Schenck v. City of Hudson
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
114 F.3d 590 (1997)
The City of Hudson (Hudson) (defendant) enacted an ordinance requiring residential-development allotments -- distributed twice yearly, 80 percent by a priority pool for pre-existing platted lots and the rest by lottery -- to manage growth so it wouldn't outpace infrastructure, with a hardship-petition option for landowners denied an allotment after a year. Mark Schenck and other landowners (plaintiffs), whose lots all qualified for the priority pool, ended up in a lottery anyway because every one of the 84 applicants in their distribution round happened to be priority applicants, and they sued for a permanent injunction against the ordinance; the district court granted a preliminary injunction, and Hudson appealed.
Whether, under constitutional law, an ordinance restricting zoning certificates in order to slow a municipality's growth until the municipality can sustain the growth is valid.