Court Opinion

ID: 9547043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:40:38.881862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:17:13.820680
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frantz
dissenting:
Zoning laws are justified only when they are enacted as a proper exercise of the police power. When such justification is absent, they become vulnerable to attack. Parkview Church v. Pueblo, 139 Colo. 98, 336 P. (2d) 310. To be a valid exercise of the police power, zoning laws must subserve to some substantial degree the public health, safety, morals or general welfare. Jones v. Board, 119 Colo. 420, 204 P. (2d) 560. Here is the touchstone of validity — that the zoning regulations have a tendency to promote the public health, safety, morals or general welfare.
An attempt to exercise police power arbitrarily is pseudo police power. As such it has no efficiency, and must fail when properly challenged. Hence, arbitrary and whimsical zoning action is hostile to, rather than in pursuance of, the police power, and should come to nothing when tested by a proper suit.
Classifications contrived in a zoning law, but having no reasonable relation to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare, are deemed arbitrary and cannot be sustained. Marie’s Launderette v. City of Newark, 35 N. J. Super. 94, 113 A. (2d) 190; Rawlins v. Braswell, 191 Tenn. 285, 231 S.W. (2d) 1021.
May the City designate an area as a zone wherein a number of innocuous, inoffensive businesses may be conducted, and exclude other innocuous, inoffensive *346businesses from operation therein? Under the guise of zoning, may the City, for instance, create a zone in which ten businesses of a non-injurious character may be conducted, and add to this enumeration or subtract from it as it pleases, and find justification in such action under the police power? It seems to me that both questions should be answered in the negative. Either action would represent capricious and arbitrary conduct; it would be classification without a basis.
In the instant case the area involved permits a number of business uses, all of which are harmless to the surrounding areas. To exclude another inoffensive business without some reasonable basis is arbitrary. Hence, I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.