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Today we will continue our coverage of zoning, with a focus on aesthetics (a word I am incapable of spelling without spell check).

The lecture notes are here, and the live chat is here.

For the first case, State ex rel Stoyanoff v. Berkely, Ladue, MO is the wealthiest suburb of Missouri (anyone know what ex rel means?). The media income was $141,000. Check out the property values on Zillow–most houses are over $1 million. Ladue, also the site of the third case, City of Ladue v. Gileo, has particularly high property values in the Willow Hill subdivision.

This is a rendering of the Stoyanoff house:

For you Rand fans, the Stoyanoff case may remind you a bit of The Fountainhead.

Roark, the architect in the Fountainhead was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright who designed Falling Water.

 

For the second case, Anderson v. Issaquah, you can learn more about Issaquah, Washington here. Here is a map of 145 N.W. Gilman Blvd, Issaquah, WA. It seems to be an Auto Tech store now.

View Larger Map

And  for an adverse possession flashback, check out this video. A homeowner in Detroit left her house vacant for a year and a squatter moved in. The squatter put a lien on the house, and now refuses to leave. The homeowner is in the process of filing the action to oust the squatter. But until that happens, under Michigan law, the homeowner can’t physically eject the squatter. So, they are both living under the same roof. Unbelievable.

The Washington Post profiles the eponymous plaintiff in Gratz v. Bollinger:

For Gratz, it all started one day in the summer of 1997, when she came home to the Detroit suburbs from the Michigan summer camp where she’d been working. Her father had spotted a newspaper article about the use of affirmative action in University of Michigan admissions. He brought it up casually, Gratz recalls. He thought his daughter, who is white, had moved on from the pain of being rejected by the university two years earlier.

Wow, was he wrong.

Gratz, then 18, chased down the author of the article. She dug up contact numbers. She called lawyers and state representatives. She had to do something.

She fell in with attorneys who had been challenging affirmative action policies. “I thought I’d end up stuffing envelopes,” she recalls. She ended up becoming their star plaintiff.

While Gratz worked on a math degree at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, her real passions were directed toward her lawsuit. On campus, all her professors knew that she was at the center of a major legal fight — the camera crews that trailed her around the school might have been a tip-off.

There was a lower-court win, but on June 23, 2003 — almost exactly a decade ago — the Supreme Court had its say. And what it said filled her with pique.

Gratz was the winner, whose cause ended up being the loser. The court sided with Gratz, saying that she’d been discriminated against because the University of Michigan’s system of assigning bonus points in its ranking to minority applicants was too “mechanistic.” But Gratz’s case got lumped with another case — filed by Barbara Grutter, an applicant to the university’s law school.

…

By the time the court had ruled in their cases, Gratz had gotten married, moved to San Diego and launched her career as a computer software expert. Her wedding was just six months before the Supreme Court’s ruling, and she decided to keep her maiden name rather than put her attorneys through the considerable trouble of filing paperwork to reflect a name change. Later, once her name became associated with ballot campaigns against racial preferences in school admissions and government hiring, it made practical sense to retain the familiar moniker. To this day, she says, people sometimes unknowingly call her husband “Mr. Gratz.”

…

In the days after the court ruled in 2003, the sting of the decision was too much. She told her husband that she was quitting her job and going back to Michigan to work on the issue that consumed her so. Gratz was soon jetting around the country, pushing for state ballot initiatives to accomplish what her lawsuit could not.

It seems she has turned from brewing constitutional cases to brewing beer:

It will be easy for her to figure out how to celebrate her victories in years to come: with something cold. She and her husband just opened a new business near their home in southwest Florida: a microbrewery.

Today we will continue our coverage of zoning, with a focus on aesthetics (a word I am incapable of spelling without spell check).

The lecture notes are here, and the live chat is here.

For the first case, State ex rel Stoyanoff v. Berkely, Ladue, MO is the wealthiest suburb of Missouri (anyone know what ex rel means?). The media income was $141,000. Check out the property values on Zillow–most houses are over $1 million. Ladue, also the site of the third case, City of Ladue v. Gileo, has particularly high property values in the Willow Hill subdivision.

This is a rendering of the Stoyanoff house:

For you Rand fans, the Stoyanoff case may remind you a bit of The Fountainhead.

\

Roark, the architect in the Fountainhead was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright who designed Falling Water.

 

For the second case, Anderson v. Issaquah, you can learn more about Issaquah, Washington here. Here is a map of 145 N.W. Gilman Blvd, Issaquah, WA. It seems to be an Auto Tech store now.

View Larger Map

And  for an adverse possession flashback, check out this video. A homeowner in Detroit left her house vacant for a year and a squatter moved in. The squatter put a lien on the house, and now refuses to leave. The homeowner is in the process of filing the action to oust the squatter. But until that happens, under Michigan law, the homeowner can’t physically eject the squatter. So, they are both living under the same roof. Unbelievable.

On Thursday I flew from Houston (IAH) to Ft. Lauderdale (FLL) to visit my Grandpa in Boca (contrary to my fears in my last post in August, he is still with us, though mostly in body). On Friday, I drove across Florida to attend the GMU LEC Conference in Captiva. I left Captiva Monday and flew from Ft. Myers (RSW) back to Houston (IAH).

On Tuesday, I taught my two classes, and immediately after classes were over, I hightailed it to Houston’s other airport, Hobby (HOU) and flew to Reagan (DCA) with a layover in Atlanta (ATL). I got into DC around midnight.

Wednesday morning, I presented on a panel at Georgetown Law Center from 10:45-12:00, then did a number of important interviews for my book. I returned to GULC at 4:00 for an all-star panel on the Supreme Court. I was supposed to fly home  from DCA to ATL to HOU on Airtran, but there were some massive thunderstorms in Atlanta. While following the Supreme Court panel, my DCA flight went from delayed by 20 minutes to 40 minutes to 1 hour to 2 hours (it was cancelled around 9:00 p.m.). At that point, I realized I would never make my connection in Atlanta.

I have class Thursday at 9:00 a.m., and I am loathe to cancel class unless absolutely necessary (it hasn’t happened yet). I even made provisions to teach the class by Skype in the event I got stranded. So I checked other flights, and purchased a direct ticket on Southwest from BWI to HOU. Rather than taking the Metro to Reagan, I took the MARC to BWI (my 7th airport!) and flew direct back to HOU.

Major props to Airtran. They refunded the cost for the leg from Reagan to Atlanta to Houston, even before the flight was cancelled–and they did it from the BWI ticket counter!

I am really excited, because in addition to class tomorrow, Professor Michael Krauss from GMU (one of my all-time favorite profs) will be speaking at the South Texas Federalist Society on Atticus Finch and legal ethics. My colleague Professor Jim Paulsen will provide commentary. The students are in for a treat.

As hectic as this journey is, this does not beat my previous record of six airports in 36 hours during my November 2012 whirlwind trip from Houston to Detroit to Lansing to O’Hare, and MIdway to Dulles, followed by a return trip from Reagan back to Houston.

The Court just granted cert in United States v. Bond. Last year, Justice Kagan presided over a moot court at George Washington Law where she considered whether Congress can expand its own powers via a treaty (it focused on a First Amendment issue via Missouri v. Holland).

Kagan’s first question off the bat was whether the Court should overrule Missouri v. Holland.

Here is the summary of the facts:

Prentice v. Pitel

Petitioner Graham Detroit Prentice is a political activist who seeks to protect the integrity of the Constitution through a non-profit that Petitioner founded. Following September 11, 2001, Petitioner became increasingly concerned with Islamic extremism and began focusing his organization’s efforts on protesting against it. Petitioner had little success until 2004, when several members of Petitioner’s organization burned an image of an Islamic holy site during a protest in Washington, DC. Petitioner used the consequent media attention to establish his and his organization’s name and message, began organizing such extreme protests as a matter of course, and initiated what he claims is a successful “Sharia Prevention Campaign” in 2006.

Two years later, the United States and 41 other nations entered into the Convention on Religious Tolerance. This treaty was a response to a series of terrorist attacks in retaliation for offensive protests outside of Islamic holy sites, which threatened to lead to more protests and even more violence. The treaty required signatories to criminalize offensive protests outside of Islamic religious sites during prayer hours. After much international pressure, the treaty was ratified and the International Responsibility and Leadership Act (IRLA) was passed by Congress to bring the United States into compliance. The IRLA implements many of the treaty’s policies but does not precisely mirror it. Specifically, the IRLA subjects anyone who burns or otherwise destroys a religious artifact immediately outside of a religious site during prayer hours to escalating civil fines.

Petitioner violated the act during a protest on July 5, 2009, when he splashed red paint on copies of the Koran outside of a mosque. Respondent Benjamin Pitel, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Columbia, then sent Petitioner a letter warning him that his next violation would result in an enforcement action. After receiving the letter, Petitioner planned, advertised, and carried out another protest on August 1, 2009, where he burned Korans outside of a mosque in New Columbia during prayer hours. After notification of the violation and some settlement negotiations, Petitioner filed an action seeking to have the IRLA declared unconstitutional as a violation of the First and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution.

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

I. Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Thirteenth Circuit erred in concluding that the International Responsibility and Leadership Act does not violate the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution?

II. Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Thirteenth Circuit erred in concluding that the International Responsibility and Leadership Act does not violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution?

H/T Charles K.