Court revives lawsuit alleging South Florida city's zoning restrictions on gun shop's operations violates state law

CBS News

5 hours ago

A divided appeals court Wednesday revived a lawsuit that alleges a South Florida city's zoning restrictions on where a gun shop could operate violated a state law that prevents local regulation of firearms.
A three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a circuit judge's ruling in favor of Dania Beach and said a jury should decide whether the city's zoning ordinances were designed to restrict the sale of firearms.
The case involves a decades-old law that largely gives the state control over gun regulations and prevents local governments from passing their own measures. The law includes an exception for zoning ordinances that "encompass firearms businesses along with other businesses" — but those ordinances cannot be designed to restrict or bar sales of guns.
Florida Custom Guns, LLC., a gun shop that does business as Affluent Arms, and the gun-rights group Florida Carry, Inc., filed the lawsuit after city code-enforcement officials cited the shop for operating in a zoning district where such businesses were prohibited, according to Wednesday's ruling. The city said gun shops were allowed in two other zoning districts reserved for businesses such as thrift shops, liquor stores and warehouses.
The lawsuit alleged that the city approved the gun-shop zoning restrictions to restrict or prevent sales of firearms, in violation of the state law.
But the city argued that it also doesn't allow other types of businesses — such as check-cashing stores, pawn shops, flea markets, drug or alcohol treatment facilities, funeral homes and lumber stores — in the zoning district where the gun shop was prohibited, according to Wednesday's ruling.
A circuit judge granted summary judgment to the city, short-circuiting a potential trial.
But in overturning that decision Wednesday, the appeals-court majority said given the "zoning ordinances' alleged cause-and-effect upon the retailer's firearms business, and upon firearms businesses generally, a factual dispute exists for a jury to decide" whether the zoning ordinances were designed to restrict firearms sales.
"In effect, the defendants (Dania Beach and city officials) contend that as long as the zoning ordinances treat several other businesses in an arguably unfavorable manner, the zoning ordinances may treat firearms businesses in the same unfavorable manner. Not so," said the majority opinion, written by Judge Jonathan Gerber and joined by Judge Alan Forst.
But Judge Martha Warner dissented, writing that city officials "provided evidence of the original enactment of the ordinances as part of a rewrite of the entire zoning code, and supported their position with attorney general opinions concluding that zoning ordinances limiting firearm activity in certain zoning districts along with other businesses did not run afoul of the statute."
"I would also point out that the plaintiff must prove the purpose of the zoning ordinances was to prohibit the sale, etc. of firearms. … That the effect of the ordinances limited firearm sales would not necessarily prove their purpose," Warner wrote.