Court Opinion

ID: 9647669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:44:43.291849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:51.668495
License: Public Domain

MOUNTAIN, J.,
dissenting.
I write in dissent both to state the grounds of my disagreement with the decision reached by my colleagues and with the reasons offered in support of that holding, but also to indicate as clearly as I am able the great significance of this case to property and home owners throughout the State and indeed to the citizens of the State generally. Although there are a number of statements and declared points of view in the majority opinion to which I take exception, two aspects of the decision are of especial importance and deserve to be especially emphasized.
One of these is the result that this case will have upon the zoning fabric of this State. The second is What I take to be an unfortunate resort to the New Jersey Constitution as a basis of decision, thus taking from the people of this State certain important rights which they have hitherto enjoyed but may now no longer exercise.
Let me initially address the first of these points. The most immediately significant result of this decision is that it deprives homeowners whose properties are located in “one-family residence zones” or in other restricted residential areas of the protection they have hitherto enjoyed against the possibility that other dwellings in the same zone would be used for multifamily purposes or for occupancy by groups of unrelated individuals unrestricted as to size. As of this writing, except as noted below,1 there is no homeowner in New Jersey who can say with *116any assurance that his next door neighbor’s house, or that of his friend down the street, may not at any time and without warning, either be occupied by two or more families or by a group of unrelated persons indefinite in number. All of this may happen although the properties are located in a Triple-A Residential one-family zone. Furthermore, at this moment, such occupancies are perfectly legal and it is not at all clear that any effective relief can be had at the municipal level. What is clear, as will be discussed below, is that no effective relief at all is available at the State level—from our Legislature. More of this anon. This condition of things results from the majority decision handed down today.
The second of these two significant aspects of this case has to do with the manner in which the majority opinion interprets and deals with our State Constitution. That Constitution, adopted in 1947, contains the following provision:
The provisions of this Constitution and of any law concerning municipal corporations formed for local government, or concerning counties, shall be liberally construed in their favor. The powers of counties and such municipal corporations shall include not only those granted in express terms but also those of necessary or fair implication, or incident to the powers expressly conferred, or essential thereto, and not inconsistent with or prohibited by this Constitution or by law. [N.J.Const., Art 4, § 7, II11]
Hitherto, in the course of our decisional law, this provision has been applied, again and again, in accordance with its terms, to afford a liberal interpretation of all constitutional provisions and of all statutes pertaining to municipalities. It applies with full force to zoning ordinances.
Zoning ordinances are to receive a reasonable construction and application, and under the Constitution of 1947, Art. IV, § VII, par. 11, they are to be liberally construed in favor of the municipality. [Place v. Bd. of Adjust. of Saddle River, 42 N.J. 324, 328 (1964)]
*117It is not especially important, however, to dwell upon the relationship of this constitutional provision to the zoning ordinance before us, because the Court’s opinion really focuses—although without specific mention—upon our Zoning Enabling Act, N.J.S.A. 40:55D-62. Through by-passing any discussion of this statute and turning directly to the Constitution, the majority in effect eliminates all possibility of legislative cure. Thus the direct result of this decision is to deprive our State Legislature of the power to authorize municipalities to restrict home occupancy to single families. As far as I know, this restriction upon legislative power exists in no other state.
We should never forget that our Constitution is the voice of the people, in whom all sovereignty ultimately rests.
[T]he Constitution derives its force, not from the Convention which framed it, but from the people who ratified it. [Gangemi v. Berry, 25 N.J. 1, 16 (1957)]
It is the people of this State who have declared that our Constitution and our statutes concerning municipalities are to receive a liberal construction. I leave it to the reader to decide whether this Court’s decision today can be said to give due and proper weight to the admonition of the people set forth above. In making this assessment it is fair and germane to point out that, as I have said above, no other court in the land appears to have so shackled the hands of its lawgivers and furthermore that the rule of law laid down today was some years ago repudiated by the highest court in the land. Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1, 94 S.Ct. 1536, 39 L.Ed.2d 797 (1974).
The majority concludes that the Plainfield zoning ordinance prohibiting more than four unrelated individuals from sharing a single housing unit violates Art. I, par. 1 of the New Jersey Constitution. The clause reads as follows:
All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain natural and unalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and *118liberty, of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and of pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness. [N.J.Const., Art. I, par. 1]
It may not be immediately apparent how this provision affects the issue before us and the majority opinion is silent and unenlightening. But we know from earlier case law that this provision has been interpreted to include both a “due process” and an “equal protection” clause similar to those found in the Federal Constitution. It is presumably upon one or both of these implied clauses that the majority relies.
This brings us to a highly significant point in our discussion. The majority, obviously intent upon achieving a foreordained result, could have reached the sought-for goal by finding that the section of the Plainfield ordinance before us, did not, as a matter of statutory interpretation, fulfill the requirements of the Zoning Enabling Act. In other words it could have held that the power to define “family” in the manner set forth in the ordinance went beyond the powers delegated to municipalities by the Legislature. The most pertinent portion of the Enabling Act says,
The governing body [of a municipality] may adopt or amend a zoning ordinance relating to the nature and extent of the uses of land and of buildings and structures thereon. [N.J.S.A. 40:55D-62]
Given the applicable canons of liberal construction adverted to above, it might be thought difficult to read this comprehensive grant of power as forbidding what Plainfield has done. But it would certainly be no more difficult to discover in this language a prohibition against the Plainfield ordinance, than to extract a proscription against such municipal legislation from the vague phrases of Art. I, par. 1 quoted above. Of course the difficulty quite clearly arises from the fact that neither the Constitution nor the Enabling Act can sensibly be read to impose the prohibition. But let us move forward to examine with some care the *119result which follows from the choice made by the majority to place its decision upon the Constitution rather than the statute.
What the Court has chosen to do is most unusual. Normally, where an issue of this sort arises, a court will rest its decision upon a statutory rather than a constitutional ground. It has been suggested that this rule is absolute and unyielding.2 Had this course been followed here, the result would be very different than the end now achieved. Had the decision been reached as a matter of statutory interpretation, then the Legislature, had it seen fit to do so, could have amended the statute to provide expressly that municipalities should thenceforth have the power the Court had found not to have been previously granted. Now it is completely foreclosed from doing this because the Court has found there to be a constitutional violation. The Legislature cannot amend the Constitution.
A parallel experience in Illinois is instructive. In 1966 the Supreme Court of that state, in the case of City of Des Plaines v. Trottner, 34 Ill.2d 432, 216 N.E.2d 116 (1966) was required to rule upon the validity of a municipal ordinance very similar to the one before us here. The ordinance in the Illinois case defined a “family” as consisting of one or more persons each related to the other by blood, adoption or marriage together with their respective spouses. “Family” might also include domestic servants and one gratuitous guest. 216 N.E.2d at 117. The court determined that as a matter of statutory construction the ordinance was invalid because the zoning enabling act in Illinois had not delegated to municipalities the power to make such a classification.
*120In the following year, 1967, the Illinois Legislature adopted Ill.Rev.Stat.19Q7, c. 24, § 11-13-1(9), which reads as follows:
[T]he corporate authorities in each municipality have the following powers:
‡‡‡‡****
(9) to classify, to regulate and restrict the use of property on the basis of family relationship, which family relationship may be defined as one or more persons each related to the other by blood, marriage or adoption and maintaining a common household.
The difference between the way in which the common problem was handled in Illinois and the way in which it has been handled in New Jersey is striking. In Illinois, since the court decision was made to rest upon an issue of statutory interpretation, the people, acting through their Legislature, were readily able to alter a decision with which they disagreed, simply by enacting corrective legislation. In New Jersey, on the other hand, this Court has deprived the people of this opportunity. In the not unlikely event that there should be dissatisfaction with the majority opinion, correction can only be accomplished by either inducing this Court to reverse itself or by amending the Constitution. Neither course is simple or certain. This is what I have referred to above as “an unfortunate resort to the New Jersey Constitution.” It is something I think the Court should not have done.
The same problem was presented to this Court in another very important zoning case decided some few years ago. I refer to So. Burl. Cty., N.A.A.C.P. v. Tp. of Mt. Laurel, 67 N.J. 151 (1975) (Mt. Laurel). There a conscious choice was made to rest the decision upon constitutional rather than upon statutory grounds. 67 N.J. at 174-75. Although I concurred in the Court’s holding in that case, I disagreed with the other members of the Court upon this single point. I would have rested the decision upon statutory rather than upon constitutional grounds and wrote a *121brief concurring opinion so stating. 67 N.J. at 193. I still believe that that view is correct.3
In a discussion of Mt. Laurel, a very able commentator had this to say about my concurring opinion:
On this point [whether to rest the opinion upon constitutional or statutory grounds] one Justice (Mountain) concurred specially, on the ground that the decision should be based upon general welfare under the zoning enabling act . and therefore that a constitutional decision was unnecessary. This would have been an open invitation to the dominant suburban forces in the Legislature, to try to figure out a way to amend the enabling act in order to get around this decision; and so the majority wisely rejected it. [3 Williams, American Land Planning Law, § 6 6.13f, p. 33-34, 1978 Cum.Supp.]
But the whole point is that the legislators and the people whom they represent should have the right to the final word. This is what democracy is all about.
While the foregoing points are, in their impact upon the citizens of this State, the most important that emanate from this decision, there are other aspects of the majority opinion which should perhaps not go unnoticed.
One of these is its rather cavalier treatment of Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, supra, a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1974. There the Court was called upon to examine an ordinance that restricted land use to one-family dwellings. The word “family” was defined as being one or more persons related by blood, marriage or adoption, as well as any two unrelated persons “. . . living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit . . . .” 416 U.S. at 2, 94 S.Ct. at *1221537-38, 39 L.Ed.2d at 800. It will be seen that this ordinance is practically identical with the one before us, except that Plain-field permits twice as many unrelated persons—four rather than two—to occupy a dwelling. Speaking for seven members of the Court, Justice Douglas wrote an opinion sustaining the constitutionality of the ordinance in all respects. The argument was made, as it has been made here, that unrelated persons were improperly deprived of associational and other constitutional rights. It was pointed out, as has been done here, that whereas only two unrelated persons might occupy a one-family residence, any number of persons, if allied by blood, marriage or adoption, were free to associate together as a single housekeeping unit. It was urged that this constituted impermissible discrimination and violated the associational rights of unrelated persons. The Court’s opinion completely rejected the argument. It formed the basis, however, of Justice Marshall’s dissent.4
Why the majority rejects Belle Terre is not clear. It is said not to be persuasive, but we are not told why or wherein its inadequacies lies. All other state courts that have addressed this issue since Belle Terre was decided have chosen to follow it. Rademan v. City of Denver, 186 Colo. 250, 526 P.2d 1325 (1974); Prospect Gardens Convalescent Home, Inc. v. City of Norwalk, 32 Conn.Supp. 214, 347 A.2d 637 (1975); Association for Educ. Dev. v. Hayward, 533 S. W.2d 579 (Mo.1976). We may properly note
. the tendency of state courts, following Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1, [94 S.Ct. 1536, 39 L.Ed.2d 797] (1974) ... to reject the claims of groups of friends or other associates who have no special needs but merely wish to live together. [Developments-Zoning, 91 Harv.L.Rev. 1427, 1578 n. 77 (1978)]
But not in New Jersey.
*123The majority argues that Plainfield’s definition of “family,” as embracing only four unrelated persons while including nuclear families of any size, is both overinclusive and underinclusive. It points to the possibility of ten distant relatives assembling under one roof while five or more jurists or other similar groups are forbidden to cohabit together. The argument proceeds upon the oft-rejected premise that legislation that could have, but did not, exclude or include every person who might properly have been so classified is therefore invalid. Much the same argument was advanced before the Supreme Court in Belle Terre:
It is said, however, that if two unmarried people can constitute a “family,” there is no reason why three or four may not. But every line drawn by a legislature leaves some out that might well have been included. That exercise of discretion, however, is a legislative, not a judicial, function. [416 U.S. at 8, 94 S.Ct. at 1540, 39 L.Ed.2d at 803—4]
Justice Douglas went on to quote Justice Holmes’ famous response to this kind of argument:
When a legal distinction is determined, as no one doubts that it may be, between night and day, childhood and maturity, or any other extremes, a point has to be fixed or a line has to be drawn, or gradually picked out by successive decisions, to mark where the change takes place. Looked at by itself without regard to the necessity behind it the line or point seems arbitrary. It might as well or nearly as well bo a little more to one side or the other. But when it is seen that a line or point there must be, and that there is no mathematical or logical way of fixing it precisely, the decision of the legislature must be accepted unless we can say that it is very wide of any reasonable mark. Louisville Gas Co. v. Coleman, 277 U.S. 32, 41, 48 S.Ct. 423, 426, 72 L.Ed. 770 (dissenting opinion). [416 U.S. at 8 n. 5, 94 S.Ct. at 1540 n. 5, 39 L.Ed.2d at 804 n. 5]
Limiting occupancy to single families and to not more than four unrelated individuals, as has been done by the City of Plainfield, is in every sense fair and reasonable and should be sustained. The majority would be better employed in protecting the rights of homeowners—grievously threatened by this decision—rather than in conjuring up imaginary hobgoblins in the form of nonexistent invasions by swarms of country cousins.
*124Let me indicate more affirmatively why I believe the Plain-field ordinance should be sustained. Appellant takes the position, stated above, that if a family, composed of an indefinite number of persons, may legally occupy a “single-family” residence, then an indefinite number of unrelated persons should have the same right. The majority has agreed and in so doing has deplorably denigrated one of the greatest and finest of our institutions—the family. The family should be entitled—as until now it has been—to stand on its own in a distinctly preferred position. There is no support in our mores as there should be none in our law, to justify the elevation of any group of unrelated persons to a position of parity with a family. Justice Brennan, concurring, in Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977), and quoting from the brief filed by the Village of Belle Terre in that earlier case, has expressed the point perhaps as well as it can be stated,
Whether it be the extended family of a more leisurely age or the nuclear family of today the role of the family in raising and training successive generations of the species makes it more important, we dare say, than any other social or legal institution. ... If any freedom not specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights enjoys a ‘preferred position in the law it is most certainly the family. [431 U.S. at 511, 97 S.Ct. at 1492, 52 L.Ed.2d at 545; emphasis that of Justice Brennan)]
Similarly the plurality opinion of Justice Powell in the same case drew a sharp line between judicial solicitude for the family as an institution and its attitude toward unrelated groups. ■ It should be stated that the ordinance in East Cleveland defined “family” in such a way that a grandmother could not maintain a common household with two grandchildren who were cousins, although she could have done so had they been brothers. The City of East Cleveland relied on Belle Terre to sustain its position. Justice Powell disagreed:
*125. . . [0]ne overriding factor sets this case apart from Belle Terre. The ordinance there affected only unrelated individuals. It expressly allowed all who were related by “blood, adoption or marriage” to live together, and in sustaining the ordinance we were careful to note that it promoted “family needs” and “family values.” 416 U.S. at 9 [94 S.Ct. 1536, 39 L.Ed.2d 797], East Cleveland, in contrast, has chosen to regulate the occupancy of its housing by slicing deeply into the family itself. [431 U.S. at 498, 97 S.Ct. at 1935, 52 L.Ed.2d at 537]
Prior decisional law in this State is not especially helpful. Kirsch Holding Co. v. Borough of Manasquan, 59 N.J. 241 (1971) dealt only with summer rentals, which perhaps should be thought of as a special problem. Furthermore its present status is ambivalent. In Taxpayers Association of Weymouth Tp. v. Weymouth Tp., 80 N.J. 6 (1976), Justice Pashman, speaking for a unanimous court, said,
Kirsch was decided on constitutional grounds and may, to that extent, have been undermined by the subsequent decision in Belle Terre v. Boraas, supra, 416 U.S. 1, 94 S.Ct. 1536, 39 L.Ed.2d 797, upholding a similar ordinance. [80 N.J. at 33]
This is clearly so, although the majority opinion seems uncertain.
Most recently, in 1976, this Court decided Berger v. State, 71 N.J. 206. There the maintenance of a group home, owned by the State, for multi-handicapped pre-school children was attacked as being violative of certain restrictive covenants in the chain of title of the land on which the school was located, as well as being in violation of provisions in the local zoning ordinance. We held that the covenants were not violated and that, as a state agency, the group home was immune from the provisions of the local zoning ordinance. We went on to say, by way of dictum, that a zoning ordinance setting apart a one-family residential zone, and defining “family” as being only those persons related by blood, marriage or adoption was unduly restrictive; that it did not fairly take account of the legitimate *126rights and needs of unrelated persons. We also suggested that this need might be met by limiting to a reasonable number those unrelated persons who might choose to live together as a bona fide housekeeping unit. 71 N.J. at 225. The same suggestion had indeed been earlier made by Judge Conford in Gate Collins Realty, Inc. v. City of Margate City, 112 N.J.Super. 341, 350 (App.Div. 1970). It seems to me that the City of Plainfield has done its best to follow this suggestion.
The majority opinion also finds that the Plainfield ordinance violates Art. IV, §6, ¶ 2, although it does not inform the reader what this is nor is any reasoned elaboration set forth to support the holding. This constitutional provision in fact reads as follows:
The Legislature may enact general laws under which municipalities, other than counties, may adopt zoning ordinances limiting and restricting to specified districts and regulating therein, buildings and structures, according to their construction, and the nature and extent of their use, and the nature and extent of the uses of land, and the exercise of such authority shall be deemed to be within the police power of the State. Such laws shall be subject to repeal or alteration by the Legislature. [N.J. Const., Art. 4, § 6, 17 2]
I leave the reader to speculate—as does the majority—as to how the ordinance before us offends this broad confirmation of legislative zoning power or in fact how the issue is even reached.
For all of the reasons set forth above, I respectfully dissent and would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and declare valid the ordinance in question.
Chief Justice HUGHES joins this opinion.
For affirmance—Justices PASHMAN, CLIFFORD, SCHREIBER and HANDLER and Judge HALPERN—5.
For reversal—-Chief Justice HUGHES and Justice MOUNTAIN—2.

Homeowners whose properties enjoy the benefits of restrictive covenants limiting the use of lands to single-family occupancy are still protected, by *116virtue of these covenants, in respect of all properties coming within the neighborhood scheme—the area to which the covenants apply.

[TJhere is the sound, oft-expressed principle that constitutional questions should not be reached and resolved unless absolutely imperative in the disposition of the litigation. While the adjudicative process admits of few unyielding rules, this maxim comes as close as any to being an absolute, [citing authorities] [State v. Saunders, 75 N.J. 200, 229 (1977); (Clifford J., dissenting)]

 I would readily concede that there is a nobility of purpose both in the decision and in the opinion in Mt. Laurel that goes far to justify resort to the Constitution. I have suggested as much before. “The rule [laid down in Mt. Laurel] has an idealistic, even Utopian quality.” Oakwood at Madison, Inc. v. Township of Madison, 72 N.J. 481, 624 (1977). It is all too obvious that no such quality is to be found in the case before us.

Justice Brennan wrote a separate dissent taking the position that under the facts presented to the Court the case was moot and therefore there was no pending “case or controversy.” He recommended dismissal on this ground and hence did not reach the meritorious issue in the case.