Roosevelt Lathan and Pearline Lathan, His Wife v. John A. Volpe, as Secretary of the United States Department of Transportation

Plaintiffs, residents of a section of downtown Seattle through which a proposed interstate highway is to be built, seek to halt all further acquisitions of property by state highway officials until certain statutory, administrative, and constitutional requirements are met. Defendants are the Secretary of Transportation and various federal and state highway administrators. Plaintiffs appeal from denial of their motion for a preliminary injunction. We vacate the order and remand.

A. The facts.

After several years of preliminary study, beginning in 1944 and continuing into the 1960s, the State of Washington proposed an interstate highway (1-90) to be built in a corridor between particular interchanges of two existing interstate highways (1-5 and 1-405) under the terms of the Federal-Aid Highways Act, 23 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. Within the selected corridor, three routes were chosen by the State as possible ones to be considered at a public hearing pursuant to 23 U.S.C. § 128 , which was held on March 5, 1963. Following the hearing, the State selected a corridor for the final location of 1-90, which received approval by the Federal Bureau of Public Roads on May 20, 1963.

In June 1970,…