Long Island Village Sheds Constitutional Claims Over Treehouse

The village of Babylon, N.Y., didn’t violate a resident’s constitutional rights when it fined him for building a treehouse without a permit, a federal appeals court said.

John Lepper alleged the village violated his right to equal protection by selectively enforcing the village code against him.

The suit was properly dismissed on summary judgment because Lepper failed to show that he “was treated differently from another similarly situated comparator,” the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in a non-precedential summary order citing its own 2019 ruling.

Among other differences, the court said, the other residents who ...