. However, even assuming that Pro-Eco's option could be construed as property under the Due Process Clause and that the Board's action somehow deprived Pro-Eco of the value of its option, Pro-Eco cannot show that it was deprived of due process. 27 The Board is an elected body that acted legislatively in enacting the moratorium. It did not deny Pro-Eco a permit or variance; rather, it enacted a generally applicable ordinance. Governing bodies may enact generally applicable laws, that is, they may legislate, without affording affected parties so much as notice and an opportunity to be heard. Bi-Metallic Inv. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization, 239 U.S. 441, 445, 36 S.Ct. 141, 142, 60 L.Ed. 372 (1915). The fact that a statute (or statute-like regulation) applies across the board provides a substitute safeguard. Philly's v. Byrne, 732 F.2d 87, 92 (7th Cir.1984) (citing United States v. Florida East Coast Ry., 410 U.S. 224, 245-46, 93 S.Ct. 810, 821, 35 L.Ed.2d 223 (1973)). It is likely, as Pro-Eco asserts, that the Board acted specifically because it saw Pro-Eco's landfill coming, and we have noted that more [process] may be required ... where the legislation affects only a tiny class of people--maybe a class with only one member. Philly's, 732 F.2d at 93. The Supreme Court, however, has held that even the functional equivalent of a petition for a variance may be put to a referendum. City of Eastlake v. Forest City Enters., Inc., 426 U.S. 668, 679, 96 S.Ct. 2358, 2365, 49 L.Ed.2d 132 (1976). We do not believe that generally applicable prophylactic legislation provoked by the fear of one particular actor converts an elected body's legislative act into a quasi-judicial or administrative act that would require more process. 9 See Anaconda Co. v. Ruckelshaus, 482 F.2d 1301, 1306 (10th Cir.1973) (finding no adjudication, and therefore no need for an individual hearing, where a general rule applied to a class that included only one member but remained open to possible future members and there was such a community of interest in the regulation as to make rulemaking effective). 28 But we need not decide how little process the Board could have given here; Pro-Eco admits that it knew of the public hearing the Board held to discuss and adopt the moratorium and that a Pro-Eco representative attended that hearing. It does not allege, moreover, that its representative was denied an opportunity to speak. This is all that due process in zoning could possibly be thought to require.... Coniston Corp. v. Village of Hoffman Estates, 844 F.2d 461, 469 (7th Cir.1988). 29 Pro-Eco insists that, because the Board allegedly did not follow the state statutes providing for public hearings, notice of those hearings, and Advisory Plan Commission input to be given to a Board of Commissioners when it promulgates zoning ordinances, it necessarily denied Pro-Eco, and presumably anyone who had their property values diminished by the moratorium, due process because there was no meaningful opportunity for interested parties to be heard on the matter. According to Pro-Eco, only if the Jay County Advisory Plan Commission had reviewed the proposed moratorium and given the Board input could Pro-Eco have had a meaningful opportunity to be heard. 30 This is incorrect. The Constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to a master land use plan proposed by an advisory plan commission before a zoning moratorium can be enacted. Or, more generally, A violation of state law is not a denial of due process of law. Coniston, 844 F.2d at 467; see also River Park, Inc. v. City of Highland Park, 23 F.3d 164, 166 (7th Cir.1994). Pro-Eco has already gotten relief for the Board's violation of the state procedural statute in the form of invalidation of the ordinance. Section 1983 affords relief only if the Constitution is offended, and a violation of a state procedural statute does not offend it.
31 Pro-Eco also claims that the Board's ordinance deprived Pro-Eco of its substantive due process rights. In order to claim that a zoning ordinance interferes with its substantive rights, Pro-Eco must be able to demonstrate either that the ordinance infringes a fundamental liberty interest, Reno v. Flores, --- U.S. ----, ----, 113 S.Ct. 1439, 1447, 123 L.Ed.2d 1 (1993), or that the ordinance is arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare. Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 395, 47 S.Ct. 114, 121, 71 L.Ed. 303 (1926). We have interpreted arbitrary and unreasonable to mean invidious or irrational. Coniston, 844 F.2d at 467; Burrell v. City of Kankakee, 815 F.2d 1127, 1129 (7th Cir.1987). 32 In Mid-American Waste Sys., Inc. v. City of Gary, Ind., 49 F.3d 286 (7th Cir.1995), we noted that [d]epositing garbage in landfills is not exactly a fundamental right.... Disposition of waste is a highly regulated industry. A claim that the Constitution protects this industry from public control ... would bring nothing but belly laughs. Id. at 291. Moreover, [c]orporations do not have fundamental rights ...; fundamental rights, a category that may include the liberty to contract, Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 572, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2707, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), describes only personal liberties. Mid-American, 49 F.3d at 291 (citation omitted). 10 So much for Pro-Eco's first avenue of recovery under the theory of substantive due process. 33 The Board's moratorium stated that the construction and operation of public or commercial sanitary landfills constitutes a use of property that may create serious, permanent, and irreversible environmental damage and may unnecessarily endanger the public health, safety, or welfare of the citizens of Jay County, Indiana.... The ordinance went on to note the absence of any county-wide protection from such pernicious use of the land. Concern for public health is a sufficient reason on its face to pass the Euclid test, and governmental action passes the rational basis test if a sound reason may be hypothesized. The government need not prove the reason to a court's satisfaction. Northside Sanitary Landfill, Inc. v. City of Indianapolis, 902 F.2d 521, 522 (7th Cir.1990) (citations omitted). In trying to protect the health, safety, and welfare of Jay County, the Board acted rationally; therefore, Pro-Eco's substantive due process rights claim must fail.
34 Pro-Eco alleges that the moratorium violated its right to equal protection of the laws in two ways. First, it treated potential landfill developers differently than other developers. Because Pro-Eco does not claim to be a member of a suspect class whose different treatment at the hands of the government would be subject to strict or intermediate scrutiny, the same test of rationality we used for analysis of Pro-Eco's substantive rights claim applies to its equal protection claim. Coniston, 844 F.2d at 468. To state the standard in equal protection terms, as long as the Board had a rational basis for creating the classification and enacted the ordinance to achieve a legitimate government end, the moratorium satisfies the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. Cohen v. City of Des Plaines, 8 F.3d 484, 494 (7th Cir.1993), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 2741, 129 L.Ed.2d 861 (1994). 35 We have already determined that the Board's goal, to protect the health, safety, and welfare of Jay County from the irreversible and pernicious social costs imposed by landfills, is legitimate. And prohibiting anyone from developing a landfill in Jay County seems a fairly straight-forward, rational way to achieve that goal. Prohibiting all land development in Jay County would achieve the Board's goal, but it would also stifle other sorts of development, such as residential development, that the Board did not find pernicious. 36 But the moratorium was not rational in the eyes of Pro-Eco, who counters that the ordinance was irrational because, in enacting the ordinance, the Board deviated from state law and, therefore, had no reasonable expectation that the ordinance would be enforced. This characterization of the Board's act misses the mark: it does not address the rationality of the classification the Board drew. Moreover, if we bought this misdirected argument, we would negate our earlier proposition that violations of state procedural statutes do not amount to constitutional violations. 37 Pro-Eco's second basis for claiming an equal protection violation is that the Board singled out Pro-Eco for unfair and unequal treatment. Pro-Eco claims that the ordinance was unfair because it was apparently the only company with its eyes on developing a landfill in Jay County at the time the Board acted. Pro-Eco argues that unfair and purposeful discrimination in the enforcement of zoning regulations violates the Equal Protection Clause, citing Scudder v. Town of Greendale, Ind., 704 F.2d 999, 1002-03 (7th Cir.1983). Indeed, it may violate the Equal Protection Clause when the power of government is brought to bear on a harmless individual merely because a powerful state or local official harbors a malignant animosity toward him.... Esmail v. Macrane, 53 F.3d 176, 179 (7th Cir.1995); see also Falls v. Town of Dyer, Ind., 875 F.2d 146 (7th Cir.1989). 38 But Pro-Eco does not present us with a case of enforcement; it presents us with a case of enactment. Pro-Eco does not claim that the ordinance on its face applied only to it, or that other landfill developers were granted waivers and Pro-Eco was not. An ordinance generally applicable on its face but enforced for no legitimate reason against only an individual or a particular class may violate the Equal Protection Clause. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 373-74, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 1072-73, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886); Esmail, 53 F.3d at 179-80; Falls, 875 F.2d 146. But legislatures may enact generally applicable legislation as a prophylactic to the danger posed by one particular actor as long as the end of the legislation is legitimate and, assuming the legislation does not distinguish between classes on bases susceptible to intermediate or strict scrutiny, the means are rationally related to the end. In other words, the fairness of which Pro-Eco speaks is always determined, in cases of low-level scrutiny, by the rationality of the state action, whether the questioned action is the enactment of an ordinance or the enforcement of it. The Board's action here, even if unabashedly directed at a threat only Pro-Eco posed, was legitimate. 11 Pro-Eco has not stated facts to support a claim that Jay County engaged in unequal enforcement of the ordinance. The Board did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.