Title: Zoning Laws | The First Amendment Encyclopedia
Headings: The First Amendment Encyclopedia
The First Amendment Encyclopedia
Zoning Laws
By David Schultz (Updated September 2017 by David L. Hudson Jr.)
Burdensome, arbitrary and discriminatory zoning laws have been struck down
First Amendment challenges to zoning often deal with adult entertainment
Court has upheld zoning laws under secondary effects doctrine
Court has upheld zoning laws meant to regulate neighborhood activity

Content: Zoning Laws | The First Amendment Encyclopedia
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Zoning Laws
By David Schultz (Updated September 2017 by David L. Hudson Jr.)
Other articles in Categories of Laws and Proposed Laws
While a city's zoning regulations may not target non-obscene protected speech activities, the Supreme Court has given communities some power to utilize land use laws to regulate adult businesses under the secondary effects doctrine. ( Photo of a strip club in Chicago in 1976, by William C. Brubaker, part of the C. William Brubaker Collection at University of Illinois at Chicago, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
State and local governments use zoning laws and ordinances to regulate the uses of land within their borders. While land-use zoning generally does not raise First Amendment issues, a government that imposes controls to prevent certain businesses from operating may violate the latter’s rights to free speech. First Amendment issues often arise when the government uses its zoning power to restrict the location of adult businesses that feature sexually explicit, but non-obscene, expression. Burdensome, arbitrary and discriminatory zoning laws have been struck down
Zoning laws first came into existence in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century as various state and local governments sought to regulate property development to promote efficiency and to regulate use. For example, a community may wish to zone some areas for residential homes and others for manufacturing to prevent a factory from being built in the middle of an area full of homes. In Buchanan v. Warley (1917), the Court struck down a city law segregating neighborhoods by race as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, effectively making it unconstitutional to use zoning for racially discriminatory purposes. However, in Eucid v. Ambler Reality (1926) the U.S. Supreme Court upheld zoning as a valid use of a state or local government’s police power. Individuals have also successfully challenged zoning laws that were so onerous or burdensome that they effected an uncompensated taking of property contrary to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court has also overturned zoning laws when governments have imposed them in an arbitrary or capricious fashion, and plaintiffs may challenge zoning laws under the First Amendment when governments use such laws to suppress free expression.