Arlington County Board v. Richards, 434 U.S. 5 (1977), is a United States Supreme Court decision on the application of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to municipal parking restrictions. In a unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that a residential zoned parking system requiring permits for daytime parking in the Aurora Highlands neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia, with those permits limited to residents, their guests and those who came to their homes for business purposes had a rational basis and was thus constitutional. Its decision overturned the Virginia Supreme Court., hereafter Richards II
The ordinance upheld the first such program in a major U.S. metropolitan area, which had been adopted by the county three years earlier in response to national and local concerns. The former was an effort by urban planners and government agencies to reduce automobile use, and conversely encourage the use of public transit and carpooling to address traffic congestion and air pollution concerns. Locally, Aurora Highlands residents were complaining about increasing spillover parking on their streets by workers commuting to nearby Crystal City from elsewhere in the Washington metropolitan area.
Suit was brought by several plaintiffs. Most were drivers who routinely parked in Aurora Highlands; the lead plaintiff, Rudolph Richards, lived a block outside of the area designated by the ordinance. While he was able to walk to work, he argued that it was unconstitutional since it allowed residents of the designated area to park in front of his house while he could not park in front of theirs. The trial court and the Virginia Supreme Court agreed,, hereafter Richards I but the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided the case purely based on the parties' briefs without granting certiorari, found the law a permissible way of carrying out the stated objectives of preserving the neighborhood character and residents' quality of life and that legal distinctions between residents and nonresidents of a particular area are not necessarily the invidious discrimination it had held to be forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The decision resolved a difference of opinion among state high courts, as earlier in the year the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had held a similar scheme in that state to be constitutional, mildly criticizing its Virginia counterpart in the process. After the decision, local governments felt more freedom to impose locally targeted parking and traffic rules. The Court has not revisited Richards since then, although it and other courts have relied on its holding that distinctions on the basis of residency, not just in parking but in taxation policy and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, do not by themselves offend the Constitution. Legal commentary has accepted this conclusion, but there has been concern in the planning community that it has enabled, through qualifications on the definition of residency, the entrenchment of residential racial segregation in some areas.
Background
Since returning to Virginia as one of the country's smallest counties in the mid-19th century after almost 50 years as part of the District of Columbia, Arlington had largely remained quiet, minimally developed and rural. Suburban development began in southern Arlington County in the 1890s with Addison Heights, the first of three subdivisions platted that would later be combined and resubdivided to become the neighborhood now the Aurora Highlands Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. The properties were marketed as easily accessible to downtown Washington via bus and trolley.
The area developed slowly over the early 20th century, primarily as a residential neighborhood of modest houses with narrow streets. During World War II, the large office building that became known as The Pentagon for its shape was built to the north of Aurora Highlands to house the main offices of the Department of Defense (DoD). After the war the many civilian and military jobs relocated there, along with the return of many veterans, drove new housing construction, and Aurora Highlands was one of the more popular sites for development, with many small brick Cape Cods going up on small lots resulting from multiple resubdivisions. Few of those houses had driveways, and residents parked in the streets.
By 1960 Arlington's population had increased sevenfold in the preceding 30 years. Three years later, the industrial and auto-related businesses in the area across U.S. Route 1 to the east of Aurora Highlands began being redeveloped into high-rise condominiums and office buildings, the beginnings of today's Crystal City. As soon as it was built, office space was often leased by defense contractors, taking advantage of the proximity of the Pentagon, and DoD itself to handle satellite and spillover functions. Late in the decade the federal government moved the U.S. Patent Office and the Institute for Defense Analysis to Crystal City.
Underlying dispute
At that time the many workers who came to Crystal City from elsewhere in the D.C. metropolitan area commuted by automobile. While Arlington's zoning code required developers to provide adequate off-street parking for the intended use of their buildings, most such parking in Crystal City charged fees for nonresidents. Commuters looking to save money thus went looking for free parking within walking distance, and found it in abundance on the nearby streets of Aurora Highlands.
This made the streets in the Highlands crowded and difficult to navigate during the day, as well as increasing noise and traffic around morning and evening rush hour. From 1968 onwards, residents complained to county government, which experimented with several sets of restrictions, neither of which were effective in addressing the parking problem and often inconvenienced the residents they were meant to benefit. Fearing that the eventual coming of Washington Metro service to Crystal City would exacerbate the problem, residents and county government persuaded the state legislature to pass a law in 1972 allowing the county to require permits for on-street parking in designated areas and charge higher fees to nonresidents. A six-block area was designated by county ordinance that October, with residents each issued one permit.
Enforcement was soon blocked by an injunction, after a group of commuters brought suit. In December county Circuit Court judge William Winston ruled against the county, finding the ordinance did not provide clear guidelines for its implementation and did not accomplish its stated goals of protecting the environment. The county and its planning department went back to work, initiating a study using free permits issued to residents to determine at what times more than 75 percent of the parking space in Aurora Highlands was occupied and when 25 percent of the cars in them were from outside the neighborhood.
The study showed that in a nine-block area of Aurora Highlands, encompassing 81 buildings, including 101 residences, and 192 parking spaces, 188 were occupied during the day. Of those 188, 156 were occupied by vehicles whose drivers and passengers worked in Crystal City. Based on that data, the county passed a new residential zoned parking ordinance that went into effect in July 1974, declaring a long list of objectives, including protecting residents from unreasonable burdens on access to their homes, and preserving the residential character of the neighborhood, as well as alleviating the earlier environmental concerns. Under it, parking in the nine-block areaRichards I, at 233 was limited to residents and those visiting them between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. Within a short period of its adoption, the streets were as clear during the day as they had been before Crystal City's construction.
The commuters who had brought suit before did so again, this time as a facial challenge to the ordinance on constitutional grounds. The distinction it drew between residents and nonresidents of the designated area, they said, was arbitrary and thus an infringement of their rights to equal protection of the laws under the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the provision of the state constitution forbidding the passage of "special" legislation.Richards I, at 233 All the plaintiffs drove to work in Crystal City from outside the area, with the exception of Rudolph Richards, the lead plaintiff, who lived in Aurora Highlands one block outside the designated area and walked to work; he argued that the unconstitutionality of the ordinance arose from its practical effect of allowing his neighbors who might live in the permit zone to freely park in front of his house while he could not park in front of theirs. Unlike the previous suit the court did not enjoin the ordinance's enforcement.
Arguments were made before Winston, again hearing the case, in March 1975; he rendered a decision by letter in June and made it final with an order in September. He agreed with the plaintiffs that the ordinance was unconstitutional. The county appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, citing its obligations under the federal Clean Air Act to develop and implement ways to reduce air pollution; guidance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had suggested, among other things, implementing parking limitations to accomplish that goal.
Virginia Supreme Court
The state Supreme Court heard arguments and decided the case in January 1977, affirming the trial court. Justice Richard Harding Poff wrote for a unanimous court that held the ordinance violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, without reaching the state constitutional argument.
Choosing from several theories of how the ordinance created and distinguished among classes, the court found it to be "residence in a selected area". It also agreed with the county that its objectives in passing the ordinance were "a legitimate governmental interest". The only question to decide was whether the distinction between residents and nonresidents of the nine-block area of Aurora Highlands was rationally related to accomplishing the ordinance's objectives.
The county relied on several precedents from Virginia (ordinance limiting parking in defined area to buses and freight vehicles for limited time was valid, served public purpose and did not discriminate in favor of specific operators) and (ordinance forbidding roadside parking at locations of funerals constitutional) and other states (ordinance limiting parking on streets next to municipal government building to city employees and public vehicles constitutional) and (legislators-only parking on streets near state capitol constitutional) to support the constitutionality of selectively applicable parking regulations. The court did not find them relevant as none of the challenged classifications involved residence. It similarly rejected a Maine case upholding an overnight parking prohibition since it applied to all motorists. Poff conceded that the county was not required to choose "the least restrictive alternative" in this case since the right at issue was not a fundamental constitutional right. "[B]ut it is never free to adopt an alternative so restrictive that it violates rights secured by the equal protection clause."Richards I, 234