holding that the plaintiff's allegations that a village "intentionally demanded a 33-foot easement as a condition of connecting [the plaintiff's] property to the municipal water supply where the Village required only a 15-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners ..., quite apart from the Village's subjective motivation, are sufficient to state a claim for relief under traditional equal protection analysis.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that the plaintiff's allegations that a village "intentionally demanded a 33-foot easement as a condition of connecting [the plaintiff's] property to the municipal water supply where the Village required only a 15-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners ..., quite apart from the Village's subjective motivation, are sufficient to state a claim for relief under traditional equal protection analysis.”
- holding that a class-of-one plaintiff sufficiently alleged that she was “intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there [wa]s no rational basis for the difference in treatment” where the defendant for no apparent reason demanded far more from her than “similarly situated property owners” after her “successful lawsuit” against the defendant
- holding that homeowner could assert equal protection claim as class of one against Defendant municipality where Defendant intentionally demanded a 33-foot easement as a condition of connecting plaintiffs property to the municipal water supply where it required only a 15-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners
- holding that a plaintiff asserts a valid equal protection claim when he (i) is a member of a protected class and was treated differently from members of an unprotected class, or (ii) belongs to a “class of one” and was treated differently from others similarly situated without any rational basis for the difference in treatment
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Declined to follow by Scarbrough v. Morgan County Board of Education, 470 F.3d 250 (2006)
528 U.S. 562, 564, 120 S.Ct. 1073, 145 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2000), we decline to extend the fundamental rights analysis to classes of one.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Paul Scarbrough v. Morgan County Board Of Education, 470 F.3d 250 (2006)
While we recognize that some equal protection claims involve a "class of one," see Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 564, 120 S.Ct. 1073, 145 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2000), we decline to extend the fundamental rights analysis to classes of one.
Distinguished by United States v. American Electric Power Service Corp., 258 F. Supp. 2d 804 (2003)
528 U.S. 562, 565, 120 S.Ct. 1073, 145 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2000)), but those are clearly distinguishable from this case, not least because here the claim is being asserted as a defense to statutorily-authorized civil enforcement proceedings, being pursued primarily by the federal government, whom Defendants clearly could not sue for such an alleged civil rights violation.
The opinion
Justice Breyer,
concurring in the result.
The Solicitor General and the village of Willowbrook have expressed concern lest we interpret the Equal Protection Clause in this case in a way that would transform many ordinary violations of city or state law into violations of the Constitution. It might be thought that a rule that looks only to an intentional difference in treatment and a lack of a rational basis for that different treatment would work such a transformation. Zoning decisions, for example, will often, perhaps almost always, treat one landowner differently from another, and one might claim that, when a city’s zoning authority takes an action that fails to conform to a city zoning regulation, it lacks a “rational basis” for its action (at least if the regulation in question is reasonably clear).
This case, however, does not directly raise the question whether the simple and common instance of a faulty zoning decision would violate the Equal Protection Clause. That is because the Court of Appeals found that in this case respond *566 ent had alleged an extra factor as well — a factor that the Court of Appeals called “vindictive action,” “illegitimate animus,” or “ill will.” 160 F. 3d 386, 388 (CA7 1998). And, in that respect, the court said this case resembled Esmail v. Macrane, 53 F. 3d 176 (CA7 1995), because the Esmail plaintiff had alleged that the municipality’s differential treatment “was the result not of prosecutorial discretion honestly (even if ineptly — even if arbitrarily) exercised but of an illegitimate desire to ‘get’ him.” 160 F. 3d, at 388 .
In my view, the presence of that added factor in this case is sufficient to minimize any concern about transforming run-of-the-mill zoning cases into cases of constitutional right. For this reason, along with the others mentioned by the Court, I concur in the result.