Advertisement
Contrary to Mr. Evanson’s claims, the courts have never held that these First Amendment freedoms are subordinate to property rights or that these rights depend on the right to own property.
If anything, First Amendment rights have been considered to have greater constitutional protection than property rights. In Abrahams v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that legislation that effects property or economic rights needed only a rational basis to establish its constitutionality whereas limitations on freedom of speech could only be justified by a “clear and present danger.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that government actions that infringe on property rights must merely “reasonably relate to a legitimist interest” while First Amendment freedoms usually receive more protection under a standard the court refers to as “strict scrutiny.”
Evanson’s argument that government regulation of property “takes that value with confiscatory zoning regulations,” and that the public’s only “proper means” of protecting the bluffs “is to purchase the bluff” is mistaken.
In order to protect public health, safety and the general welfare of a community, government may pass zoning laws, which protect scenic surroundings, aesthetic values and environmental quality.
A strong bluff land ordinance is not confiscatory because developers can still build homes on the bluffs, but the homes would not be allowed to be visible from below.
If the only option to protect the general welfare was to buy the property, none of us would be safe from nonconforming uses. Strip clubs could be built in residential areas or factories could be built in agriculture areas, and the only action government could take would be to buy the property to prevent the nonconforming use.
|
More Letters: |
