Mount Laurel

Mount Laurel I

In 1971, the attorneys filed the case, known as Southern Burlington County NAACP et al. v. Township of Mount Laurel, on behalf of the Springville residents. In 1972, the trial judge found in favor of the residents and ordered Mount Laurel to adopt a plan to provide affordable housing for the town's poor residents. The township appealed, and in 1975, the New Jersey Supreme Court handed down its first Mount Laurel decision, known as Mount Laurel I.

In that decision, the court set down a new principle of law, that every

The court stressed that zoning was a police power granted by the state; as such, it must serve the general welfare, not only for the residents of the municipality or for the affluent but, as the court pointed out unequivocally, also “it is plain beyond dispute that proper provision of adequate housing for all categories of people is certainly an absolute essential in promotion of the general welfare required in all land use regulation.”

Having set down this legal principle, however, the court remained largely silent on how this far-reaching transformation of local land use practice was to take place. Seemingly confident that Mount Laurel and other New Jersey municipalities would rise to the occasion, the court chose not to go beyond instructing the township to amend its ordinance to comply with the general principles of the doctrine. While that choice was understandable, it meant that any tangible outcomes of the decision would be delayed for nearly a decade.

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