Cortland City's Zoning Restriction Against Rentals to Unrelated Groups of People Upheld

Landlords of residential properties in Cortland, N.Y., who rented properties primarily to groups of college students, sued the city in 2010. They claimed that a local ordinance requiring landlords to obtain rental permits before renting and limiting occupancy of dwelling units to "family" was unconstitutionally vague and that the limits set weren't reasonably related to a legitimate governmental purpose. They also claimed that the law's disclosure requirements concerning the number of tenants living in a building violated the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

The court ruled against landlords, who appealed and lost. The city's rental restrictions served a legitimate governmental interest in reducing public nuisances created from overcrowding of dwelling units occupied by transient residents. The law didn't favor certain types of families over others, or restrict the size of unrelated persons living as a functionally equivalent family without also restricting the size of a traditional family. The law also contained objective criteria for rebutting the presumption that four or more persons living together in a single dwelling unit who are unrelated by blood, marriage, or legal adoption don't constitute the functional equivalent of a traditional family.

Grodinsky v. City of Cortland: 2018 NY Slip Op 05236, 2018 WL 3383637 (App. Div. 3 Dept.; 7/12/18; Egan Jr., JP, Lynch, Mulvey, Aarons, Pritzker, JJ)