{"id":212989,"date":"2026-03-31T13:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T13:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/212989\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T13:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T13:15:15","slug":"circuit-court-judge-tosses-out-most-of-sb-180-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/212989\/","title":{"rendered":"Circuit court judge tosses out most of SB 180 lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the Florida Legislature ended its 2026 session without making any changes to a controversial law that restricts local governments\u2019 ability to regulate land development, cities and counties that want to challenge SB 180 are left with one immediate chance for a respite:\u00a0 two related lawsuits challenging the constitutionality<\/a> of the statute.<\/p>\n

But that legal effort, in which Orange County<\/a> and the Town of Windermere are plaintiffs, is hanging by a thread after Leon County Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey dismissed four of the five counts in the primary\u00a0complaint in late February.<\/p>\n

It was the latest in a series of rulings that went against the\u00a0local governments\u00a0after Dempsey refused to grant an injunction<\/a> last December and ruled that one of the plaintiffs in a companion case<\/a>, environmental group 1000 Friends of Florida, lacked standing to challenge the law.<\/p>\n

Now the public case hinges on a single claim, that the law should be overturned because it creates an unfunded mandate, forcing cities and counties to spend money that the state doesn\u2019t provide. \u00a0Attorneys for the state and Florida Homebuilders Association have until April 14 to submit their answers and defenses to the claim.<\/p>\n

Passed into law as a hurricane relief measure in 2025, SB 180 has wreaked unexpected havoc for land-use planners across the Sunshine State since then. Landowners have argued that its broad language goes beyond its intended purpose of easing regulations on storm-damaged properties to thwart any local government efforts to tighten development rules. The DeSantis administration has backed that interpretation, pushing the issue into court.<\/p>\n

Jamie Cole<\/a>, a South Florida attorney representing the more than two dozen cities and counties challenging SB 180, said he disagrees with the judge\u2019s ruling but will continue to litigate the unfunded mandates claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, what the Florida Constitution says is that in order for the legislature to enact any law that requires local governments to spend, in the aggregate, a significant amount of money, they need to do certain things, and one of the things that they\u2019re required to do is make an express finding of great public importance. In this case, they did not make that finding,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n

Orange County, for example, was forced to pay legal expenses after it was sued by developers of the proposed Sustanee project in rural east Orange County that county commissioners denied.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut even the ones that haven\u2019t been sued are also spending money on other things,\u201d Cole told GrowthSpotter.\u00a0 For example, at least 20 jurisdictions had spent money on planners, consultants and lawyers for updates to their comprehensive plans \u2014 including Orange County\u2019s long-labored-over Vision 2050 master plan \u2014 that were rejected or voided by the Department of Commerce because they conflicted with SB 180.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat then forces those cities and counties to expend funds to redo those amendments,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n

And since the planning restrictions were part of a larger hurricane recovery bill, there were other unfunded costs passed to local governments related to staff training and storm debris removal, he argued.<\/p>\n

In addition, SB 180 prohibits local governments from charging impact fees for reconstruction or replacement of storm-damaged structures or from increasing the tax valuation of those properties if they are homesteaded. Such provisions \u201ccause financial injury\u201d because they negatively impact a municipality\u2019s ability to raise revenue, according to a court filing.<\/p>\n

If the plaintiffs prevail, the court could overturn the entire bill or just the two sections (18 and 28) that effectively froze local land development regulations and comprehensive plan updates retroactively to Aug. 1, 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur focus is on sections 18 and 28,\u201d Cole said. \u201cSo it may be that the relief that\u2019s ultimately granted is a permanent injunction just on 18 and 28, but it could be the entire bill as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the state officers argued in their court filings that the law doesn\u2019t create unfunded mandates, and even if it did, the litigation wouldn\u2019t solve the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if SB 180 constitutes an unfunded mandate the relief is not what the Public Plaintiffs request \u2014 striking the law as unconstitutional \u2014 but being excused from complying with the infringing law,\u201d they wrote.\n<\/p>\n

In a companion case brought by 1000 Friends of Florida and Orange County resident Rachel Hildebrand, Judge Dempsey found that only Hildebrand, who lives across the street from the county\u2019s disputed rural boundary, had shown a direct negative impact as a result of SB 180.<\/p>\n

\"RollingRolling Ranch LTD and Mary R Lamar sued Orange County under the provisions of SB 180 after county commissioners denied their proposal for an 1,800-home community in rural east Orange County. Rachel Hildebrand lives directly across from the property. (Source: Orange County Property Appraiser)<\/p>\n

\u201cHildebrand has standing due to the proximity of her property and home to land that now may be developed more intensively under SB 180 than they could before it was adopted and applied by the Department of Commerce to the Orange County Comprehensive Plan,\u201d Dempsey wrote.<\/p>\n

The judge dismissed two of the four counts in the environmental case but allowed two claims by Hildebrand \u2014 that SB 180 is arbitrary and capricious and that it should be voided for vagueness \u2014 to move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cHildebrand has identified the particular provisions of the bill that would directly affect or harm her,\u201d Dempsey wrote.<\/p>\n

Efforts by the state senator who authored SB 180 to find a legislative solution to the matter and restore local control to land regulations failed during the 2026 session. Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-St. Petersburg, filed SB 840, to clarify and narrow the scope of SB 180<\/a> while striking parts of the law entirely. It unanimously passed the Senate but died in the House<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that the legislation didn\u2019t pass because that would have certainly rectified the situation to a large extent,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n

Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at\u00a0lkinsler@GrowthSpotter.com<\/a> or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on\u00a0Facebook<\/a> and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Florida Legislature ended its 2026 session without making any changes to a controversial law that restricts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,7293,28,114,1335,11477,139,141,140,480,11478,2261],"class_list":{"0":"post-212989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-deltona","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-orange-county","13":"tag-orange-county-developments","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-orlando-headlines","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-real-estate","18":"tag-residential-developments","19":"tag-volusia-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}