Those wanting to live with more than two unrelated roommates in Ames still cannot do so, after the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the section of the Ames Municipal Code that restricts the number of unrelated individuals living in one residence.

Mayor Ann Campbell said the ordinance was passed before she was on the Ames City Council. She said she thought it had been on the books for a long time, but it recently just began being more aggressively enforced.

“It’s definitely not a new ordinance,” she said.

Brian Phillips, Government of the Student Body president and senior in political science, said he wasn’t aware that the ordinance was being appealed, but the ruling was unfair.

“I’m . offended on some levels by the apparent humor in which the majority justices wrote their opinions,” he said.

Phillips said this is a serious issue that affects a lot of students.

Campbell said in the last two or three years, this law started being enforced more aggressively after the “mix of residential neighborhoods have become more of a challenge.”

She said some residents had asked the city to enforce the law. She also said it was very difficult to prove who is actually living at certain residence to enforce the ordinance.

Campbell said although she is not a voting member of the City Council, she lives in an “affected neighborhood” and has seen demographic changes that have impacted neighborhoods.

Campbell said some neighbors told her about a party where there was drinking until early the next morning.

“That’s a difficult blend when you have young children who’ve been in bed since 8 o’clock,” she said.

Although Phillips said it was not an issue that he could remember coming up in GSB very often, he thought it was a big issue for students. In fact, Phillips has been affected by it personally.

“The house I used to live in was a five-bedroom house, but because of the city ordinance, we weren’t allowed to have five people in that house,” he said.

He said the rent for him and his roommates was higher than it could have been and there was a lot of space that was not utilized because of the law.

Phillips said the ordinance is based on a negative stereotype about college students and “isolated incidents.”

“For every group of students who live in a house who want to party and make noise, there are 10 times as many students who just want to live there and go to class and be on their own,” he said.

The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the part of the Ames Municipal Code that restricts that no more than three unrelated people can live in one house in “residential low density” areas.

The decision had been challenged by the Ames Rental Property Association, which said it violated the equal protection clauses of the Iowa and U.S. Constitution. The court ruled to upheld the law on a 4-3 decision.