Richard Pennell and Tri-county Apartment House Owners Association v. City of San Jose and City Council of San Jose (485 U.S. 1)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 24, 1988 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 485 U.S. 1 · 108 S. Ct. 849
- Decided
- February 24, 1988
- Term
- October Term 1987
- Vote
- 6–2
- Majority author
- Justice Rehnquist
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court. This case involves a challenge to a rent control ordinance enacted by the city of San Jose, California, that allows a hearing officer to consider, among other factors, the “hardship to a tenant” when determining whether to approve a rent increase proposed by a landlord. Appellants Richard Pennell and the Tri-County Apartment House Owners Association sued in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County seeking a declaration that the ordinance, in particular the “tenant hardship” provisions, are “facially unconstitutional and therefore . . . illegal and void.” The Superior Court entered judgment on the pleadings in favor of appellants, sustaining their claim that the tenant hardship provisions violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. The California Court of Appeal affirmed this judgment, 154 Cal. App. 3d 1019, 201 Cal. Rptr. 728 (1984), but the Supreme Court of California reversed, 42 Cal. 3d 365, 721 P. 2d 1111 (1986), each by a divided vote. The majority of the Supreme Court rejected appellants’ arguments under the Takings Clause and the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment; the dissenters in that court thought that the tenant hardship provisions were a “forced subsidy imposed on the landlord” in violation of the…
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