A federal court ruled the city of Anacortes, Wash., violated fede...
A federal court ruled the city of Anacortes, Wash., violated federal law in denying T-Mobile a special use permit to build a wireless tower because its land-use ordinance imposed onerous requirements for obtaining a tower permit and gave the…
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city unlimited ground for rejections based on esthetics and other subjective factors. The U.S. District Court, Seattle, ordered the city to grant T-Mobile’s tower permit (Case 07-1644RAJ). T-Mobile said the city ordinance imposed unreasonable conditions such as requiring eight separate preliminary steps for tower applications and requiring that towers be compatible with “the character and appearance of the vicinity” without defining what that phrase meant. T-Mobile said the city’s ordinance granted local officials an unfettered degree of discretion over subjective criteria that went beyond what the Telecom Act intended and therefore was preempted. The city said its tower application requirements were necessary for protection of the public safety and welfare, and were therefore exempt from Telecom Act preemption. But the court said the city failed to show why its onerous permitting process and overly broad discretion on tower applications were necessary to protect the public. It said the regulations acted to create a barrier to wireless service that must be preempted.