In the case of Thomas Cusack Company v. City of Chicago et al., 1916, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a city ordinance that prohibited billboards in residential areas unless residents gave their consent. The plaintiff, Thomas Cusack Co., was a billboard company that challenged this law on grounds it violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection under the law. However, the court upheld the constitutionality of such ordinances as they were within local government's police power for public welfare purposes like preserving aesthetics and property values in residential neighborhoods. Furthermore, since these restrictions could be lifted with resident approval, they did not constitute an absolute ban but rather allowed for community input into neighborhood character preservation.

In the dissenting opinion for Thomas Cusack Company v. City of Chicago, Justice McKenna argued that the ordinance in question was not a legitimate exercise of police power and violated property rights protected by due process. He contended that while cities have the right to regulate land use through zoning laws, this particular law went too far by allowing two-thirds of property owners on any given block to override those regulations at their discretion. This provision effectively gave these majority groups unrestricted control over how others could use their properties, which he saw as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority. Furthermore, he believed it created an arbitrary and discriminatory system where some individuals were subject to different rules than others based solely on their neighbors' preferences rather than any objective public interest or welfare considerations.