Fetterman Out to End Single-Family Zoning

Senator John Fetterman and Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester have introduced in both Houses of Congress the “Reducing Regulatory Barriers to Housing Act.” This bill would make a federal law prohibiting state and local zoning protections for single-family neighborhoods, CPR member American Policy Center warns. Read APC's article below for more information.

The American Dream or Government Control?

Your Home Is In the Path to Destruction

By

Tom DeWeese

Does your family live in a home located in a single-family neighborhood of your choosing? A place where your kids are safe to play in the yard, you can enjoy the sun in your own lounge chair, the grill is ready to be fired up for dinner, and your neighbors wave hello? Best of all, are you counting on the equity value growing with each mortgage payment, preparing for your financial future?

This is your home, your investment, your quality of life!

Well, get ready to lose it all, because a growing movement believes your happiness and success is divisive, racist, and ignores the plight of others who just don’t have the same opportunities and privileges as you.

Over the past few years, in several states and communities there has been a drive to eliminate zoning protections for single family neighborhoods such as yours. Those zoning protections were designed to keep your neighborhood in the same shape as you found it. A street of matching home styles, and of equal value, free of apartment buildings and excess crowding of those designed for lower income living space.      

As Smart Growth programs began to take control of planning policy in many cities across the nation, single-family neighborhoods became a special target. Of course, Smart Growth is about control of development, not personal choice. Its main focus is to move people out of the rural areas and suburbs into the inner cities. 15 minute cities! In such a plan there is no room for traditional two-story homes and yards. The new housing plan is for high rise apartments squeezed together in a urban setting where few cars are necessary as you walk or ride your bike to the store; and take public transportation to work. It’s all to protect the environment!

But how do you get people to accept such a major change in life? Create a crisis, of course. So today, we have a housing shortage! Proponents of the scheme declare, “We can put 100 families in the space of your house and yard that today only holds four people!”

The main question that must be asked is do we really have a housing shortage? If so, why? Aren’t home building companies able to keep up with demand for housing? And why aren’t homes affordable to the average American?

The answer is, we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a government interference problem. For the past several decades, the government has been working to limit home building. Urban Sprawl, they call it. To protect the environment, we can’t have housing developments spreading all over the place. So, many communities have put up Urban Growth Boundaries around the city and allow no growth outside that line. The poster child for this practice is Portland, Oregon. Over twenty years ago the city installed such a boundary and the restrictions have barely changed. But the population has grown by almost 80%. Now Portland has a housing crisis!

Meanwhile millions of illegal aliens are flooding our inner cities, and suddenly we have a national housing shortage. And why are homes no longer affordable? Massive inflation caused by government destruction of the value of the dollar is the real culprit. It’s a crisis caused by bad government – not zoning protections for homeowners. In fact, such home ownership used to be called the American Dream. Now it’s a crisis.        

 To make the stakes even higher in our new world of social equity, the mayor of Minneapolis declared that people living in zoning-protected single-family neighborhoods are actually self-segregating themselves from those they don’t want to live next to. He summed up the charge saying single-family neighborhoods are racist!

  Biden’s so-called infrastructure program calls for the end of zoning protections for single-family neighborhoods, to be replaced by the installation of Section 8 public housing projects. And Congress voted big money for such a plan. To implement such a plan, city councils would need to apply for the federal grants supplied through the legislation. Many have done so, but such a process would take time and there is no guarantee that every city would do it. Another approach was needed.

That plan came in June, through the bold efforts of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and Delaware Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester. Together they introduced in both Houses of Congress the “Reducing Regulatory Barriers to Housing Act.” Now, instead of waiting for local communities to make the decision to move forward with the assault on community organization, Congress can now make it a law!

In a joint statement, Fetterman and Blunt Rochester explained their motivation for introducing the bill, “Historically, zoning practices have been used to divide communities and concentrate poverty in under-resourced areas. By transforming our zoning regulations, more people would have access to affordable and diverse types of housing, high-paying jobs, and healthy and safe communities”.      

Do you catch what they are saying? Single family neighborhoods are the root of creating ghettos (under-resourced areas), but, if you move that public housing to upscale neighborhoods, then the inhabitants will have “affordable” housing. Well, yes, that can happen because the values of the homes there will certainly plummet as property values are destroyed. But how “diverse” can the housing be when government will have to do all of the building in these newly created ghettos? Oh, and don’t forget, the new inhabitants will now get “high-paying jobs” by living in these newly constructed communities. I never knew that salaries on the job depended on the type of housing one lived in! And finally, everyone is going to have “healthy and safe communities” simply because of the location.

Let’s get something straight. Ghettos are created by government controlling the living space because it’s run by bureaucrats who care little about the quality of living there. If the air conditioning stops working, a window is broken, or the land around the building is overgrown with weeds, he still gets paid. Land owned by a private owner is nearly always better taken care of because it affects the value of the property. To believe that simply moving such a nightmare to a nice neighborhood will fix the problem of poverty is just ignorance of economics.

In addition, the Fetterman bill reads, “It is the policy of the United States to provide for fair housing throughout the country, and it is in the regional and national interest to have a supply of housing that is fair, affordable, adequate, and near opportunity”. And it goes on to say that any zoning ordinance that restricts housing opportunities based on economic status or income without good reason is “contrary to the regional and national interest.”     

Now, under the Fetterman bill, they are not planning to just take your home by eminent t domain and just rebuild the neighborhood. No, that would cause controversy and possibly pushback. They can’t have that opposition blocking their high ideas. That would be too messy. Instead, they will begin a steady movement forward. First, they will begin to promote new building in the neighborhood, perhaps to allow tiny homes to be built in the backyards, or apartments over the garage. Next will come the promotion of turning some existing housing into rental apartments. Slowly the atmosphere in the neighborhood will begin to change.

Over time, the original residents will begin to sell and leave. Their property will be bought by developers who are involved in the reorganization project, such as Blackrock. And the home will be torn down, and apartment buildings placed on the land. One at a time, the original homes will disappear. Finally, you too, will have had enough, and you’ll have no choice but to leave. Mission accomplished. Your personal choice, your investment, your ability to live as you chose for your family will disappear.    

Do you want to stop this monster? Then the time has come for every homeowner in America to stand up and say NO! For perhaps the first time in your life, pick up the telephone or send a letter to your Congressman and U.S. Senators and tell them that this Fetterman bill must be thrown in the trash where it belongs. Your way of life depends on it.   

Bricks Tumble from Administrative State’s Walls

The latest greatest hits at the U.S. Supreme Court further curb the excesses of the Administrative State by restoring an important aspect of the Constitution’s separation of powers and Seventh Amendment constitutional rights.

The court’s holding in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ends "Chevron deference,” the legal doctrine under which Article III courts defer to the interpretations of federal agencies regarding the meaning of the statutes agencies administer.

"Chevron deference” has bound the judiciary from questioning unaccountable bureaucracies’ opinions—what bureaucrats say goes. This has empowered agencies to operate unchecked by the legislative or judicial branches, steadily building the Administrative State that cancels constitutional protections and legal rights.

The majority opinion in Loper Bright rests on a sounder reading of the Administrative Procedure Act. The APA recognizes the “elemental proposition reflected by judicial practice dating back to Marbury: that courts decide legal questions by applying their own judgment. It specifies that courts, not agencies, will decide ‘all relevant questions of law’ arising on review of agency action . . .—even those involving ambiguous laws—and set aside any such action inconsistent with the law as they interpret it. And it prescribes no deferential standard for courts to employ in answering those legal questions.”

U.S. House Republican leaders responded to the Supreme Court’s overturning of a rule that tied the hands of Congress and the judiciary from performing their constitutional checks and balances against the imperial executive.

“For forty years, Chevron deference has led to a massive expansion of the federal government and a reduction of Congress’[s] role in the policymaking process. Chevron upended the separation of powers between our three branches of government and is responsible for many of the burdensome regulations that stifle progress and curtail liberty. Today’s landmark decision by the Court restores the balance outlined by the Founders in our Constitution and represents the beginning of the end of the administrative state.”

Look for executive agencies being held accountable and constrained under this restoring of separation of powers.

Also, the high court ruled in Securities & Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy that "the Seventh Amendment entitles a defendant to a jury trial when the SEC seeks civil penalties against him for securities fraud.”

The majority in Jarkesy described in some detail the contrast between Article III courts and administrative proceedings that hand an agency legislative, executive and judicial powers.

Further, the SEC (and many other administrative agencies) have had the prerogative of taking someone to real court or to an in-house, quasijudicial administrative proceeding.  The court held that “[a] defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator. Rather than recognize that right, the dissent would permit Congress to concentrate the roles of prosecutor, judge and jury in the hands of the Executive Branch.”

This cozy arrangement deprives individual rights and butchers the division of authorities the Founders constructed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Perhaps most chilling in the majority opinion is its description of this aspect of unbounded administrative fiat: “The Commission or its delegee also determines the scope and form of permissible evidence and may admit hearsay and other testimony that would be inadmissible in federal court” (emphasis added).

Thus, securing constitutional rights to individuals and limiting excessive administrative overreach, through these two rulings, represent victories for private property rights.

These rulings, particularly Loper Bright, follow the Supreme Court’s laudatory decisions against the EPA’s stretching the Clean Air Act in West Virginia v. EPA and similarly lassoing the EPA’s gross expansion of the Clean Water Act in Sackett v. EPA.

Steadily, SCOTUS is hauling the Administrative State in line with the Constitution’s limits on government.

Patent Suit Trends Aiding Infringers

A new study of patent litigation finds significant, troubling changes in U.S. patent litigation patterns

Republicans and conservatives tend to react in knee-jerk fashion to civil litigation. We reflexively react as though all civil lawsuits are tantamount to advertising ambulance-chaser lawyers who clog the courts with shady shakedown cases.

While there are plenty of sketchy attorneys playing a numbers game against corporate deep pockets, conservatives should be more discerning, more astute, more prudent, and differentiate between the dregs and the cream.

Indeed, much civil litigation is legitimate. Courts exist in large part to settle legal disputes between private parties.

Patent litigation is one such critically important category of civil lawsuits. Unlike copyright, patent law provides only civil, not criminal, penalties for infringement.

Patent owners’ only recourse to defend their intellectual property is civil litigation. At stake in these cases is the right to exclude anyone else from making, using, selling or importing their invention.

The inventors have already invested much in their invention: Time, money and other resources poured into research and development perfecting a working item that represents newly created property. Then there are the costs of commercializing an invention.

In exchange for exclusivity for a limited time, their patent has disclosed the invention’s details to the degree than someone else could make a functioning model of the invention. The patent (i.e., a deed) is supposed to secure exclusivity, enforceable only by litigation.

The patent litigation study by Marcum reports that patent case filings have fallen over recent years, from 6,497 in 2013 to 3,639 in 2022. This drop has occurred even after the 2011 America Invents Act antijoinder provision forced separation of infringer defendants into their own cases. Compared to the number of patents granted, only 1.7% of patents on average were involved in infringement litigation in 2013 to 2017; that percentage has fallen to a negligible 1%.

Damages awards in patent infringement cases have dropped, as well. Median damages that courts award in patent litigation only amount to $3.7 million. In just 22 percent of cases with damages awarded do court levy enhanced damages against infringers for willfulness.

Marcum confirms that awards of permanent injunction are less likely now. Courts awarded patent-owner plaintiffs 80 injunctions between 2008 and 2012—after the Supreme Court’s infamous 2006 eBay v. MercExchange ruling. Injunctive relief was granted in a mere 36 cases between 2018 and 2022.

Marcum's assessment also puts the lie to the patent infringers’ lobby’s “patent troll” propaganda--as though there were actually all these bad actors driving up a patent litigation explosion and preying on Big Tech “innovators.” In fact, nonpracticing entities, which are innovators that don’t make their own inventive products (e.g., R&D firms that, like most of the iconic American inventors, license their patents to manufacturers, and universities) were awarded only 23% of remedies against patent infringers from 2013 to 2022, including just 12 injunctions to NPEs.

These results demonstrate that enforcing patent rights of exclusivity through civil litigation today holds much less hope of bringing patent owners justice. U.S. patents have lost value while predatory infringement has put the gangsters in charge of IP. This development threatens property rights and U.S. innovation.