zoning ordinance was not an unreasonable extension of the village's police power and did not have the character of arbitrary fiat, and thus it was not unconstitutional. Further, the Court found that Ambler Realty had offered no evidence that the ordinance had any effect on the value of the property in question, but based their assertions of depreciation on speculation only. The court ruled that speculation was not a valid basis for a claim of takings. Ambler Realty had argued their case on the basis of the 14th Amendment's due process clause. The Court noted that the challenger in a due process case would have to show that the law in question is discriminatory and has no rational basis. The Court found that Euclid's zoning ordinance in fact did have a rational basis. Planner and lawyer Alfred Bettman, supported by the Ohio Planning Conference (now APA-Ohio, a chapter of the American Planning Association), submitted a friend of the court brief on behalf of Euclid, arguing that zoning is a form of nuisance control and therefore a reasonable police power measure. In short the court ruled that zoning ordinances, regulations and laws must find their justification in some aspect of police power and asserted for the public welfare. Benefit for the public welfare must be determined in connection with the circumstances, the conditions and the locality of the case. Significance Zoning precedent At the time of Euclid, zoning was a relatively new concept, and indeed there had been rumblings that it was an unreasonable intrusion into private property rights for a government to restrict how an owner might use property. The court, in holding that there was valid government interest in maintaining the character of a neighborhood and in regulating where certain land uses should occur, allowed for the subsequent explosion in zoning ordinances across the country. The court has never heard a case seeking to overturn Euclid. Today most local governments in the United States have zoning ordinances. The city of Houston, Texas, is the largest unzoned city in the United States. Less than two years later, the Supreme Court decided Nectow v. City of Cambridge (1928). In Nectow, the Court overturned a zoning ordinance for violating the 14th Amendment due process clause. Euclid The Ambler tract remained undeveloped for 20 years until General Motors built an aircraft plant there during World War II and later a GM Fisher Body