The following cases involve vested rights in the context of land use law and disability:
A Helping Hand, LLC v. Baltimore County, MD, 515 F.3d 356 (2008)
Tags
- ADA
- Property Rights
- Vested Rights
- Methadone Clinic
- Standing
- Drug Rehabilitation Center
Story
A Helping Hand, LLC (“Helping Hand“) was a for-profit methadone clinic located in Baltimore County, Maryland. Methadone, a federally-approved drug, is used to treat severe, chronic opioid addiction, including heroin addiction. Like many other methadone clinics, the Clinic provided methadone maintenance treatment to eligible, admitted patients, along with services such as counseling. Helping Hand asked the county whether it could operate such a clinic at a particular property.
The County notified Helping Hand in writing that a drug addiction counseling and treatment center constituted a use “permitted by right” under the zoning ordinance. Helping Hand obtained the rights to the property in question and obtained all relevant federal licenses to operate the clinic. However, the county then passed an ordinance where “state-licensed medical clinics” could no longer operate as a matter of right in commercial zones. Rather, such clinics could only operate in commercial zones after obtaining a “special exception,” which required a permit and a public hearing before any permit could issue. While there was a grandfathering exception in the new ordinance, it only allowed an exception for clinics already in operation.
The County moved to enforce its new zoning ordinance against Helping Hand and assessed daily fines for its “unlawful” operation. At the same time, it granted a variance to another medical clinic without requiring it meet all the ordinance’s standards.
Legal Claims
The Clinic filed an action on its own behalf, alleging two claims for violation of Title II of the ADA — one for intentional discrimination and one for disparate impact — and one claim that the County violated the Due Process Clause.
Holding/Reasoning (Each Claim)
The 4th Circuit explained that “[r]egulations implementing Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C.S. §§ 12131-12165, bar associational discrimination. These regulations explicitly prohibit local governments from discriminating against entities because of the disability of individuals with whom the entity associates. 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(g). As such, Helping Hand had standing to bring an ADA based on its association with the disabled persons it served.
Next, the court explained that “[d]rug addiction constitutes an impairment under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C.S. §§ 12101-12213. However, merely having an impairment does not make one disabled for purposes of the ADA.” The drug addiction must be regarded as “substantially limiting one or more major life activities” or substantially limit one or more major life activities because of others’ attitudes toward those possessing the condition.
However, the court held that, as a matter of law, the lower district court improperly decided the methadone patients were disabled under the ADA. Rather, a jury could have decided the question of whether the patients were disabled differently. A jury certainly could have found that the community regarded the clients as significantly impaired in one or more major life activities, and thus qualified as disabled under the ADA. However, that was not the only way a reasonable jury could have decided the question. While the record showed the community regarded many of the clinic’s clients as “criminals and undesirable neighbors,” it did not follow that they were also regarded as significantly impaired in their ability to work, learn, care for themselves, or interact with others. Since a jury could have reasonably drawn another conclusion, the 4th Circuit returned the ADA disparate impact and intentional discrimination claims to the district court for a new trial.
With respect to the vested property rights claims, the 4th Circuit wrote that a “federal court looks to state law to determine whether a party has a cognizable property interest that could trigger federal due process guarantees.” While Maryland law only grants vested rights in a permit that is not the subject of continuing litigation, the rule means “only that a person has no vested property right in a permit that has not yet been issued and is the subject of ongoing litigation.” Since the permit issued before litigation, the court held that the trial court properly instructed the jury that (1) “the clinic had a property interest in continued operation at its chosen location” and (2) that a “deprivation of a property interest violated due process if it was clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, with no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose.” Thus, Helping Hand had a vested right to operate as a clinic before the County enacted its ordinance.