In Moore v. City of East Cleveland, decided in 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a municipal housing ordinance that made it a crime for Inez Moore, a grandmother, to share her home with two grandsons who happened to be cousins rather than brothers. By a 5-4 vote, the Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects extended family members’ right to live together, and that a city cannot use zoning to dictate which blood relatives may share a roof.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland
The Ordinance That Criminalized a Family
East Cleveland’s housing code limited occupancy of any dwelling unit to “one, and only one, family.”2American Legal Publishing. East Cleveland Code of Ordinances 1351.02 – Limitation on Occupancy The complication was in the definition. The code recognized people related by blood, adoption, or marriage to the head of household, but then layered on rigid categorical rules about which relatives counted. No more than two additional unrelated people could live in the home, and unrelated minors had to fit narrow slots such as foster children or legal wards.3American Legal Publishing. East Cleveland, OH Code of Ordinances
The result was that some perfectly ordinary family arrangements fell outside the code’s boxes. A grandmother could keep one set of grandchildren under her roof, but adding a grandchild from a different branch of the family could push the household over the line. Violations were criminal.
Inez Moore and Her Grandsons
Inez Moore lived in her East Cleveland home with her son, Dale Moore Sr., and two grandsons: Dale Jr. and John Moore Jr. The two boys were first cousins, not brothers. John had come to live with his grandmother after his mother died when he was less than a year old.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland
Because the two boys were cousins rather than siblings, the city treated their combined presence in the home as a violation of the housing code. East Cleveland notified Moore that the arrangement was illegal and demanded she remove one grandson. She refused. The city filed criminal charges. Moore argued that the ordinance was unconstitutional, but the trial court disagreed, convicted her, and sentenced her to five days in jail and a $25 fine.4Legal Information Institute. Inez Moore, Appellant, v. City of East Cleveland, Ohio
What the Supreme Court Held
Justice Lewis Powell announced the judgment of the Court in a plurality opinion joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun. Justice Stevens concurred separately, producing the 5-4 outcome.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland
The plurality held that East Cleveland’s ordinance violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by intruding on constitutionally protected family choices. Powell wrote that the “sanctity of the family” is not limited to parents and their dependent children. Extended arrangements, including grandparents raising grandchildren, are deeply rooted in American history and tradition and deserve constitutional protection. Powell tied the ruling back to earlier cases that had recognized family-related liberty interests, particularly Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), which together established that the Constitution shelters family autonomy from routine government intrusion.5Library of Congress. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923)6Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Pierce v. Society of Sisters
The plurality applied heightened review without labeling it as such. Powell wrote that “when the government intrudes on choices concerning family living arrangements, the usual deference to the legislature is inappropriate,” and that courts must “examine carefully the importance of the governmental interests advanced and the extent to which they are served by the challenged regulation.”1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland The city’s stated goals were preventing overcrowding, reducing traffic congestion, and easing school burdens. The plurality found the connection between those goals and a rule banning cousins from cohabiting to be tenuous at best.
Why Belle Terre Did Not Save the Ordinance
East Cleveland relied on Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas (1974), where the Supreme Court had upheld a New York village ordinance that capped how many unrelated people could share a home. Six unrelated college students had challenged that law, and the Court sided with the village, treating the restriction as ordinary economic and social legislation subject only to rational-basis review.7Justia. Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1 (1974)
The Moore plurality drew a sharp line. Belle Terre involved restrictions on unrelated individuals and did not touch any fundamental family right. East Cleveland’s ordinance, by contrast, “slic[ed] deeply into the family itself” by telling blood relatives they could not live under the same roof.1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland That is the doctrinal boundary the case established, and it still governs today: cities keep broad authority to cap unrelated occupants, but regulating which relatives can live together triggers far more demanding scrutiny.
The Concurrences
Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, wrote separately to surface the racial and economic dimensions the plurality had only hinted at. He argued that the “Constitution cannot be interpreted to tolerate the imposition by government upon the rest of us of white suburbia’s preference in patterns of family living.” Extended families, he wrote, had served as “the beachhead for successive waves of immigrants” and remained “virtually a means of survival” for poor and minority households pooling scarce resources. Brennan cited data showing that extended-family living was far more common in Black households than in white ones, particularly among households headed by an elderly Black woman like Inez Moore.
Justice Stevens reached the same result on different reasoning. He framed the case as a property rights question rather than a family privacy one. A homeowner has a fundamental right to decide who lives in her own home, and East Cleveland’s ordinance amounted to “a taking of property without due process and without just compensation.” Stevens noted the ordinance’s irrationality: the city had “failed totally to explain the need for a rule which would allow a homeowner to have two grandchildren live with her if they are brothers, but not if they are cousins.”1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland
The Dissents
Justice Stewart, joined by Justice Rehnquist, rejected the idea that a grandmother’s right to live with her grandchildren rose to the level of a constitutionally protected liberty interest. Existing precedents about “having children and raising them,” he wrote, did not extend to the grandparent-grandchild relationship, and a law is not unconstitutional simply because it produces “some hardships.”1Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Moore v. City of East Cleveland
Justice White wrote the most sustained methodological attack. He warned that substantive due process has “little or no cognizable roots in the language or even the design of the Constitution” and that the Court “should be extremely reluctant to breathe still further substantive content into the Due Process Clause so as to strike down legislation adopted by a State or city to promote its welfare.” He added that he “cannot believe that the interest in residing with more than one set of grandchildren is one that calls for any kind of heightened protection under the Due Process Clause.”4Legal Information Institute. Inez Moore, Appellant, v. City of East Cleveland, Ohio Chief Justice Burger filed a brief separate dissent, providing the fourth vote that kept the majority to a plurality.
What Moore v. East Cleveland Means Today
Because there was no majority opinion, Moore never became a blockbuster citation in the mold of some landmark rulings. Its core holding has held up anyway. Constitutional protection for family life reaches beyond the nuclear household, and courts and legislatures have leaned on that principle since. In Troxel v. Granville (2000), the Supreme Court cited Moore in acknowledging that the “average American family” resists easy definition and that grandparents often play essential roles in raising children.8Legal Information Institute. Troxel v. Granville
The decision also sets a constitutional backdrop for modern zoning debates. As cities revisit their definitions of “family” and consider accessory dwelling units, multigenerational housing, and co-living arrangements, Moore is the case marking the outer limit of what a local government can do. The practical rule for households is straightforward. A city can regulate building density, occupancy per square foot, and how many unrelated people share a dwelling. It cannot tell a grandmother that her grandson is not family enough to live under her roof.