2004

Cochran v. Fairfax County Bd. of Zoning Appeals

Supreme Court of Virginia

267 Va. 756, 594 S.E.2d 571

Three consolidated cases from the County of Fairfax, Town of Pulaski and the City of Virginia Beach. In all three cases the landowners sought variances for mostly aesthetic reasons, and the Boards of Zoning Appeals granted the variances in Fairfax and Pulaski, and a Virginia Beach trial court granted the variance there. Supreme Court reversed in all three cases. A valid zoning ordinance may be unconstitutional as applied to a particular landowner in violation of Article 1, § 11 of the Constitution of Virginia. Variances alleviate this problem. However, the General Assembly intended that variances be granted only in cases where application of zoning restrictions would appear to be constitutionally impermissible. Va. Code § 15.2-2309(2). A Board of Zoning Appeals has no authority to grant a variance unless the zoning ordinance would, in the absence of a variance, interfere with all reasonable beneficial uses of the property, taken as a whole. None of the requested variances met that standard.

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