Manassas Using Zoning Ordinance As Anti-Immigrant Tool

The city of Manassas, VA, has come up with one outrageous, probably unconstitutional, and clearly bigoted zoning ordinance. It outlaws households consisting of a family's cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. Why? Because Manassas is changing as Hispanic immigrants, legal and undocumented, move into what were once relatively homogeneous neighborhoods. Just like one would expect of people who are pursuing the American Dream, some of the immigrants share housing with their relatives to help out with the rent or mortgage. This form of home life would be banned under the new zoning ordinance.

See Moore v. City of East Cleveland, Ohio (1977) where Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., wrote:

"Ours is by no means a tradition limited to respect for the bonds uniting the members of the nuclear family. The tradition of uncles, aunts, cousins, and especially grandparents sharing a household along with parents and children has roots equally venerable and equally deserving of constitutional recognition. Over the years millions of our citizens have grown up in just such an environment, and most, surely, have profited from it."

Read the Washington Post story, Manassas Defends New Rule On Who Can Live Together, and the Post's editorial, Manassas's War on Immigrants.