As a result of complaints by the Town about “quality-of-life issues resulting from high turnover and absentee landlords” who owned student housing which resulted in “overcrowding, property abuse, excessive traffic, noise, litter public drunkenness, underage drinking and fights,” which the Town viewed as results of large gatherings of people, including parties, and as a result deemed the gatherings when they become unruly to be “a threat to the peace, health, safety, or general welfare of the public,” the town enacted as Ordinance that made it a public nuisance to conduct a gathering of five or more persons on any private property in a manner which constitutes a substantial disturbance of the quiet enjoyment of private or public property in a significant segment of a neighborhood. The Ordinance specified “excessive noise or traffic, obstruction of public streets by crowds or vehicles, illegal parking, public drunkenness, public urination, the service of alcohol to minors, fights, disturbances of the peace, and litter” as events which could constitute a substantial disturbance.
The Ordinance also required that once the police intervened at a gathering on a property, an orange sticker, which acted as a notice, would be posted stating that the police had intervened because of a public nuisance at the property. In addition the sticker made the residents, owners, and any guests aware of their potential joint and several liability for any public nuisance which occurred after the notice had been posted. The Ordinance also threatened residents and the owner of the property with a $100.00 fine if any notice was “removed or defaced.” Furthermore the repeated violations requiring “police intervention at an unruly gathering during [the specified period required by the notice]” resulted a penalty for a first violation of a fine of $300, the second resulted in a $400 fine, and the third violation resulted in a $500 fine. In addition violators could “receiv[e] community service for the first nuisance abatement” and were mandated to perform community service if a second occurred.
Students and owners of rental property in the Town challenged the Ordinance alleging it was unconstitutional and preempted by state statute. The students claimed that when they were charged with a violation, they were evicted from their apartments and disciplined by URI. The property owners claimed that after notices of violation were posted to their properties under the ordinance, they have been unable to rent their property.
The Court found baseless the Plaintiff’s substantive due process claim, right to association claim, and void for vagueness challenges. With respect to Plaintiffs’ procedural due process claim (that allowing the police to place orange stickers on property the police are thus allowed to “defame and humiliate landlords and tenants without due process of law”), the court recognized the fact “there [was] no opportunity to challenge the posting of ‘unruly gathering’ notices” was “the most troubling aspect of the Ordinance,” however, applying First Circuit precedent, the Court held that the alleged liberty and property interests fell short of constitutional protection. Further, the court noted that the claims were the result of third party and not the State actions, as “[T]he academic discipline and vacant apartment ar[ose] from independent decisions of actors who are” not related to the Town: “namely URI officials and prospective tenants who elected not to rent houses with stickers.”
With respect to their Equal Protection challenge, the court found the Ordinance valid, as “the purpose of the Ordinance is to improve the quality of life in the Town by discouraging parties that attract lawbreaking activity, which flourish due to seasonal housing and absentee landlords.” The court concluded that “to this end, it prohibits gatherings that create a nuisance as a result of misdemeanors such as excessive noise, traffic, public drunkenness, underage drinking, fights, and litter” which the court had “little difficulty [in] concluding this effort [was] rationally related to the stated objective.”
Finally plaintiffs claimed that the state Residential Landlord and Tenant Act preempted the Ordinance. However, the Court held that the plaintiffs were unable to show “that the Ordinance ‘conflicts’ with the Act, or that the state legislature intended the Act to ‘completely occupy the field of regulation’ on landlord and tenant law.” Therefore, there was no legitimate claim that it intended the Act to fully occupy the field.
URI Student Senate v. Town of Narragansett, 2010 WL 22587, (D.R.I., 1/22/2010).
The opinion can be accessed at: http://www.riaclu.org/documents/URI_orange_sticker_decision.pdf
For more information about this case, visit the Rhode Island ACLU site at: http://www.riaclu.org/CourtCases/Case/URIStudentSenateVNarragansett.html
This case brings up an interesting aspect of nuisance law that I have always been concerned with, namely, whether people can be considered nuisances. Here, college students with a propensity for partying are effectively deemed to be nuisances as their actions constitute “a threat to the peace, health, safety, or general welfare of the public.” The language of the ordiance, however, gets around expressly naming college students, by classifying their actions as nuisances.
Not all nuisance ordinances are chartachterized so broadly, when clearly aimed at one aspect of people. For instance, can an ordinance classify a certain type of person as a nusiance. In my home town, Rutland, Vermont the city counsil passed an ordinances declaring registered sex offenders as public nuisances. A similar ordiance was deemed unconstitutional in Barre, Vermont when Chris Hagen, a registered sex offender was precluded from living within 1,000 feet from, among other places, a public playground. The court held that while Vermont enabling statutes allow municipalities the power to define what a public nuisance is under 24 V.S.A. § 2291(14), identifying sex offenders as public nuisances is “not traditionally within the legal concept of a public right” protected by the public nuisance doctrine and therefore was not lawfully enacted under 24
V.S.A. § 2291(14). did not grant municipalities such power.
Nuisance ordiances that specifically targets a specific group of people, regardless of whether they constitute a protected class under equal protection, should not be upheld. People are not nuisances. Their actions, or lack their of, can be nuisances.
By: Patrick Collins on November 21, 2010
at 3:49 pm