The Supreme Court used the doctrine of substantive due process to strike down a local zoning ordinance that prohibited extended families from living together in a single-unit residence.
A residential suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, wanting to maintain its character as a single-family neighborhood, enacted a zoning ordinance that restricted each dwelling to a single family. The ordinance defined a family so narrowly that it did not allow Inex Moore, a grandmother, to live with her two grandsons. When Moore refused to comply with the ordinance, she was sentenced to five days in jail and fined twenty-five dollars.
By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court held that the ordinance violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a plurality opinion, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.,
Belle Terre v. Boraas
Due process, substantive
Family and children
Griswold v. Connecticut