If you thought Kyle was bad . . .

try Sunnyvale, an eastern suburb of Dallas.

It faced a lawsuit similar to the one pending against Kyle.[1]  Here's the federal judge's description of Sunnyvale's set-up:

Nestled in the midst of towns defined by the shopping malls and dense apartment development for which the Dallas Metropolitan Area has become famous, Sunnyvale presents a stark contrast. It is a beautiful, rural, Texas town with almost 11,000 acres of rolling hills and green grassland and only 2,000 residents. Sunnyvale has no shopping malls and no apartment developments. The secret to Sunnyvale's success is its unusual zoning laws, including an outright ban on apartments and a one-acre zoning requirement for residential development.

The judge ruled that Sunnyvale's zoning had a disproportionate effect on African-Americans.  More damning, he ruled that the city had adopted the regulations with the intention of discriminating against African-Americans.

The judge was probably persuaded by citizen comments like this one, made at a zoning hearing on the town's first proposed multi-family project:

We'll build that fence up, we'll hold that gate there and as long as we can hold those Indians off, fine.  And, when they bust through then we pay the price . . . there's an over abundance of multi-family housing around here and we're not like that.  But, we're boxed in . . . personally, I'd rather not see any apartments or any cottage homes in Sunnyvale.  Period.

I've discounted the possibility that Kyle was actually motivated by race.  I suspect that's unlikely with fast-growing suburbs because they're less likely to be racially homogeneous.  But obviously, if the plaintiffs have turned up hard evidence of discriminatory intent, Kyle will be in real trouble.  The hit to its reputation would dwarf any impact on its zoning authority.

[1]Dews v. Town of Sunnyvale, Texas, 109 F. Supp.2d 526 (N. D. Tex. 2000).

Comments

[el_longhorn]

That legal analysis has always been a tough one for me, since intent is always so difficult to prove...even when everyone involved KNOWS race is the issue, the evidence is difficult to unearth and introduce. I would suggest that where there is a disproportionate racial impact, why not flip the burden - make the defendant show that the impact was NOT motivated by racial bias.

Voter ID is a great example. It will probably survive a challenge because the stated intent is election integrity, but everyone knows that what the Republicans pushing this are going for is the 1-2% reduction in the votes of elderly minority citizens, which will swing close races their way. Can I prove this in court? No. But with literally no evidence of identity fraud in voting, what other explanation is there?

[AC]

The disparate-impact standard would be too easy for plaintiffs to meet. Almost all land-use decisions can be portrayed as having some impact; the lawyers would have fun inventing arguments that the impacts are disproportionate. (Would rezoning east 12th for VMU have a disproportionate impact?)

The FHA would just turn into another NIMBY tool.

The disparate-impact analysis bothers me a lot less for civil rights/voting cases. (In fact, I thought the Voting Rights Act used some standard like that to circumvent the creative strategies employed by southern states.)