Who Cares Your "Evidence" Shows This Is Just An Old Part Of Chicago – All That Matters Is The City Says It's Historic

By noemailnoemail-org-robert-thomas-inversecondemn on April 22, 2025

The key quote from the Illinois Appellate Court’s recent opinion in Robinson v. City of Chicago, No. 1-23-2174 (Mar. 24, 2025), in which a property owner challenged the inclusion of his property in a new Chicago historic preservation district? This seemingly innocuous sentence setting out the standard of review:

The plaintiff acknowledges that his substantive due process and equal protection challenges to the ordinance designating the District as a Chicago landmark are subject to rational basis review.

Slip op. at 13.

Those of you for whom this ain’t your first rodeo know that rational basis review (aka aliens might have done it) being invoked isn’t a good sign for a challenger. It nearly always tells the challenger “you lose, no matter what.” And here, that prediction plays out: the court rejected the property owner’s arguments that the city’s designation of his small neighborhood — a neighborhood that is nice in the owner’s view, but not all that special except that it is old — is arbitrary and capricious, and singles out this area without good reason.

Those claims survived a motion to dismiss, but then summary judgment followed. In opposition to the city’s motion, the owner submitted declarations from three expert witnesses. Under the city’s ordinance establishing the standards by which an area is deemed historic and subject to the restrictions in the ordinance, the area must have “value as an example of the architectural, cultural, economic, historic, social, or other aspects of the heritage of” the city, the state, or the nation. Slip op. at 14. One expert opined that this neighborhood isn’t particularly unique and is not a critical part of the city, and nothing really distinguishes this area from lots of others. Another expert opined that most of the neighborhood’s buildings are “ordinary or mediocre examples of architectural styles[.]” Slip op. at 16.

The court acknowledged that the expert declarations do raise “fact-intensive” challenges. A fact dispute? That means no summary judgment, correct? Nope. As you know, fact disputes must be about material facts. And whether the city got it right — or was even close — is not material. Just doesn’t matter what the city is actually doing.

What matters is what the city says it is doing. And here, the city says that this neighborhood qualifies, and thus is appropriate for historic designation and all the stuff that comes along with that designation:

Although this evidence is certainly fact-intensive, we reject the plaintiff’s argument that it raises a genuine issue of material fact in this case involving rational basis review. The facts that the plaintiff’s experts dispute all involve matters within the judgment of the city council as to whether this area of the City possesses sufficient historical and architectural value to warrant its designation as a Chicago landmark. Rational basis review simply does not permit this kind of factbased evidentiary challenge to the judgments made by a legislative body when enacting legislation. See Arangold, 204 Ill. 2d at 148 (“litigants may not challenge the factual underpinnings of *** legislative judgments under due process analysis”).