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Thursday, April 18, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

SCOTUS Won’t Look at Newport Beach Challenge

WASHINGTON (CN) - Claims that Newport Beach, Calif., will bar addiction-recovery homes need not face Supreme Court intervention, the justices said Monday.

A surge of residential group homes and complaints from neighbors about them had led the wealthy Southern California beach community to adopt a restrictive ordinance in 2008 that made it much more difficult for such facilities to open and operate.

The new law created a substantial permitting scheme for which very few group homes were able to qualify.

Within a year of the new law's approval, about one-third of the city's 73 group homes had shut down or were about to; another year on and only nine remained, the 9th Circuit noted last year.

Three of the affected group homes, Pacific Shores Properties, Newport Coast Recovery and Yellowstone Women's First Step House brought a federal complaint, alleging, among other things, that the law discriminated against the disabled and had led to a decline in their revenues of between 40 and 50 percent in two years.

U.S. District Judge James Selna in Santa Ana ruled for the city, but a unanimous 9th Circuit panel reversed in September 2013.

The city failed to win a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court on Monday. Per its custom, the court did not issue any opinion on its decision.

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