Court Opinion

ID: 9698498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:52:07.53242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:41.334425
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING EN BANC
SCHWELB, Associate Judge:
Appellants challenge the constitutionality of the District’s Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act, D.C.Code §§ 45-1601 et seq. (1986 and 1988 Supp.) (hereinafter the RHCSA or the Act). This statute provides in substance that an owner of rental housing may not convert it to condominium use unless fifty per cent of the eligible tenants consent to such conversion. We uphold the validity of the tenant consent requirement and reject the contention that it constitutes an improper delegation of legislative authority. We perceive little, if any, legal basis for the appellants’ alternative conten*532tion that the Act, alone or in conjunction with the District’s rent control laws, constitutes an unconstitutional uncompensated “taking.” Nevertheless, we are constrained by the procedural posture of that issue to remand the case to the Superior Court for further proceedings.
I
Appellants own the Savoy, a 203-unit apartment complex in northwest Washington. For many years, they have sought to convert the Savoy into a condominium. In May, 1981, they filed this action in the Superior Court against the Mayor and other District of Columbia officials (the District), alleging that the defendants had unlawfully denied their application for conversion, in violation of their statutory and constitutional rights. In January, 1983, Judge John F. Doyle granted the District’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed all of the owners’ claims.
The owners appealed to this court. On September 11, 1987, a three-judge panel affirmed Judge Doyle’s dismissal of the owners’ statutory claims, but held that the tenant consent requirement constitutes an improper delegation of legislative authority and deprives the owners of property without due process of law. The panel found that there was a genuine issue' of material fact which precluded the entry of summary judgment as to the uncompensated taking claim and remanded for further development of that issue. Hornstein v. Barry, 530 A.2d 1177 (D.C.1987). On February 19, 1988, we granted the District’s petition for rehearing en banc and vacated the panel opinion. 537 A.2d 1131 (D.C.1988).
As this case was proceeding towards resolution, similar contentions regarding the RHCSA were being considered a few blocks away by our federal appellate colleagues. On May 3, 1988, in a suit brought by a different group of owners, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals dismissed a number of statutory and constitutional claims, some of them identical to those urged upon us in the present case. Silverman v. Barry, 269 U.S.App.D.C. 327, 845 F.2d 1072 (1988). That court explicitly declined to follow the reasoning or the decision of the panel of this court which had invalidated the tenant consent provisions. Id. at 341-42, 845 F.2d at 1086-87. On July 15, our federal colleagues, without a single dissenting vote, denied rehearing en banc in Silverman, 271 U.S.App.D.C. 179, 851 F.2d 434 (1988). On November 14, 1988, the Supreme Court denied certiorari. — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 394, 102 L.Ed.2d 383 (1988).
II
The RHCSA forbids the conversion of a rental apartment complex into condominium units unless the Mayor certifies that a majority of the tenants qualified to vote1 have consented. §§ 45-1611(a), 45-1612. The Act is the culmination of a long history of restrictions on conversion which is described in some detail in Silverman, supra, 269 U.S.App.D.C. at 330-32, 845 F.2d at 1075-77, and we need not repeat it here.2 It is but one part of a comprehensive scheme of regulation3 designed to protect the rights of tenants, particularly poor and elderly tenants who, in the Council’s reasonable view, merit and need such protection.
In enacting the RHCSA, the Council made a number of findings, summarized below, in which it explained the need for the legislation. According to the Council, there exists a continuing housing crisis in *533this city, with a severe shortage of rental housing and a low vacancy rate, particularly in relation to units which lower income tenants can afford. § 45-1601(2). The conversion of rental units to condominiums4 or cooperatives depletes the rental housing stock. § 45-1601(3). Lower income tenants, particularly the elderly, feel the bite of this depletion most severely, for post-conversion costs are usually beyond their means, a condition which results in forced displacement, serious overcrowding, and disproportionally high housing costs. § 45-1601(4). Experience with prior conversion controls has demonstrated that such restrictions have not been sufficiently effective, and tenants who are most directly affected by conversion should be given a voice in the determination whether their rental housing should be converted. § 45-1601(7). The foregoing findings persuaded the Council that enactment of the RHCSA was required to preserve the public peace, health, safety and general welfare. § 45-1601(8).
In § 45-1602, the Council enumerated the purposes of the legislation, which parallel and complement the legislative findings summarized above. The Act was designed, among other things,
[t]o discourage the displacement of tenants through conversion or sale of rental property, and to strengthen the bargaining position of tenants toward that end without unduly interfering with the rights of property owners to the due process of law.
§ 45-1602(1).
The comprehensiveness and specificity of the Council’s findings compel us to conclude that the District confronted a serious problem which the Council had the right and duty to address. The question is whether the means by which the Council addressed it are constitutional.
Ill
A. Presumption of Constitutionality.
Our Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and at least since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803), courts in this country have had the authority to invalidate legislation which contravenes its proscriptions. We do not, however, sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of statutory enactments. Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 731, 83 S.Ct. 1028, 1031, 10 L.Ed.2d 93 (1963). A decent respect for the coordinate branches of government dictates that we exercise sparingly the power to strike down laws which have been duly passed by the elected representatives of the people. The Constitution presumes that even improvident legislative decisions will be rectified by the democratic process, and that “judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think that a political branch has acted.” Vance v. Bradley, 440 U.S. 93, 97, 99 S.Ct. 939, 943, 59 L.Ed.2d 171 (1979). The judiciary cannot encroach on the domain of the popularly elected branches without imperiling our most basic institutions. Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U.S. 700, 718, 25 L.Ed. 496, 504 (1878). Indeed, a court “usurps legislative functions when it presumes to adjudge a law void where the repugnancy between the law and the Constitution is not established beyond reasonable doubt.” National Maritime Union of America v. Herzog, 78 F.Supp. 146, 155 (D.D.C.) (three judge court), aff'd per curiam, 334 U.S. 854, 68 S.Ct. 1529, 92 L.Ed. 1776 (1948).5
Laws adjusting the burdens and benefits of economic life come to the courts *534with a presumption of constitutionality, and one complaining of a due process violation must establish that the legislature acted in an arbitrary and irrational way. Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 16, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 2892, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976). The elected branches have broad authority to determine the legislative facts on which a statute is based, and those challenging their judgment must convince the court that the legislative findings could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decisionmaker. Vance v. Bradley, supra, 440 U.S. at 111, 99 S.Ct. at 949. Only last term, the Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles with respect to the authority of states and their instrumen-talities to regulate housing conditions in general and the landlord-tenant relationship in particular — the very kind of regulation at issue here. Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 U.S. 1, -, n. 6, 108 S.Ct. 849, 857-58 n. 6, 99 L.Ed.2d 1 (1988).
We emphasize that mere lip service to the presumption of constitutionality is insufficient, especially where, as in the present case, the legislation under attack addresses issues which are traditionally a proper subject for the exercise of the police power. Accordingly, the owners must make a very compelling showing indeed before this court may invalidate the RHCSA without impermissibly encroaching upon legislative prerogatives.
B. Delegation, Standardlessness, and Due Process.
Although they acknowledge the applicability of the presumption of constitutionality, the owners contend that the tenant consent requirement impermissibly delegates legislative authority to private citizens. They claim, in effect, that the RHCSA relegates their right to use their property as they see fit to the caprice of tenants who are free to act to promote their own private advantage rather than in the public interest. They argue that no standards are provided for the granting or withholding of consent, so that a majority of the tenants can bar conversion for a good reason, a capricious reason, a selfish reason, or no reason at all. This standard-lessness, say the owners, renders the legislation unconstitutional and denies them property without due process of law.
It cannot be gainsaid that, under this statutory scheme, a tenant majority may act arbitrarily, and that there is no objective standard to which they must conform. Indeed, the Council, by making it an explicit purpose of the Act to strengthen the bargaining power of tenants,6 undoubtedly recognized that the residents of a particular rental complex might well act in their own financial interest and consent to conversion only if the owners would sweeten the pie by buying them out at an attractive price. Where the residents of one complex agree to conversion in response to their landlord’s financial largesse, their parochial interest in allowing the landlord to take the affected units off the rental market may collide with the needs of tenants city-wide and with the prime goal of the legislation, which is to avoid the erosion of affordable rental housing.
These criticisms of the Act may be thought plausible or persuasive, and perhaps the give and take of the political process has, in this instance as in others, produced less than perfect legislation. Perfection, however, is neither constitutionally required7 nor practically achievable.8 The *535validity of this legislation must be considered in the context of the real world, warts and all, with its hard bargaining and legislative compromises, rather than by reference to some pristine utopia of a political theorist’s wistful dreams. The Council, seeking both to protect the supply of available rental housing and to reinforce the bargaining power of tenants and their organizations, elected in this instance to prohibit conversion conditionally but not absolutely, and to temper that proscription by providing, in effect, for plebiscites in affected complexes. The Act permits tenants to dispense with the protection provided by the general ban on conversions if they can negotiate a better bargain for themselves. It may not be pretty, but we do not think it is unconstitutional.
Allowing a group of intended beneficiaries of legislation to waive its protection is not an impermissible delegation of legislative functions to private decision-makers. “An otherwise valid regulation is not rendered invalid simply because those whom the regulation is designed to safeguard elect to forgo its protection.” New Motor Vehicle Board v. Orrin W. Fox Co., 439 U.S. 96, 109, 99 S.Ct. 403, 411, 58 L.Ed.2d 361 (1978), citing Thomas Cusack Co. v. City of Chicago, 242 U.S. 526, 37 S.Ct. 190, 61 L.Ed. 472 (1917). Where, as here, the City Council has made an appropriate finding that conversion to condominium use is presumptively contrary to the public interest and should be proscribed, it may constitutionally allow the primary beneficiaries of such a proscription to waive its benefits, even though this allows the units in question to be used in a manner which would otherwise be impermissible. Cusack, supra. Although such an arrangement countenances some private sovereignty over the fate of others and a concomitant lack of standards, the due process clause is not thereby transgressed.
Cusack, on which Judge Doyle relied in this case in granting judgment for the District, upheld an ordinance prohibiting construction of billboards in residential areas without the consent of a majority of property owners in the affected blocks. The Court held that the City had not impermis-sibly delegated its legislative authority to private citizens by permitting the prohibition against erection “to be modified with the consent of the persons who are most affected by such modification.” Id. at 531, 37 S.Ct. at 192. Rather than being put at a disadvantage, the Court noted, the billboard manufacturer “obviously may be benefited by this provision, for without it the prohibition of the erection of such billboards in such residence section is absolute. He who is not injured by the operation of a law or ordinance cannot be said to be deprived by it of either constitutional right or of property.” Id. at 530, 37 S.Ct. at 191.9
Of course, before private persons may legislatively acquire any say with respect to property belonging to others, the legislative regulation must itself be “otherwise valid” in the sense that its provisions must serve a legitimate governmental function. *536See Silverman v. Barry, supra, 845 F.2d at 1086. Seattle Trust Co. v. Roberge, 278 U.S. 116, 49 S.Ct. 50, 73 L.Ed. 210 (1928), on which the owners rely, is distinguishable both from Cusack and from the present case because the regulation there invalidated served no such permissible purpose. In Roberge, a zoning ordinance permitted establishment of “philanthropic home[s] for children or old people” only with the consent of two-thirds of the adjoining landowners. Id. 278 U.S. at 118, 49 S.Ct. at 50. In holding the ordinance unconstitutional, the Court emphasized that there had been no legislative determination that the proposed building and use would be inconsistent with public health, safety, morals or general welfare. Id. at 121, 49 S.Ct. at 51. The Court distinguished Cusack on the grounds that the legislative facts there found were “sufficient to warrant the conclusion that such billboards would or were liable to endanger the safety and decency of such districts.” Id. 278 U.S. at 122, 49 S.Ct. at 52. By contrast, there was no finding in Roberge that a home for the aged “is liable to work any injury, inconvenience or annoyance to the community, the district, or any person.” Id. The present case is like Cusack and unlike Ro-berge, for the Council has spelled out in detail the dangers to the public peace, health, safety, and welfare which the RHCSA was designed to address.
The distinction between Cusack on the one hand and Roberge and Eubank v. City of Richmond, 226 U.S. 137, 33 S.Ct. 76, 57 L.Ed. 156 (1912)10 on the other has precipitated some judicial11 and other12 criticism. We agree with our federal brethren in Sil-verman, however, that the Eu-bank-Cusack-Roberge trilogy presents a coherent set of principles sufficient to sustain the RHCSA.13 In any event, more than half a century has passed since the Supreme Court last struck down, on due process grounds, a statute delegating Congressional authority, see Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S.Ct. 837, 79 L.Ed. 1570 (1935); Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388, 55 S.Ct. 241, 79 L.Ed. 446 (1935), and we perceive little basis for concluding that the analysis in Cusack14 will, or should, be abandoned. Given the presumption of constitutionality, the view of the United States Court of Appeals that the Act is constitutional,15 and the continuing viability of Cu-*537sack, we find no due process violation in the RHCSA.
C. Uncompensated Taking.
The owners claim that by enacting the RHCSA and the rent control laws, and by effecting “delays through the use of illegal ordinances,” the District has taken their property for public use without just compensation, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Judge Doyle’s order granting the District summary judgment did not explicitly address this issue. The panel found dismissal of the taking claim on the pleadings to be premature, because resolution of the issue requires an “essentially ad hoc factual inquiry.” 530 A.2d at 1185, citing Loretto v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S. 419, 426, 102 S.Ct. 3164, 3171, 73 L.Ed.2d 868 (1983). Although our emphasis differs from the panel’s, we agree that a remand is required.
To prove a taking under the Fifth Amendment, it is not necessary to demonstrate that the property was “taken” in the narrow sense of the word, nor need the government have directly appropriated the title, possession, or use of the property. Richmond Elks Hall Assn. v. Richmond Redevelopment Agency, 561 F.2d 1327, 1330 (9th Cir.1977). A land use regulation effects a taking if it denies an owner any economically viable use of his land. Agins v. Tiburon; 447 U.S. 255, 260, 100 S.Ct. 2138, 2141, 65 L.Ed.2d 106 (1980); Nollan v. California Coastal Com’n, 483 U.S. 825, 833-34, 107 S.Ct. 3141, 3146, 97 L.Ed.2d 677 (1987). The just compensation clause does not, however, require that a landowner be permitted to make the most profitable use of his property. Quite the contrary, diminution in property value, standing alone, does not establish a taking, especially where the property is capable of earning a reasonable return within the governmental restrictions. Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104, 129, 131, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 2661, 2662, 57 L.Ed.2d 631 (1978); see Keystone Bituminous Coal Ass’n v. DeBenedictis, 480 U.S. 470, 495-96, 107 S.Ct. 1232, 1247, 94 L.Ed. 2d 472 (1987); 900 G Street Assoc. v. Dept. of Housing, 430 A.2d 1387, 1390-91 (D.C.1981).
These principles have been applied to situations similar to the one that confronts us here. In Griffin Development Co. v. City of Oxnard, supra, the Supreme Court of California upheld, against a Fifth Amendment challenge, a regulation which effectively prohibited condominium conversion. The court noted that the owner was “free to continue to rent its apartments, unaffected by the ordinance; the regulations apply only to its plans to convert the apartments to condominiums.” 39 Cal.3d at 259, 217 Cal.Rptr. at 1, 703 P.2d at 344-45. The court observed that most land use regulations have the effect of reducing the value of regulated properties, but concluded that even a significant diminution in value is insufficient to establish a prohibited taking. Id. at 2, 217 Cal.Rptr. at 260, 703 P.2d at 345. See also Troy Ltd. v. Renna, 727 F.2d 287, 300-02 (3d Cir.1984) (upholding a forty-year statutory tenancy for senior citizens following condominium conversion against contention that it constituted an uncompensated taking in violation of Fifth Amendment), and the opinion of Silberman, J., concurring in the denial of rehearing in Silverman, supra, 271 U.S. App.D.C. at 180, 851 F.2d at 435.
In the present case, as in Griffin, supra, the owners are free to continue to use the Savoy as rental property. They complain in conclusory fashion that the District’s rent control laws promote expropriation, but the Supreme Court declined, only last term, to reconsider Block v. Hirsh, 256 U.S. 135, 41 S.Ct. 458, 65 L.Ed. 865 (1921) and its progeny, upholding the constitutionality of rent control. Pennell, supra, 485 U.S. at -, 108 S.Ct. at 857-58 n. 6. Moreover, the District permits a landlord to file a hardship petition and obtain an up*538ward adjustment of the rent if his rate of return has been less than 12% per year, § 45-2522, a provision which appears to make the law anything but confiscatory. Given these circumstances, as well as the presumption of constitutionality, the difficulties with the owners' contention that the District has taken their property without compensation may not be easy to surmount.
We conclude, however, that the procedural posture of the litigation precludes its final disposition on this appeal. The case came before Judge Doyle on the District’s motion for summary judgment. • The District’s statement, pursuant to Super.Ct. Giv.R. 12-I(k), of material facts as to which there was alleged to be no genuine issue, focused entirely on the owners’ statutory claims, and did not address the factual context of the issue of uncompensated taking. The owners’ statement of what they claimed to be genuine disputed issues of material fact, filed in response to the motion and in compliance with the same Rule, also addressed the statutory claims alone. Accordingly, the record as to uncompensated taking is deficient, which is problematical in a situation in which, as the panel noted, an ad hoc case by case inquiry is called for.
The District contends, and we agree, that the owners bear the burden of proof to establish an unconstitutional taking. The District goes on to argue that the owners, having access to the relevant evidence, presented nothing to the trial court which would demonstrate the unavailability of alternative economic uses for the property. The owners having failed to establish that material facts were at issue, says the District, summary judgment followed “as a matter of course.”
The problem with the District’s argument, however, is that although the owners bear the ultimate burden with respect to the substantive issue, the party seeking summary judgment has the burden of showing that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Super.Ct.Civ.R. 56(c). In the present posture of the case, with the District’s Rule 12-I(k) statement devoted to other matters, we apprehend that the owners were not fully and fairly put on notice that they were required to submit affidavits or other materials from which the court might find that a genuine issue of material fact exists. For all practical purposes, they were given no factual material to which to respond.
Accordingly, in order to ensure that the owners do not forfeit a constitutional claim as a result of a procedural focus by both sides on other matters, we remand the case to the Superior Court for further proceedings with respect to the uncompensated taking claim. In light of the possibility that this claim lacks substance, we suggest, but do not require, that in lieu of proceeding to trial, the parties be permitted to supplement their submissions in support of and in opposition to the motion for summary judgment and to provide affidavits or other materials relevant to the question whether there was an unconstitutional taking. Further consideration may be given to that motion after this has been accomplished.
IV
The judgment is affirmed with respect to the owners’ statutory and due process claims. The case is remanded to the Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion with respect to the uncompensated taking claim.

So ordered.

. Qualifications for ■ voting are governed by § 45-1612(d). Basically, a head of household may vote if he has lived in the accommodation at least 90 days before the election and is not and has not recently been an employee of the owner.

. The owners’ statutory claims are grounded in •this history of restrictions and in the invalidation of one emergency measure in District of Columbia v. Washington Home Ownership Council, Inc., 415 A.2d 1349 (D.C.1980) (en banc). The panel effectively disposed of these statutory contentions in Part I of its opinion in this case. 530 A.2d at 1180-81. We adopt as our own this part of the vacated panel opinion and address the issue no further.

.For other aspects of this regulatory scheme, see, e.g., §§ 45-2501 (rent control); 45-2531 (tenant assistant); 45-2551 (eviction controls).

. To the purist who winces when Latin is misused, the plural of condominium is condominia.

. The courts of this jurisdiction have also long adhered to the doctrine that statutes are not to be pronounced unconstitutional on the basis of “slight implication and vague conjecture,” and that the opposition between the Constitution and law must be such "that the judge feels a clear and strong conclusion of their incompatibility with each other.” Thompson v. Riggs, 6 D.C. 99, 111 (1864), aff'd, 72 U.S. (5 Wall.) 663 (1866). "Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a reasonable doubt.” Bernardin v. Seymour, 10 App.D.C. 294, 305 (1897), aff'd sub nom. United States v. Duell, 172 U.S. 576, 19 S.Ct. 286, 43 L.Ed. 559 (1899).

. Another stated purpose of the legislation is "to encourage the formation of tenant organizations.” § 45-1602(6).

. “The demand for perfection must inevitably compromise with the hard facts of political life." Vance v. Bradley, supra, 440 U.S. at 108 n. 26, 99 S.Ct. at 948 n. 26.

. Given the Council’s stated purposes, we know of no flawless legislative solution that would achieve all of them. The Council could have made the ban on conversion absolute, see Griffin Development Co. v. City of Oxnard, 39 Cal.3d 256, 217 Cal.Rptr. 1, 703 P.2d 339 (1985), but this would have placed further restrictions on the choices available both to owners and to their tenants. Another alternative would have been to fashion legislative standards, with the wishes of tenants being one factor, but the Council could reasonably conclude that this would have necessitated more administrative hearings, more bureaucracy, more litigation and more delay.

. We think that in the present case the tenant consent provision, like its functional counterpart in Cusack, probably inures to the benefit of the owners rather than to their disadvantage. The RHCSA contains a very broad severability clause, § 45-1663, which directs that if any "provision, section, clause, phrase or word" is held invalid, the remainder of the Act shall not be affected. See abo Gary v. United States, 499 A.2d 815, 821 (D.C.1985) (en banc), cert. denied sub nom. Cole v. United States, 475 U.S. 1086, 106 S.Ct. 1470, 89 L.Ed.2d 725 (1986) and authorities there cited (discussing presumption of severability). A consideration of the Council's findings and statement of purposes, as well as the legislative history of the Act, see Commission on Housing & Economic Development, Council of the District of Columbia, Report on Bill 322 (May 13, 1980), strongly suggests that if the Council had been compelled to elect between an outright ban on conversion and a scheme which would permit such action even without the consent of the tenants, it would probably have chosen the former as a means of dealing with the unrelenting housing crisis. Given this analysis, the question arises whether the owners have standing to complain of the tenant consent requirement since, if that requirement were eliminated, the restrictions on the owners would be even more severe. Actual or threatened injury in fact is, of course, indispensable to standing. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498-501, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2204-06, 42 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). This issue not having been expressly raised by the District, however, we rest our decision on other grounds.

. In Eubank, which was decided before Cu-sack, the Court struck down as fatally lacking in standards an ordinance which directed a municipal agency to prohibit construction of buildings beyond a certain line if two thirds of the abutting landowners requested it.

. See, e.g., the panel decision in the present case, 530 A.2d at 1183; Drovers Trust & Savings Bank v. City of Chicago, 18 Ill.2d 476, 478, 165 N.E.2d 314, 315 (1960).

. See, e.g., Note, The Validity of Ordinances Limiting Condominium Conversions, 78 Mich.L. Rev. 124 (1979). Drawing upon a level of certitude as to who knows best which is often directly proportional to youth but inversely proportional to experience, the student editors allude contemptuously to the "fatuousness" of a distinction which the Supreme Court justices almost unanimously found persuasive. Id. at 137-38.

. As the court explained in Silverman, supra, 269 U.S.App.D.C. at 341, 845 F.2d at 1086:
In order for a legislative delegation to private citizens to survive a due process challenge, t e. <rourt instructs that two criteria must be satisfied. First, the underlying exercise of authority must be a reasonable regulation within the power of the government. Cusack, 242 U.S. at 528, 37 S.Ct. at 190. Second, the legislature’s restriction must be in the form of a general prohibition, and the delegation must be in the form of permitting private citizens to waive the protection of that prohibition. Id. at 531, 37 S.Ct. at 192....
The court held, and we agree, that the RHCSA meets each prong of this test because "[t]he interest of a municipality in the conversion of its apparent stock to condominiums and cooperatives cannot be gainsaid,” and because “[i]ts tenant election provision is phrased as a blanket prohibition that can be overcome through a tenant election.” Id. at 342, 845 F.2d at 1087. Cf. opinion of Silberman, J., concurring in the denial of rehearing in Silverman, 271 U.S.App.D.C. at 179, 851 F.2d at 434.

. Both New Motor Vehicle Board v. Orrin W. Fox Co., supra and Eastlake v. Forest City Enterprises, Inc., 426 U.S. 668, 677-78 n. 12, 96 S.Ct. 2358, 2364 n. 12, 49 L.Ed.2d 132 (1976) suggest that Cusack is alive and well.

. Although only a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States is binding on us, even with respect to a federal constitutional issue, we believe that we should treat Silverman as per*537suasive authority both on the basis of its reasoning and in the interest of harmony between court systems and uniformity of result in the same geographical area. See State v. Knowles, 371 A.2d 624, 627-28 (Me.1977); Littlefield v. State Dept. of Human Services, 480 A.2d 731, 737 (Me.1984).