Manassas Ordinance Raises Cries of Bigotry
City Says It Redefined 'Family' to Stop Crowding

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 1, 2006

Robin Croft has never protested anything, isn't part of a liberal group or a conservative group or any other group, really. He's a 47-year-old artist who grew up in southern Virginia and lives in Manassas and who finds a new city ordinance so outrageous that he was moved to act.

So he wrote up a sign expressing his inner feelings as concisely as he could -- "Manassas! Thanks for helping to revive Virginia's BIGOTED PAST! Find a constitutional way to address illegal immigration!!" -- drove to city hall and, for a couple of hours around noon Friday, stood out in the cold holding it up, a slightly uncomfortable protest of one.

"I'm a private person," Croft said as cars whizzed by. "I hate doing this. I despise coming out and putting myself in public view. But it just bothered me. . . . It's the same thing that was done to blacks, only it's transferred to another race."

Although no one stood with Croft in protest Friday, activist groups are lining up to oppose the rule, and one organization has called for a Justice Department investigation of possible violations of the federal Fair Housing Act.

The ordinance, adopted by the city Dec. 5 and modeled on one in Herndon, changed a definition of "family" in the zoning code so that, essentially, households are restricted to immediate relatives, even when the total is below the occupancy limit. With a few exceptions, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and other extended relatives do not count as family in Manassas anymore. For instance, six cousins living in a six-bedroom house would be illegal, even though the number does not exceed the occupancy limit.

City officials said in statement Thursday that the ordinance was aimed at combating crowding.

"The City views residential zoning regulations as a covenant with citizens who purchase property in the community, and our actions honor this commitment," the statement said. "The suggestion that changes in the zoning ordinance reflect any other intent on the part of City government are absolutely false."

However, Vice Mayor Harry "Hal" Parrish II last month explained the rationale in broader terms, saying that it was in part aimed at the larger problem in Manassas of illegal immigration, which some city officials and residents blame for problems such as parking and strained school budgets.

The rule is being enforced when people complain to the city and, overwhelmingly, complaints so far have been against Latino families, a city official said.

Under the city's former zoning ordinance, about 400 people were relocated from June 2004 to June 2005; under the new rule, that number is expected to rise by about 100, officials said.

Some legal experts say that an ordinance targeting illegal immigrants could withstand a court challenge, but others have said that what Manassas has enacted is constitutionally dubious. They point to a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a similar ordinance in the city of East Cleveland, Ohio, on the basis that it violated 14th Amendment protections of family and privacy, among other reasons.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia has said it is "strongly inclined" to challenge the ordinance. Two other organizations -- the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Equal Rights Center -- said Friday in a joint statement that the ordinance is "clearly discrimination based on national origin and family status."

"I'd like to think that in 2005, surely these things wouldn't happen for the wrong reasons," said Rabbi Bruce Kahn, executive director of the center, which requested the investigation. "But my work tells me otherwise."

Kahn pointed to a similar case about 10 years ago in Waukegan, Ill., where the local government passed an ordinance restricting households to a husband and wife, their children and no more than two relatives. The Justice Department sued the city for attempting to limit the number of Latinos living in Waukegan. The ordinance was revoked and the case settled for $175,000.

Manassas Mayor Douglas S. Waldron (R), City Manager Lawrence D. Hughes, City Attorney Robert W. Bendall and several council members have not returned numerous calls seeking further comment on the ordinance, the latest in a string of attempts by municipalities across the region and nation to use their limited powers to deal with problems they associate with illegal immigration.

"It's sort of a balance, and frustrating to everybody, of trying to walk that tightrope, of not being discriminatory and also not encouraging the settling of illegals into a community," said Mark Flynn, director of legal services for the Virginia Municipal League and a former Winchester city attorney.

The Manassas ordinance was modeled after one adopted last year by Herndon, which in turn looked to ordinances in Boulder, Colo., and Tacoma, Wash., as models, said Richard Kaufman, Herndon town attorney.

The Herndon ordinance is less restrictive than the one in Manassas, and includes aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins in its definition of family.

Kaufman said that the town researched the rule for two years and was mindful of three U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the subject: one dealing with group homes, another dealing with the Fair Housing Act and especially the 1977 East Cleveland case.

"The Town Council studied very carefully the city of East Cleveland case and read the language that described the degree to which the Supreme Court would allow one to regulate family relationships," said Kaufman, who declined to comment on the Manassas ordinance. "That's the highest authority we have."

Kaufman said that in Virginia, municipalities do not have the authority to establish occupancy limits, which are set by the state's uniform building code.

Municipalities do have land-use authority, however, and it is under that authority -- zoning -- that Herndon restricted its definition of family, he said. Thus, in an indirect way, he said, the town could affect occupancy limits.

In Manassas, a suburban town of 40,000 that is about 72 percent white, 15 percent Latino and 13 percent black, the ordinance is the latest step officials have taken to combat problems they associate with people assumed to be illegal immigrants.

In October, Waldron asked Gov. Mark Warner (D) to declare a state of emergency in Virginia with regard to illegal immigration, suggesting that doing so would make the state eligible for federal homeland security dollars.

In his response, Warner explained that it would not and that the two states that had declared such emergencies, New Mexico and Arizona, received additional border guards, not money.

"I regard illegal immigration as a serious public policy problem," Warner wrote, "and have written to our congressional delegation on this issue, asking for them to work to increase federal funding for border security and enforcement of existing immigration laws."

If the mayor complained in his letter to Warner about illegal immigrants "eroding the strong spirit of our city," if some residents complained about trash and parking problems, Croft said Friday that he found such complaints mystifying.

As far as he could tell, neighborhood streets around Manassas were generally pretty clean, the civic spirit strong and, in a way, he saw his little protest as an affirmation of that.

"I understand the illegal immigration problem is real, but I find this to be an un-American way to go about fixing it," Croft said. "I moved to Northern Virginia to get away from that more narrow-minded mind-set. . . . I feel this sort of thing doesn't belong anymore."

So there he was, holding his sign. Cars swished past. A woman walking by smiled and said, "God bless." Two men, one black, one white, both city workers, stopped to chat about how things were then and how they are now.

"I figure to err on the open-minded side is better than cracking down," Croft said, explaining that, in his view, the city might have found a more reasonable way of dealing with problems such as garbage and parking, for instance, by enforcing common nuisance ordinances.

He figured there were other people who shared his views in Manassas. He wondered where they were.

"I guess it's because they don't like to be singled out," Croft said. "It's not easy to come out and speak your mind in public. I don't like doing it."