The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit instructed a lower court to hear a zoning case brought by Roswell, Ga., after the court granted T-Mobile summary judgment on the grounds that the city’s denial of a cell tower…
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permit sought by the carrier violated the Telecommunications Act. The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel was written by Judge Frank Hull. “After review of the briefs and record, with the benefit of oral argument, and in light of our decision in T-Mobile South, LLC v. City of Milton, Georgia, ... we reverse and remand for further proceedings,” the court said (http://1.usa.gov/1g1fonS). A key question in the case was whether Roswell’s decision denying the permit was “in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record” per the Telecom Act. “The district court adopted a reading of the ‘in writing’ requirement employed by several courts around the country,” the court said. “Under that reading, a separate written document delineating the specific reasons for the local government’s decision is required to satisfy the ‘in writing’ requirement.” The city countered the “decision was reduced in writing in numerous forms, including the denial letter, hearing minutes, and hearing transcript.” The court said the case raised the same issue raised in the City of Milton case. “This Court reasoned that the statute does not say that ’the decision [must] be “in a separate writing” or in a “writing separate from the transcript of the hearing and the minutes of the meeting in which the hearing was held” or “in a single writing that itself contains all of the grounds and explanations for the decision."’ ... Therefore, we concluded that ’to the extent that the decision must contain grounds or reasons or explanations, it is sufficient if those are contained in a different written document or documents that the applicant is given or has access to.'” The facts were nearly identical in the second case, the court said. “As in City of Milton, the City of Roswell provided T-Mobile with a written letter clearly stating that the City Council had denied T-Mobile’s request to build the proposed cell tower,” the court said. “That same letter informed T-Mobile that ‘[t]he minutes from the aforementioned hearing may be obtained from the city clerk’ and even provided T-Mobile with a contact to assist T-Mobile in obtaining the minutes. T-Mobile therefore had access to the written minutes of the City Council hearing where its request was denied.”