Orange County, Windermere and Deltona are among the 25 local governments that have sued the state seeking to overturn the law used to nullify much of Orange’s Vision 2050 plan and other growth control measures.
The law, Senate Bill 180, was passed with little debate earlier this year. But almost immediately, it has been interpreted by the state to prevent any city or county impacted by 2024’s hurricanes from implementing stricter development rules.
The legal action was filed Monday in Leon County Circuit Court, according to a news release from Weiss Serota Helfman Cole + Bierman, a South Florida law firm. The suit asks a judge to declare the law unconstitutional, because the law doesn’t focus on one subject and its purpose wasn’t clearly stated in the title.
It also argues that the new law conflicts with the Community Planning Act and infringes on the Home Rule authority of cities and counties.
“Every city and county has unique needs, and local leaders are best positioned to make decisions about growth, safety, and resilience,” Jamie Cole, the attorney who filed the suit, said in a statement. “SB 180 is the largest intrusion into local home rule authority since the adoption of the Florida Constitution in 1968.”
It names as defendants the Florida Secretary of Commerce, Alex Kelly; the Florida Division of Emergency Management Director, Kevin Guthrie; the Agriculture Commissioner, Wilton Simpson; the Executive Director of the Department of Revenue, Jim Zingale; and the Chief Financial Officer, Blaise Ingoglia.
The law was passed with bipartisan support and was presented as a means to help communities recover from devastating hurricanes. But afterward, it became the backbone of a lawsuit filed to revive a subdivision in rural east Orange, called Sustanee, that was previously voted down.
That development sought to build 1,800 homes on rural land. Orange County Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad called it, “the very definition of sprawl.”
The law was then cited by the Florida Department of Commerce as reason to reject 14 provisions in the county’s Vision 2050 growth plan, which had been in the works for nearly a decade.
Specifically, the law bans counties within 100 miles of the track of 2024 hurricanes Milton, Helene and Debby from proposing or adopting “more restrictive or burdensome procedures: for land development.” The three storms crossed a wide swath of the state from the Gulf to the Atlantic.
