United States Supreme Court

In this case, plaintiff-telecom alleges that defendant City's denial of their application to build a cell phone tower on residential property was not supported by substantial evidence on the record. The judgment of the Eleventh Circuit reversed the decision of the district court, finding that the requirements of the Telecommunications Act were satisfied here because plaintiff had received a denial letter and possessed a transcript of the hearing on the matter that it arranged to have recorded. The judgment of the Eleventh Circuit is reversed and remanded, where: 1) the Telecommunications Act requires that localities provide or make available their reasons for denying telecommunication companies' applications to construct cell phone towers, but those reasons need not appear in the written denial letters or notices themselves, and may be stated with sufficient clarity in some other written record issued "essentially contemporaneously" with the denial; and 2) in this case, the City provided its reasons in writing and did so in the acceptable form of detailed minutes of the City Council meeting, but did not provide these reasons "essentially contemporaneously" with its written denial (defendant waited 26 days after the date of the written denial and just 4 days before plaintiff's time to seek judicial review would have expired).

Appellate Information

• Decided 01/14/2015
• Published 01/14/2015

Judges

• Sotomayor

Court

• United States Supreme Court

Counsel