In the 1926 U.S. Supreme Court case Gorieb v. Fox et al., the court examined whether a city ordinance requiring homeowners to set back their houses from the street by fifteen feet was constitutional. The plaintiff, Mrs. Gorieb, had been ordered to move her house in Norfolk, Virginia due to this law and refused on grounds that it violated her Fourteenth Amendment rights of property without due process of law and equal protection under the laws. The Supreme Court ruled against Mrs. Gorieb, upholding that cities have a right to establish building lines for aesthetic reasons or public welfare such as health and safety considerations even if it causes inconvenience or financial loss for individual property owners like Mrs.Gorieb who must comply with these regulations. This decision established an important precedent affirming local government's power over land use regulation within its jurisdiction under police powers granted by state constitutions.

In the dissenting opinion for Gorieb v. Fox et al., Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the majority's decision to uphold a zoning ordinance as constitutional was an overreach of government power, infringing upon individual property rights without sufficient justification. He contended that while public health and safety are valid reasons for limiting property use, aesthetic considerations such as maintaining neighborhood character should not be grounds for imposing restrictions on private landowners. In his view, this interpretation of police powers could lead to arbitrary and potentially discriminatory enforcement by local authorities based on subjective standards of beauty or desirability rather than objective measures of harm or danger to the community at large.