No for No-Growth

When a severe water shortage started in Marin County outside San Francisco four years ago, more and more families began to consider moving deeper into the exurbs. Many of them chose Petaluma, a pleasant town of 30,000 just up High way 101.

People already living in Petaluma were frightened rather than flattered. Applications for housing-construction permits doubled, then doubled again until they reached 2,000 a year. The smalltown character of the onetime egg capital of California was clearly in jeopardy, as were the low local property taxes. Rapid population growth would require a sharp increase in public services. Petaluma decided to fight back. It passed a new ordinance 18 months ago limiting new building permits to 500 a year. Other communities, eager to check growth, soon began adopting the Petaluma plan. But a group of California land developers had already gone into federal court.

The Petaluma ordinance, they argued, limited the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to travel. They also contended that a fence-them-out approach would put an "undue burden" on interstate commerce, specifically the commerce of producing housing. Moreover, the rule would force housing prices up, imposing a harsh penalty on families of modest means and violating their right to equal protection under the law.

The builders' lawyer admitted, however, that "if the court defines and protects the right to migrate and settle as a fundamental liberty, few local land use regulations are likely to survive in their present form." Backed by 36 other California towns, Petaluma's attorney responded: "The question at issue here is whether a city has the right to determine its own destiny."

Federal Judge Lloyd Burke concluded, "No city may regulate its population growth numerically so that residents of other cities cannot enter and establish residency there." He based his decision on the right to travel, apparently the first judge to do so in such a case. Petaluma will probably appeal, making it likely that the Supreme Court will eventually have to sort out the competing interests of two treasured American values: local self-rule and unrestricted mobility.

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