With a judge slated to hear arguments this week, the state is trying to short-circuit constitutional challenges to a new law that blocks cities and counties from approving “more restrictive or burdensome” changes to growth plans.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for state officials argued in two motions late Friday that Leon County Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey should dismiss challenges filed by 25 cities and counties, the growth-management group 1000 Friends of Florida and an Orange County resident.<\/p>\n
The prohibition on growth-plan changes was included this spring in a wide-ranging bill (SB 180) that lawmakers said would help the state recover from the 2024 hurricanes. The law, signed in June by Gov. Ron DeSantis, effectively freezes local land-development regulations and comprehensive plans through Oct. 1, 2027, and was made retroactive to Aug. 1, 2024.<\/p>\n
The cities and counties filed a lawsuit in September, and 1000 Friends of Florida and Orange County resident Rachel Hildebrand followed with another lawsuit. In part, the attorneys for state officials argued in Friday\u2019s filings that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to challenge the law. Also, they said Dempsey should reject requests for a preliminary injunction against the law.<\/p>\n
As an example, the attorneys for state officials contended that a concept known as the \u201cpublic official standing doctrine\u201d barred the cities and counties from challenging the constitutionality of the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt bottom, the public plaintiffs (the cities and counties) run up against a threshold bar \u2014 one that prevents them from reaching (let alone showing they will \u2018likely succeed\u2019 on) the merits. As public entities, the public plaintiffs \u2018must presume legislation affecting their duties to be valid, and do not have standing to initiate litigation for the purpose of determining otherwise,\u2019\u201d one of Friday\u2019s filings said, partially quoting a 1982 Florida Supreme Court precedent.<\/p>\n
In a separate filing, the attorneys for state officials argued that 1000 Friends of Florida and Hildebrand could not show they had suffered a \u201cconcrete injury\u201d because of the law.<\/p>\n
The lawsuits, which have been consolidated, raised a series of issues, including that the law violates local governments\u2019 home-rule authority, violates a constitutional single-subject requirement for legislation and strips the ability of cities and counties to manage growth.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers touted the overall bill as helping the state recover from last year\u2019s hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton. It included changes related to issues such as debris removal, mutual-aid agreements, rebuilding storm-damaged homes and building-permit and inspection fees.<\/p>\n
But the lawsuit focuses on a section of the bill that was added May 2 and prohibits local governments from proposing or adopting \u201cmore restrictive or burdensome\u201d amendments to comprehensive plans or land development regulations. Any resident or business owner may file suit to enforce the section.<\/p>\n
The section applies to governments that were placed under federal disaster declarations from any of the three hurricanes. All 67 of Florida\u2019s counties were listed in at least one of the three declarations.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the local governments have also had to pause moving forward with planning and zoning regulations that have been years in development even if those regulations are unrelated to emergencies or rebuilding after emergencies, amounting to a waste of the public funds expended in effort to pass said regulations and expanding the reach of SB 180 past emergencies,\u201d the lawsuit filed by cities and counties said.<\/p>\n
Dempsey is scheduled Friday to hear arguments on the state officials\u2019 motions to dismiss the cases and the plaintiffs\u2019 preliminary injunction requests.<\/p>\n
Defendants in the cases are Department of Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly, Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie, Department of Revenue Executive Director Jim Zingale and state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia. The lawsuits said those state officials have roles in carrying out the law or in local-government money.<\/p>\n
In addition to contending that the plaintiffs lack legal standing, the state officials\u2019 filings Friday also disputed the arguments about issues such as violating home-rule powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile it\u2019s true that home rule powers are important, the Florida Constitution is unequivocal that general (state) laws reign supreme over home rule powers,\u201d the attorneys from the Lawson Huck Gonzalez, PLLC, firm wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a judge slated to hear arguments this week, the state is trying to short-circuit constitutional challenges to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-85466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85466","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=85466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}