Opinion ID: 2365726
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: The Validity of the Zoning Statute

Text: Plaintiffs' original cross-appeal from the trial court's first determination assailed that portion of the court's decision upholding the constitutionality of the zoning enabling act, N.J.S.A. 40:55-30 et seq., and their second brief to this court incorporates the supporting arguments. Plaintiffs' novel contention is that the general zoning purposes stated in N.J.S.A. 40:55-32, although adequate when enacted in 1928, today fail to provide detailed standards to guide municipalities in their exercise of the zoning power, to wit, they fail to direct that a municipality must be racially and economically inclusionary rather than exclusionary. The stated argument was formulated before we decided Mount Laurel and is basically mooted by our holding there, in effect, that the zoning statute is to be construed to conform with state due process and equal protection so as to compel zoning in developing municipalities to affirmatively combat exclusion of the lower income population needing housing. [47] In any event, we find the contention to lack intrinsic merit. The statute expressly sets out as a standard for the exercise of the zoning power the promotion of health, morals and the general welfare as well as other subordinate criteria. N.J.S.A. 40:55-32. As noted, a zoning ordinance contrary to the general welfare is invalid, Mount Laurel, supra, 67 N.J. at 175, and the term general welfare requires the consideration of regional housing needs. Ibid. Cf. Ward v. Scott, 11 N.J. 117 (1952), where a similar attack was made on N.J.S.A. 40:55-39 (d), providing for the issuance of use variances, on the grounds that specific standards did not accompany the delegation of power. Finding that this section incorporated the standard of N.J.S.A. 40:55-32, and hence was valid, Justice Jacobs noted that although the legislature may not vest unbridled or arbitrary power in the administrative agency but must furnish a reasonably adequate standard to guide it    [nonetheless] the exigencies of modern government have increasingly dictated the use of general rather than minutely detailed standards in regulatory enactments under the police power. Id. at 123-4. Provision for local and regional housing needs, although not expressly enumerated under N.J.S.A. 40:55-32, is required in the promotion of the general welfare. Mount Laurel, supra. It goes without saying that the statutory and constitutional prohibition, by judicial construction, of zoning to exclude, encompass exclusion by race as well as by economic circumstances. The statute is valid.