The United States Supreme Court has issued a unanimous ruling striking down challenges to Hawaii's rent control protections for gas station owners who lease from oil companies. The decision has far-ranging implications for residential rent control and other land use measures, and represents a crushing defeat for the Small Property Owners of San Francisco, who filed an amicus brief in the action. The decision will make it more difficult for San Francisco's anti-tenant judges to invalidate tenant protection laws.

The case of Lingle v.Chevron USA had right- wing property rights zealots in a frenzy over the prospect that the Supreme Court would issue a ruling paving the way for striking down both commercial and residential rent control laws. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Chevron had relied on a legal standard so broad---the notion that a law was an unconstitutional taking unless it "substantially advanced" a legitimate government interest-that it virtually invited conservative judges to throw out land use regulations that they did not like.

Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor rejected the "substantially advanced" test and reaffirmed that rent control and other laws are only unconstitutional if they completely deprive an owner of all economic benefits from the property." Since landlords under rent control laws still receive rental income, they cannot meet the "complete deprivation of all benefits" test.

Landlord activists were jubilant when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Lingle, and saw the case as the perfect fact situation to achieve a new, easier to meet standard for finding land use laws unconstitutional. But the notion that judges, rather than legislators, should be deciding what laws "substantially advance" a state interest proved too extreme even for right-wing Justices Scalia and Thomas.

Unlike our local Republican judges, in land use cases conservative Supreme Court judges are not restricted in their rulings by the business interests of their friends and close relationships. In contrast, San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren has made some legally outrageous rulings against tenants that have benefited the real estate industry that employs his domestic partner.

Warren's domestic partner may not be in the business of Ellis evictions, but he is part of a San Francisco real estate industry that is profiting mightily from such evictions. Yet Warren continues to feel free to make rulings that benefit his partner's industry at the expense of vulnerable tenants.

Judge Warren describes himself as someone guided by case precedent, yet his rulings in key tenant cases conflict with prevailing case law. For example, Warren removed an anti-demolition initiative from last November's ballot despite overwhelming case authority in support of implementing the voter's will.
Warren recently ruled that San Francisco's Ellis relocation law was illegal because it imposed too great a burden on an owner's right to go out of the rental housing business. But the landlord in the action produced no evidence that the relocation payments were financially burdensome. How can a judge find a financial burden without evidence? One suspects that Warren spends a lot more time socially hearing horror stories from landlords and realtors than from tenants, and he shapes his rulings accordingly.


Warren never explained in his ruling how the law could be facially invalid---as opposed to being invalid if applied to a particular landlord---when there was no financial evidence submitted on behalf of any landlord in the city.

Warren is the grandson of the great former US Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. It makes on think that perhaps the Kansas School Board is right to question evolution.

Prior to Judge Warren, Republican Judge James Robertson invalidated San Francisco's restrictions on tenancies in common because he claimed it was an "invasion of privacy." Had he remained Law and Motion judge much longer, he undoubtedly would have ruled Ellis protections violate the right to bear arms, or perhaps interstate commerce.

The Small Property Owners Association of San Francisco has wracked up so many legally undeserved court victories here that they thought the fix would also be in at the Supreme Court. But it is a measure of just how extreme this group's views are that even Scalia and Thomas rejected them.

After Lingle, land use regulations in San Francisco are safe from a takings lawsuit despite our pro-landlord bench. Thanks to the Supremes for giving tenant advocates a rare opportunity to cheer a court decision.