The District’s highest court has upheld Fenty administration-backed legislation that empowered government regulators to shut down outdoor used car lots, many of which served as “chop shops.”
The D.C. Court of Appeals ruling stems back to December 2008, when Mayor Adrian Fenty introduced and received D.C. Council approval for emergency legislation that required used car dealers to either cover their lots or move to industrial zones.
The shops, Fenty and Attorney General Peter Nickles said, were an eyesore and represented a threat to public health. Many of the used car dealerships were home to busted-up cars scattered around empty lots and stored in alleys. Oil, authorities said, was leaking into the soil, and the piles of metal and glass had become home to rats.
“We are going block by block to clean up these blights,” Nickles said at the time. “Residents do not want these businesses in their neighborhoods and expanding their operations into sidewalks and in alleys and turn city streets into veritable ‘chop shops’ and parking lots.”
Chop shops are illicit businesses where stolen cars are broken down and sold for their most valuable pieces.
The administration began enforcing the emergency law in May 2009. By the end of June 2009, regulators had closed more than 50 used car lots and 39 other dealers had reduced their inventories to fewer than the five cars allowed by the new law.
But the car dealers fought back.
First, they obtained the support of Councilman Marion Barry, who introduced legislation to make it easier for the dealerships to stay in business. When that failed to gain traction, 10 used car dealers sued the city, saying regulators had acted outside their authority, and citing economic hardship. The regulations, the dealers said in their legal challenge, unfairly blamed them for urban blight and were forcing them out of business.
The appeals court agreed that the regulations posed an economic hardship, but ruled they were legal.
“Although imposing a potentially costly burden on used car dealers who wish to locate or remain in commercial districts,” the court said, “[the regulations are] not unreasonable … as a response to the conditions of public nuisance.”
