73 N.Y.2d 942 | NY | 1989
OPINION OF THE COURT
Memorandum.
The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed, with costs.
Plaintiffs, five unrelated elderly women, live in a house located in a Town of Brookhaven residential zone where only one-family dwellings are permitted as of right. Under the Town Code the term "family” is defined as "[o]ne or more persons related by blood, adoption or marriage, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit, exclusive of household servants. A number of persons but not exceeding four, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit though not related by blood, adoption or marriage, shall be deemed to constitute a family” (emphasis added). After the Town charged a violation of the four unrelated persons limit, plaintiffs commenced this action seeking, among other things, a declaration that the restrictive definition of "family” violates the State Due Process Clause (see, NY Const, art I, § 6).
In McMinn v Town of Oyster Bay (66 NY2d 544) we addressed the constitutionality of a zoning ordinance which limited the number and age of unrelated persons who could dwell in a single-family home to two persons, 62 years of age or older. We held that the ordinance was invalid because it imposed a restriction on the number of unrelated persons residing together as a functionally equivalent family but imposed no such restriction on related persons. Such differentiation, we said, was not reasonably related to a legitimate zoning purpose and, therefore, violated the State Due Process Clause (see, id., at 550-551). Because the ordinance here similarly restricts the size of a functionally equivalent family but not the size of a traditional family, it violates our State Constitution.
Chief Judge Wachtler and Judges Simons, Kaye, Alexander, Titone, Hancock, Jr., and Bellacosa concur.
Order affirmed, with costs, in a memorandum.