Schanzenbach v. Town of Opal
| Decision Date | 07 February 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–8093.,11–8093. |
| Citation | 706 F.3d 1269 |
| Parties | Roger SCHANZENBACH, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. TOWN OF OPAL, WYOMING, a Wyoming municipal corporation; Karen Rawlings, an individual; Jeremy Summers, an individual; Elva Bienz, an individual; Willa Roose, an individual, Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Kathleen E. McDonald (Stephen C. Clark, pro hac vice, on the briefs), Jones Waldo Holbrook & McDonough PC, Salt Lake City, UT, for Plaintiff–Appellant.
Richard Rideout, Law Offices of Richard Rideout, PC, Cheyenne, WY, for Defendants–Appellees.
Before LUCERO, HARTZ, and MATHESON, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Roger Schanzenbach owned several properties in the Wyoming town of Opal. Intending to install mobile manufactured homes on these properties, he applied for permits with town authorities. The town council issued several building permits to Schanzenbach but shortly thereafter enacted an ordinance that included a provision banning the installation of any manufactured home that was older than 10 years at the time of the relevant permit application (the 10–Year Rule). When the permits were about to lapse and Schanzenbach requested an extension, the town council denied his request. It also rejected his applications for new permits because the proposed houses were more than 10 years old.
Schanzenbach brought an action against Opal and its town council in the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming. He asserted a claim that the 10–Year Rule was preempted by the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974 (the Manufactured Housing Act) as well as a variety of constitutional claims. The district court awarded summary judgment to the defendants. Schanzenbach's appeal raises claims based on preemption, equal protection, and substantive due process. We affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment on these claims. The 10–Year Rule was not preempted and the rule was sufficiently rational to survive an equal-protection or substantive-due-process challenge.
Schanzenbach owned several lots in Opal, a town of less than 200 people. In November 2008 he applied for building permits to install four manufactured homes, one on each of four consecutive lots. All four homes were more than 10 years old at the time. On January 21, 2009, the town council approved the permits. Each permit stated that it “shall expire by limitations and become null and void if construction or work authorized is not commenced within forty-five (45) days” of the estimated completion date of December 31, 2009 (that is, by February 14, 2010). Aplt.App. at 45, 48, 51, 54.
In the following weeks the town council began considering Ordinance 2009–001, entitled “An Ordinance Regulating Construction and Standards for Buildings Placed in the Town of Opal.” Id. at 93 (capitalization omitted). The ordinance was approved on March 23, 2009, and became effective on that date. It contains the 10–Year Rule, which restricts the age of houses brought into Opal. Under the ordinance, Id.
Although Schanzenbach apparently spent about $27,000 between March and November of 2009 in preparing for construction on his lots in Opal, in late November he wrote the town council a letter explaining that the start of construction would be delayed until the following Spring, after the required commencement date of February 14, 2010. Schanzenbach requested a two-year extension on the four building permits, but the town council denied the extension on December 8. Defendant Jeremy Summers, the mayor of Opal, wrote Schanzenbach a letter the following August stating that the reason for the denial was that the manufactured homes did not meet the requirements of the 10–Year Rule. Schanzenbach submitted applications for new building permits in September 2010, but Mayor Summers rejected them for noncompliance with the 10–Year Rule.
In December 2010 Schanzenbach filed his complaint against the town of Opal; Mayor Summers; Karen Rawlings, the mayor during 2009 and part of 2010; and two members of the town council (collectively, Defendants). The individuals were sued only in their official capacities. Schanzenbach's complaint asserted (1) that Ordinance 2009–001 was preempted by the Manufactured Housing Act, see42 U.S.C. §§ 5401–5426; (2) that the ordinance violated his constitutional rights “under the Commerce Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause,” Aplt.App. at 173; and (3) that the town had intentionally interfered with his economic relations with the prospective renters of the manufactured homes. He sought damages, attorney fees, and declaratory and injunctive relief.
Defendants and Schanzenbach both moved for summary judgment. Schanzenbach's pleadings on the motions explicitly raised for the first time the arguments that the 10–Year Rule violated his substantive-due-process and equal-protection rights. The district court awarded summary judgment to Defendants on all claims. As relevant here, it ruled that Schanzenbach's substantive-due-process and equal-protection claims were both untimely raised and meritless and that the 10–Year Rule was not preempted by the Manufactured Housing Act.
Schanzenbach's arguments on appeal are (1) that the district court erred in holding that the Manufactured Housing Act does not preempt the 10–Year Rule; (2) that the court erred in holding that his substantive-due-process and equal-protection claims had been raised too late and therefore should not be decided on the merits; (3) that the 10–Year rule denies him equal protection because it treats manufactured homes differently by age without a rational basis for doing so; and (4) that the 10–Year Rule denies him substantive due process because it arbitrarily and unreasonably interferes with a protected property interest.
Because Schanzenbach is appealing from a grant of summary judgment, we review the district court's decision de novo, “applying the same standards that the district court should have applied.” Merrifield v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm'rs, 654 F.3d 1073, 1077 (10th Cir.2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Summary judgment is appropriate if the pleadings and the record establish that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See id. “We can affirm on any ground supported by the record, so long as the appellant has had a fair opportunity to address that ground.” Id. (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted).
Schanzenbach argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to Defendants on his claim that the 10–Year Rule is invalid under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause because it is preempted by the Manufactured Housing Act. See U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2 (). The court held that the 10–Year Rule is not preempted because it regulates the aesthetics of manufactured homes rather than their construction or safety.
On appeal Schanzenbach insists that there are genuine issues regarding whether the Act and its accompanying regulations “expressly or by inference show an intent to preempt such local laws” and whether Congress “legislated comprehensively with regard to durability standards for manufactured homes.” Aplt. Br. at 16. We are not persuaded. Because we hold that the Act does not preempt the ordinance, we need not address whether there exists a private right of action to enforce the provisions of the Act.
The Supreme Court has recently provided a useful summary of preemption doctrine:
There is no doubt that Congress may withdraw specified powers from the States by enacting a statute containing an express preemption provision.
State law must also give way to federal law in at least two other circumstances. First, the States are precluded from regulating conduct in a field that Congress, acting within its proper authority, has determined must be regulated by its exclusive governance. The intent to displace state law altogether can be inferred from a framework of regulation so pervasive that Congress left no room for the States to supplement it or where there is a federal interest so dominant that the federal system will be assumed to preclude enforcement of state laws on the same subject.
Second, state laws are preempted when they conflict with federal law. This includes cases where compliance with both federal and state regulations is a physical impossibility and those instances where the challenged state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress. In preemption analysis, courts should assume that the historic police powers of the States are not superseded unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.
Arizona v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2492, 2500–01, 183 L.Ed.2d 351 (2012) ().
An examination of the Manufactured Housing Act shows that its core concern is the creation of uniform standards for construction and safety of manufactured housing in the United States, with the resulting reduction in the costs of such homes. The Act recites the following purposes:
(1) to protect the quality, durability, safety, and affordability of manufactured homes;
(2) to facilitate the availability of affordable manufactured homes and to increase home ownership for all Americans;
(3) to provide for...
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