City of Santa Barbara v. Adamson

610 P.2d 436, 27 Cal. 3d 123, 164 Cal. Rptr. 539, 12 A.L.R. 4th 219, 1980 Cal. LEXIS 168
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedMay 15, 1980
DocketL.A. 31126
StatusPublished
Cited by141 cases

This text of 610 P.2d 436 (City of Santa Barbara v. Adamson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Santa Barbara v. Adamson, 610 P.2d 436, 27 Cal. 3d 123, 164 Cal. Rptr. 539, 12 A.L.R. 4th 219, 1980 Cal. LEXIS 168 (Cal. 1980).

Opinions

Opinion

NEWMAN, J.

“All people. . .have inalienable rights”, proclaims the California Constitution in the first sentence of article I. The second sentence reads: “Among these [inalienable rights] are enjoying. . life and liberty,. . . possessing. . . property, and pursuing and obtaining. . . happiness, and privacy.”1

Appellants argue that Santa Barbara and the trial court have violated those rights because the court, on request of the city, ordered appellants to comply with a city ordinance which requires, in the zone where appellants and other individuals live together, that all occupants of houses like that in which they reside be members of a family.

[127]*127Section 28.10.030 of the ordinance commands that no premises be used “in any manner other than is permitted in the zones in which such . . . premises are located.” Other sections describe the zones; those most directly involved here are the one-family, two-family, and multiple-family residence zones. The trial court concluded that appellants may not reside in such zones because they and individuals with whom they wish to live are not within the ordinance’s definition of “family”:

“28.04.230 Family.
“1. An individual, or two (2) or more persons related by blood, marriage or legal adoption living together as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit.. . .
“2. A group of not to exceed five (5) persons, excluding servants, living together as a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit.”

The record shows that appellants are three residents of a house in a single-family zone where the minimum lot-size is one acre. They and other individuals form a group of 12 adults who live in a 24-room, 10-bedroom, 6-bathroom house owned by appellant Adamson. The occupants are in their late 20’s or early 30’s and include a business woman, a graduate biochemistry student, a tractor-business operator, a real estate woman, a lawyer, and others. They are not related by blood, marriage, or adoption.

They moved into the house after Adamson acquired it on December 1, 1977. On February 9, 1978, following warnings, the city attorney sued for a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, and permanent injunction. A restraining order was issued on March 7, 1978; a preliminary injunction on March 29, 1978.

Appellants’ household illustrates the kind of living arrangements prohibited by the ordinance’s rule-of-five. (§ 28.04.230, subd. 2, supra.) They chose to reside with each other when Adamson made it known she was looking for congenial people with whom to share her house. Since then, they explain, they have become a close group with social, economic, and psychological commitments to each other. They share expenses, rotate chores, and eat evening meals together. Some have children who regularly visit. Two (not including Adamson) have contributed over $2,000 each to improving the house and defraying costs of this lawsuit. Emotional support and stability are provided by the members to each other; they enjoy recreational activities such as a trip to Mexico togeth[128]*128er; they have chosen to live together mainly because of their compatibility.

Regarding physical environment, the house has 6,231 square feet of space and is hidden from the street by trees and a fence. It has off-street parking for at least 12 cars. Appellants have built a wall around part of the property and a new, private driveway to help isolate them from neighbors’ houses. There is no evidence of overcrowding though, after appellants had arrived, some neighbors did notice a larger number of cars parked on the property and an understandable increase in the number of residents.

Appellants say that they regard their group as “a family” and that they seek to share several values of conventionally composed families. A living arrangement like theirs concededly does achieve many of the personal and practical needs served by traditional family living. It could be termed an alternate family. It meets half of Santa Barbara’s definition because it is “a single housekeeping unit in a dwelling unit.” It fails to meet the part of the definition that requires residents, if they are more than five and are not servants, to be related by blood, marriage,. or adoption.

The Ordinance’s Restrictions

Valid laws can, of course, be written to help promote and protect values that family life enhances. The question in this case is whether that kind of law may deny to individuals who are not family members certain benefits that family members enjoy.

The ordinance at issue is 93 pages long. The words “family” and “families” are used at least 85 times. Because of various phrases in which the words are used it appears that, in Santa Barbara, appellants and their associates are denied the right to reside together in a one-family, two-family, or multiple-family dwelling, a “garden apartment development,” and “a trailer or cabana or combination thereof.” Other possible abodes not adaptable to their needs include hotel (“the more or less temporary abiding place of individuals who are lodged”), tourist court (“designated for...[use] temporarily by automobile tourists or transients”), and auto trailer (“designed... to travel on the public thoroughfares at the maximum allowable speed limit”).

[129]*129Where then, according to the ordinance, might they reside together? Apparently nowhere, with three exceptions: First, if any five or less of them were acceptable as masters, perhaps the others then could sign on as servants. (See § 28.04.230, which in part defines family as any “group of not to exceed five (5) persons, excluding servants..cf. § 28.04.180: “all necessary servants and employees of such family.” The legality of such clauses has not been argued here, but they appear to present equal protection questions.)

Second, if appellants could meet the requirements of section 28.94.001 they then might obtain from the Planning Commission a conditional use permit to maintain a boarding house in another zone, unlike where they now reside. (See § 28.94.030, subd. 17; also § 28.04.100, stating that a boarding house is “[a] building where meals and/or lodging are provided for compensation for six (6) or more persons by pre-arrangement for definite periods.”)

Third, they might apply for a variance pursuant to chapter 28.92 of the ordinance. (We discuss below this suggestion of the city attorney, as well as his “boarding house” suggestion.)

Do the ordinance’s restrictions, with those three exceptions, respect the commands of the California Constitution concerning people’s rights to enjoy life and liberty, to possess property, and to pursue and obtain happiness and privacy?

Our leading precedent on privacy is White v. Davis (1975) 13 Cal. 3d 757 [120 Cal.Rptr. 94, 533 P.2d 222], where this court observed that “the general concept of "privacy relates, of course, to an enormously broad and diverse field of personal action and belief....” (Id., pp. 773-774; and see fn. 10 regarding “the wide variety of contexts in which the constitutional privacy analysis has been employed”; Bostwick, A Taxonomy of Privacy: Repose, Sanctuary, and Intimate Decision (1976) 64 Cal.L.Rev.

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Bluebook (online)
610 P.2d 436, 27 Cal. 3d 123, 164 Cal. Rptr. 539, 12 A.L.R. 4th 219, 1980 Cal. LEXIS 168, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-santa-barbara-v-adamson-cal-1980.