MacMann v. Matthes, No. 15-3400 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs filed suit against the City, alleging that the City violated their rights under the Columbia City Charter, the Missouri Constitution, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by interfering with their participation in a municipal referendum process to repeal two ordinances passed by the City Council in connection with a student housing development project proposed by Opus. The district court granted summary judgment to the City. The court concluded that the City did not violate plaintiffs' rights by enacting Ordinance B while Referendum A was pending; the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to the City on plaintiffs' claims involving the issuance of the Opus project permits; plaintiffs have not established a violation of their First Amendment rights where neither the referendum process itself nor the City’s conduct in responding to the referendum process interfered in any way with the message plaintiffs sought to communicate, restricted their ability to circulate either referendum petition, regulated the content of their speech, or infringed on their ability to communicate with other voters or the manner by which they could so communicate; the court also rejected plaintiffs' claim that the City violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by depriving them of protected liberty and property interests without due process of law; and there is no constitutional right at stake in the referendum process, and thus conditioning the repeal of Ordinance A on abstaining from the referendum process cannot be unconstitutional. In this case, the City complied with all relevant provisions set forth in the City Charter. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Wollman, Author, with Arnold and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Constitutional law. In an action alleging the City of Columbia, Missouri and its City Manager violated plaintiff's rights by interfering with their participation in a municipal referendum process to repeal two ordinances passed by the City Council in connection with a student-housing development project to be built by a third-party developer, the district court did not err in determining plaintiffs' rights to challenge the ordinances was defined and limited by the City Charter; the City did not violate the City Charter or interfere with resident's referendum rights by adopting the second ordinance at issue; the City could repeal the first ordinance rather than submitting it to a vote, and the City could enact the second ordinance while the first ordinance was pending; Charter does not give residents the power to challenge the issuance of construction-related permits by City administrative departments, and the issuance of permits upon the submission of valid permit applications did not violate the residents' rights under the Charter; plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment challenges were properly rejected.
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