Southern Burlington County NAACP v. Township of Mount Laurel

Supreme Court of New Jersey · 1975 · Property

336 A.2d 713 (N.J. 1975)

Updated July 23, 2026

PropertyZoningLand useExclusionary zoningAffordable housinggeneral welfarestate police powersubstantive due process

Facts

Mount Laurel was a rapidly developing township with substantial vacant land that zoned only for single-family detached dwellings in its regular residential districts and prohibited apartments, townhouses, and mobile homes under its general ordinance. Its zoning imposed minimum lot sizes, frontage requirements, and minimum floor areas that made housing realistically available only to middle and upper income households, while large amounts of land were also zoned for industry and commerce. Although some planned unit developments allowed multi-family housing, those projects were designed for more affluent residents and included bedroom and child-related restrictions that kept out lower income families with children. The record showed the township intentionally used zoning to attract selective growth, preserve its tax base, and exclude low and moderate income households, including its own poor residents living in substandard housing.

Issue

May a developing municipality validly use land use regulations to make it physically and economically impossible to provide low and moderate income housing and thereby exclude people from living there because of limited income and resources? More broadly, does such a municipality have an obligation to provide a realistic opportunity for a variety of housing types, including housing for its fair share of regional low and moderate income need?

Rule

A developing municipality must, through its land use regulations, presumptively make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing. It may not foreclose or substantially hinder low and moderate income housing and must affirmatively afford that opportunity, at least to the extent of its fair share of the present and prospective regional need, unless it can sustain a heavy burden of showing peculiar circumstances that justify not doing so. When a municipality's regulations fail to make such housing realistically possible or contain requirements that preclude or substantially hinder it, a facial showing of violation of substantive due process or equal protection under the New Jersey Constitution is established and the burden shifts to the municipality.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

Pine Haven Township, outside Trenton, has rapidly grown for twenty years and still contains large tracts of vacant buildable land. Its zoning code allows detached single-family homes on large lots in all residential districts and allows offices and light industry on extensive acreage near highways, but it provides no district where apartments, townhouses, mobile homes, or small-lot homes are permitted.

A civil-rights group challenges the ordinance under the state constitution. Which is the strongest argument that the ordinance is invalid?

Explanation. The majority held that a developing municipality must, through land use regulations, make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing and may not foreclose low and moderate income housing. The rule is tied to developing municipalities, not all municipalities regardless of context. The duty is to provide the opportunity through zoning, not to build housing itself. Industrial zoning does not insulate exclusionary residential controls.