SC voids parts of Marikina fence ordinance

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court (SC) has affirmed a Court of Appeals (CA) ruling nullifying provisions of a Marikina City ordinance regulating the fences and walls of establishments in the city.

In a ruling promulgated last March 12 but released only yesterday, the SC held that the city government’s imposition of standard height, location and type of fences and walls of industrial establishments, including schools, was invalid.

Justices voted unanimously to affirm the CA’s decision that voided Sections 3.1 and 5 of Marikina City’s Ordinance 192 imposed on St. Scholastica’s Academy and dismiss the local government’s petition for review.

The high court struck down the two provisions of the local ordinance as invalid for being in violation of the school’s constitutional rights to property. The other provisions of the ordinance still stand.

In enforcing the ordinance, the city government ordered the school to move its fences six meters back from the road to provide parking space to the public.

The SC, in a ruling penned by Associate Justice Jose Mendoza, held that the order – which was stopped by a local court through a writ of prohibition – would have converted 3,762 square meters of the school’s land for public use and violated the Constitution’s provision on eminent domain, which provides that private property should not be taken for public use without just compensation.

The SC added that the ordinance’s provision requiring at least 80 percent of fences to be see-through also violates the constitutional guarantee on privacy, “considering that the residence of the Benedictine nuns is also located within the property.”