What The Experts Say About The Case

Cuyahoga Falls v. Buckeye,
Decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, March 25, 2003
(Click on expert quotes below to link to edited interview transcripts)

	"The Supreme Court was not able to use this case to [change] Fair Housing theory, so we live to fight another day." -- Michael Allen, co-director, Building Better Communities Network, Washington, D.C.			"Historically, there has aways been a disconnect between where [tax credit] projects have been built and where the jobs and good schools are." -- Chip Bromley, director, Housing Research and Advocacy Center, Cleveland
	"A Case like this forces us to ... ask ourselves, 'What kind of country, what kind of state, what kind of community do we want to be?'" -- Alan Arthur, president, Central Community Housing Trust, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.ccht.org			"There are more subtle ways of stopping affordability in neighborhoods than a referendum." -- Marty Mellett, director of the Community Development Support Collaborative, Washington, D.C.
	"This case falls into an unfortunately long line of cases in which the Court has chosen not to construe federal law in a way that would place limits on ... exclusionary practices." -- David Barron, assistant professor of law, Harvard Law School			"We don't like liability. At the end of the day, it doesn't serve anybody's interests." -- Juan Otero, principal legislative counsel, National League of Cities, Washington, D.C.
	"The good news is it could have been a whole lot worse." -- John Relman, attorney, represented the Fair Housing Alliance in an Amicus brief			"In terms of the trend toward more increasingly formal community consultation in the use of private property, this is ... nothing unusual." -- Ron Utt, senior research fellow, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.
	"This will open the doors to the NIMBYists thoughout the country." -- William Sullivan, former executive director, Rocky Mountain Mutual Housing Association, Denver			"I didn't really read the opinion as being all that controversial." -- Tom Ward, director of litigation, National Association of Home Builders, Washington, D.C.
	"The things that are ... problematic from a developer's point of view are actually found in the separate opinion by Justice Scalia." -- Lani Williams, associate counsel, International Municipal Association of Lawyers, Washington, D.C.