It Is and It Isn’t

The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled on the case of Powell v. City of Houston. The plaintiffs had claimed that Houston’s preservation ordinance violated the city charter, which prohibits zoning without a referendum. The preservation ordinance, the plaintiffs held, is a form of zoning. In its ruling, the Court agreed that the ordinance is zoning, and then, a few sentences later, the court found that the ordinance isn’t zoning.

Because the Legislature considers historic-preservation regulations to be zoning regulations under Local Government Code section 211.003(b), the Court concludes the ordinance is a zoning regulation adopted in accordance with a comprehensive plan under section 211.004(a)…. The City Charter’s limitations on the power to zone do not apply to the ordinance’s historic-preservation regulations because they do not fall within the ordinary meaning of zoning.

In other words, though historic-preservation regulations are considered to be zoning, Houston’s preservation regulations aren’t zoning. Unfortunately, this isn’t an episode from The Twilight Zone. It is a ruling from the state’s highest court.

The Law of Non-contradiction, formulated by Aristotle, holds that a thing cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same respect. Apparently, the Texas Supreme Court disagrees with Aristotle. According to the Court, Houston’s preservation regulations are zoning, and at the same time, they aren’t zoning. They are A and non-A.

Despite the Court’s findings, a contradiction cannot exist. As Ayn Rand noted,

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

The Court may have a legal basis for its ruling, but it has no basis in logic. When a chasm exists between the legal and the logical, it doesn’t bode well for a society.