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Privacy Rights in the Digital Age

Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977)

by John W. Klinker

A 5–4 decision, with a plurality opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an ordinance restricting housing to a nuclear family, and thereby excluding extended family from said housing, violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.

Inez Moore (“Moore”) was a resident of the city of East Cleveland. Moore shared her home with her son Dale Moore Sr., as well as with her two grandsons, Dale Jr., and John Moore Jr. Dale Jr. and John Jr. were first cousins. John, Jr. began living in Moore's home after the death of his mother.

In early 1973, Moore received a notice of violation from the City of East Cleveland stating that John Jr. was an “illegal occupant” in Moore's home. The notice called for Moore's compliance with the city's ordinance by removing John Jr. from the home. Moore refused, and the City of East Cleveland responded by filing criminal charges against her. Moore moved for dismissal of the charges, claiming that the ordinance was facially unconstitutional, but the motion was overruled. Moore was subsequently convicted and sentenced to five days in jail and a $25 fine, the conviction was upheld by the Ohio Court of Appeals, and the Ohio Supreme Court denied review of the matter.

The ordinance in question limited the occupancy of homes to a single family. Said limitation was established, in part, to combat an increased number of children moving to East Cleveland in pursuit of better education. According to the ordinance, the term single family only applied to nuclear families.

In an attempt to bolster its position, the City of East Cleveland relied heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas. In Belle Terre, the Court upheld a housing ordinance similar to the one at issue in Moore; however, Justice Powell distinguished between Belle Terre and the matter at hand based on the fact that the ordinance in Belle Terre applied only to unrelated individuals living together. With regard to the ordinance at issue, Justice Powell criticized it for being too intrusive into the lives of private families. Thereafter, Justice Powell proceeded to the heart of his opinion—his discussion of the due process clause.

To begin his discussion of the due process clause, Justice Powell relied heavily on a previous description of the Court's function under the due process clause from Justice Harlan. In this description, Justice Harlan described the liberty afforded by the due process clause as something that cannot be exactly determined through one set formula but instead as something that lies on a vast continuum. This continuum calls for a “freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints” as well as “careful scrutiny of state needs asserted to justify [the] abridgment” of certain interests.

Following his quotation of Justice Harlan, Justice Powell then began his own discourse on substantive due process. This discussion has proven pertinent within the realm of privacy law. Perhaps the most poignant portion of this discussion with regard to privacy law was when Justice Powell stated, “Appropriate limits on substantive due process come not from drawing arbitrary lines but rather from careful ‘respect for the teachings of history [and] solid recognition of the basic values that underlie our society.’”

Finally, Justice Powell ended his opinion with a discussion of the merits of child rearing within a home comprising more than just a nuclear family.

For these reasons the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Inez Moore and found the East Cleveland law limiting the occupancy of homes to nuclear families to be unconstitutional.

Justice William Brennan penned a concurring opinion to which Justice Thurgood Marshall joined. Justice Brennan used his concurrence to discuss the East Cleveland ordinance's lack of sensitivity with regard to those who are unable to exist as only a nuclear family as well as to criticize the irrationality of a variance for “hardship exceptions” allowed under the law.

Justice John Paul Stevens concurred with the plurality but wrote separately to address his belief that the issue that should have been addressed in this case revolved around an individual's right to use her own property as she sees fit.

Chief Justice Warren Burger dissented from the Court's opinion on the grounds that Moore failed to exhaust adequately her potential remedies before reaching the U.S. Supreme Court and, as such, did not have proper standing before the Court.

Justice Potter Stewart filed a separate dissent that Justice William Rehnquist joined. Justice Stewart argued, largely based on the decision in Belle Terre, that the nuclear family limitation in the East Cleveland ordinance was rationally designed to achieve a legitimate government purpose.

Finally, Justice Byron White submitted his own dissent, in which he stated that Moore's equal protection claim should not have been viewed under the strict scrutiny standard because it did not pertain to a fundamental interest or a suspect classification and therefore should have failed.

Further Reading

1 

Hersey, Pala. “Moore v. East Cleveland: The Supreme Court's Fractured Paean to the Extended Family.” Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 14, no. 1, (2004): 57–64.

2 

Jensen, Tamila C. “From Belle Terre to East Cleveland: Zoning, the Family, and the Right of Privacy.” Family Law Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 1–25.

See also: Constitutional law; Legal evolution of privacy rights in the United States; The Right to Privacy; Supreme Court of the United States

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Klinker, John W. "Moore V. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977)." Privacy Rights in the Digital Age, edited by Christopher T. Anglim & JD, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=PRDA_0146.
APA 7th
Klinker, J. W. (2016). Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977). In C. Anglim & JD (Ed.), Privacy Rights in the Digital Age. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Klinker, John W. "Moore V. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977)." Edited by Christopher T. Anglim & JD. Privacy Rights in the Digital Age. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed May 30, 2026. online.salempress.com.