Stewart v. Inhabitants of Durham: An Exclusionary Purpose Ignored

Exclusionary zoning of mobile homes has become an increasingly important issue in Maine because of escalating costs of conventional housing and rising unmet housing needs. Although towns may regulate mobile home or any other housing use in order to foster public health, safety, morals, or general welfare, they may not enact a zoning ordinance to exclude people of lower income in an attempt to avoid the "increased governmental costs and the stresses upon public services which generally accompany such an incursion." In Stewart v. Inhabitants of Durham, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court was confronted with an exclusionary purpose in a zoning ordinance. The court chose to avoid the issue by construing an ordinance so narrowly as to avoid a constitutional issue. The court's reliance on this expedient principle of statutory interpretation raises troubling questions in the context of exclusionary zoning challenges. In Stewart, the plaintiffs challenged the expansive application of Durham's zoning ordinance, a challenge which the Law Court refused to recognize. The plaintiffs demonstrated that the application of the ordinance's grandfather clause lacked a rational relation to general public welfare and discriminated in favor of local residents. The Law Court avoided the "as applied" challenge in Stewart by construing the ordinance in an alternative manner. The Law Court should be willing to fashion a remedy for plaintiffs who establish bona fide challenges to an ordinance's application. By denying the plaintiff in Stewart relief, the Law Court has in effect encouraged exclusionary zoning practices. Future plaintiffs will be reluctant to challenge the exclusionary application of ordinances because of the bleak prospects for success. At a minimum, the Law Court in Stewart should have granted the plaintiff relief by applying its interpretation of the ordinance prospectively, and allowed the plaintiff's mobile home into Durham. Optimally, the Law Court should have invalidated the ordinance in its entirety because of its exclusionary purpose. By granting relief to the plaintiff the Law Court would have demonstrated effectively to other municipalities that such exclusionary zoning practices would no longer be tolerated.