The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, one of the most influential state high courts, has just handed down a decision opening the door to challenging short-term rentals most everywhere as not permitted in single-family homes. While the decision is extremely narrow and is not precedent-setting in other states, it portends the possibility that local governments and state courts nationwide could start to find that a short-term rental is inconsistent with zoning definitions of “family” and “single housekeeping unit,” thereby making such rentals illegal in most places. It is a remarkable ruling, worth understanding and watching for its impact.

The issue starts with the traditional definition of “family.” In most places, take Tolland, Connecticut, chosen at random for this analysis, it is:

Family: One or more persons occupying a single housekeeping unit and using common cooking facilities, provided that unless all members are related by blood, marriage, legal adoption or legal guardianship, no such family shall contain more than six persons.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 upheld a substantially similar variant of this most-often-used definition against a constitutional challenge. It remains good law today in all but a handful of states that have held the definition too restrictive under their statutory constitutions.

Then, Tolland, as many other towns, defines a single-family home:

Dwelling, Single Family: A detached building used or designed exclusively as a dwelling for one family.

And finally, these definitions are applied to single-family residential zones, limiting the use to single families as defined. In Tolland it happens to be called the “Residential Design District.” In that district a “single-family dwelling” is allowed as of right.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on April 26, in Slice of Life v. Hamilton Township, handed down a decision answering this question:

… whether a zoning ordinance that defines “family” as requiring ”a single housekeeping unit” permits the purely transient use of a property located in a residential zoning district.

The court held that the “purely transient use” was not a permitted use.

Some observations. First, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is highly regarded because, like the U.S. Supreme Court, and unlike most other highest state courts, including Connecticut, nearly all appeals to the court are discretionary—it picks and chooses only the most important. Other states look to Pennsylvania and are influenced by the court.

Second, the court's body of jurisprudence on land-use law is solid, ranking among the top three or four states with well-reasoned precedent.

Third, so many other towns are just like Tolland; they have the same or quite similar definitions, and limit their single-family zones in the same way.

The one major limiting factor in Slice of Life is the extreme narrowness of the decision: it only applies when a single-family dwelling is used exclusively for short-term rentals. There are many investors who are doing just that all across the country, but most people who offer whole house rentals do so for a few weeks or a few months a year—for example, beach houses—and the owners occupy the home themselves the rest of the time.

In zoning enforcement, however, the problem is often one of line drawing. What if the owner uses the home just one weekend in the spring and fall at the open and close of the season? Is that virtually “exclusive”? What if an owner has short-term rentals 27 weeks of the year, just more than half? And zoning enforcement: If you start selling used cars on the front lawn of your single-family home in Tolland, or any other place, is the zoning enforcement officer going to wait a year to see if it is the exclusive use of the property, or will enforcement be unnecessary because you still live there and the used-car sales are not the exclusive use?

The reality is that this question of when a short-term rental is not a single-family residential use remains unresolved. Fortunately, all across our land, local governments have broad authority to plan and to regulate. With this Pennsylvania decision, the urgency to come to grips with short-term rentals is even greater.

Attorney Dwight Merriam is a member of the Connecticut Law Tribune's editorial board.