Plaintiffs were residents of a neighborhood in which the Detroit City Council approved the construction of a Super Kmart department store. The residents claimed that the development was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated substantive due process, was arbitrary and capricious and violated equal protection. The district court granted Defendants' motion for summary judgment. The court held that to establish a violation of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, a plaintiff would have to show that the state action "shocks the conscious of the court." Here, Plaintiffs made no showing other than to make conclusory allegations that the City Council's actions were arbitrary and capricious. The court also rejected Plaintiffs' argument that the zoning permitting the Super Kmart would constitute a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment. The court reasoned that the property to be rezoned does not belong to Plaintiffs, but to other parties who are actually seeking the rezoning. Nor was there any evidence that the rezoning of the property would deprive Plaintiffs of the viable use of their property. In any case, Plaintiffs' taking claim was premature, since such claims are not ripe until a property owner seeks compensation through the procedures the State has provided for doing so. Since Michigan law allows a property owner to bring an inverse condemnation suit to obtain just compensation for a taking, Plaintiffs had to utilize that procedure first. Finally, the court rejected Plaintiffs' claim that the Equal Protection Clause was violated simply because the community in which the development would be created is largely African-American. The court stated that this alone was insufficient to state a claim for equal protection, especially since the City of Detroit is predominantly African-American.
Neighborhood Legal Defense Fund v City of Detroit Planning & Development Dept., Civ. No. 97-CV-75261-DT, E.D. Mich., 07/09/98, Zatkoff, J.
This article was prepared by Mark A. Goldsmith, a partner in our Litigation Department, and previously appeared in the October, 1998 edition of the Michigan Bar Journal.