Imagine walking through a suburban neighborhood when, suddenly, you spot a power plant situated between two homes. This disruption of a uniform zoning scheme is rare, as nearby residents could have claimed the zoning decision permitting this power plant’s construction constituted “spot zoning.” Claims of spot zoning, defined as the detrimental rezoning of a small piece of land contrary to its uniform surroundings, protect uniform residential and rural communities from environmentally harmful industries. However, uniformly zoned areas are overwhelmingly wealthy and white due to racist and classist land use policies that concentrate polluting industries in low-income communities of color. This Article therefore posits that spot zoning claims, as utilized today, effectively push harmful industries away from wealthier, whiter communities to these frontline communities.
We support this assertion by analyzing every electronically available spot zoning claim—an overdue and imperative effort given the unprecedented number of spot zoning claims litigated in the past five years. The results indeed indicate that spot zoning claims are overwhelmingly brought in whiter, wealthier communities to keep out polluting industries and, accordingly, leave frontline communities without the same legal redress. We do not advocate for outright elimination of spot zoning claims, as they prevent the siting of heavily polluting industries in populous areas. Instead, we explore the underlying implications of all spot zoning claim criteria to explain how land use practitioners and reviewing courts could curb these trends without violating stare decisis. Relaxing the uniformity requirement for historically marginalized communities, contextualizing a rezoned parcel’s size based on its rural or urban environment, and other substantive changes to the doctrine could allow spot zoning claims in areas traditionally excluded from these considerations.
