Rental Inspections
MINNESOTA
(10/11/01)
Landlord's
Rights
Landlord loses rental license because he
wouldn't allow city to inspect
Rozman v.
City of Columbia Heights
8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
No. 99-2630 (2001).
QUESTION BEFORE THE COURT: Is
it unconstitutional for a landlord to
permit a rental inspection without tenant's
consent?
FACTS: The city of Columbia Heights
required owners of residential rental property to obtain a license before
they could rent their properties to tenants. As a part of the license
requirement, a yearly inspection was required of each of the owner's units.
The landlords were thus required to notify their tenants of the impending
inspections.
Rozman, a landlord, complied with the city's annual inspection program until
1996. At that time his concerns about the constitutionality of the program
motivated him to refuse to inform the tenants of impending inspections or
allow the actual inspections to take place until the city had gotten the
tenant's consent or entered the apartments with a search warrant. As a
result, the city revoked Rozman's rental license.
Rozman sued the city, claiming it had violated his Fourth Amendment rights
against illegal search and seizure when it entered the tenant's apartments
without their permission. Rozman also argued the city's inspection
requirement was unconstitutional.
The trial court found in favor of the city.
Rozman appealed.
DECISION: Affirmed. The law
was constitutional, and Rozman's license was properly revoked.
Rozman did not have standing to assert the Fourth Amendment right of
the tenants regarding an illegal search. It was the responsibility of the
tenants to sue, and not Rozman, because the inspection did not infringe any
of Rozrnan's privacy rights, only the tenants' rights. Nevertheless, the
lower court did interpret the law to require a valid search warrant to
search a tenant's apartment if the tenant did not give consent.
Because a valid search warrant would be required to search a non-consenting
tenant's apartment, the law was deemed constitutional. It was also
constitutional to require Rozman to notify his tenants of an upcoming
inspection. Therefore, Rozman's rental license was properly revoked.
DESSENT
In a dissenting opinion, the 8th Circuit stated, "I think that [Rozman's]
due process rights were violated because the City conditioned a license on a
landlord's commission of a tort or a crime (trespassing on a tenant's
property) or on the commission of an impossible act (giving permission that
the landlord has no power to give). It would be difficult to think of
something more arbitrary than requiring a person to do the impossible; such
a requirement is a quintessential example of the use of governmental power
'as an instrument of oppression.'
Citation:
Rozman v.
City of Columbia
Heights, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. No.
99-2630 (2001).
The 8th Circuit has jurisdiction over
Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska,
North Dakota, and South Dakota.
see also: Chesterfield Development
Corporation a'.
City of Chesterfield, 963 F.2d 1102 (1992).
see also: Camara v.
Municipal Court of the City and
County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 LEd 2d 930 (1967).
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