The right to private property is a crucially important part of what it means to be free. And courts in Texas have long held that it’s a “fundamental” right—meaning that it’s given the same strong legal protections that freedom of speech or religion get. But Dallas officials think that’s all wrong. They’ve asked the Texas Supreme Court to overturn a trial court ruling and declare that city governments can carve up someone’s property rights into little pieces and eliminate each little piece whenever they want. In a new brief, we urge the justices to reject the city’s manipulative efforts to undermine this critical constitutional right.
The case involves home-sharing—the basic right to rent out your property to other people on a short-term basis. Although home-sharing has become better known in recent years due to companies like Homeaway and Airbnb, it’s actually an old American tradition; the Declaration of Independence was even written in a home that Thomas Jefferson rented on a short-term basis in 1776. Renting out a piece of property is a basic element of private property rights; as lawyers like to say, it’s one of the “sticks” in the “bundle” of property ownership. It’s just a lease, like any other lease.
But Dallas leaders have decided they want to effectively ban home-sharing; making it virtually impossible to lease out homes in one of America’s largest cities. Even though there are already laws on the books that prohibit nuisances like noise or excessive traffic—and despite the fact that city experts have repeatedly admitted that there’s no evidence home-sharing increases these sorts of problems—politicians adopted one of the most restrictive home-sharing bans in the country.
That was too much for a trial judge, who declared that the Dallas ordinance violates the fundamental right of property. If owners have the right to lease their land—which of course they do—then they have the right to lease their land for a day or a week or a month, as they choose. But the city’s attorneys have appealed to the state’s high court, arguing that although one may have the right to lease one’s property, one doesn’t have the right to lease property for a short period.
Where’s that line drawn? Nothing in legal history supports the idea of dividing “long term” from “short term” leases in this way—and it makes no sense. If you have the right to lease for a long period, then you must have the right to lease for short periods, as well—and if the city can ban “short” leases, then it would necessarily also have the power to ban “long” leases, which just consist of a bunch of “short” leases put together.
Home-sharing isn’t just a basic part of private property rights; it’s an important source of income for millions of Americans who use the income from these leases to improve their properties and provide for themselves and their families. Home-sharing benefits communities by bringing in people who shop at local stores and eat at local restaurants. While people might sometimes cause trouble with noise or traffic, cities already have the power to combat these problems—in fact, they’re illegal already in Dallas and most other cities.
Texans have long been proud of their state’s historical dedication to personal independence and private property. We hope the state’s high court will stand up for that tradition by vindicating all Texans’ right to use the property that belongs to them.
The Goldwater Insitute thanks American Freedom Network member Jacob Sparks for his work on this brief. You can read it here.
Learn more about our work on home-sharing here.
Timothy Sandefur is the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
