Smith Anderson Secures Win in Landmark Zoning Case, Strengthening Property Rights in NC

A recent North Carolina Supreme Court decision has bolstered private property rights across the state, reiterating that ambiguous local zoning ordinances must be interpreted "in favor of the free use of land." The 5-2 decision in Schooldev East, LLC v. Town of Wake Forest was a victory for Smith Anderson client Schooldev East, a charter school developer whose plans to build a new K-12 charter school in Wake Forest, N.C., were blocked after the Town’s Board of Commissioners reinterpreted an ambiguous sidewalk ordinance right before a key vote.    

Smith Anderson Attorneys Toby Coleman, Amy Crout and Mitch Armbruster handled the appeal for Schooldev and successfully argued the case before the North Carolina Supreme Court. During oral arguments, the Smith Anderson team underlined the implications this case had for private property rights in North Carolina. There has long been a tension between the state’s public policy encouraging "the free and unrestricted use and enjoyment of land" and the state’s zoning enabling statutes, which grant municipalities broad authority to regulate land use.

The majority decision in Schooldev, authored by Justice Trey Allen, addressed this issue directly, writing that unclear language in zoning laws must be interpreted in favor of the property owner. "Although this Court will uphold legitimate ordinances," Allen wrote in the majority opinion, "the state’s public policy disfavoring property restrictions influences how we construe unclear or ambiguous ordinance provisions in disputed between property owners and local governments. Specifically, the Court will resolve any well-founded doubts about a provision’s meaning in favor of 'the free use of land.'"

The Schooldev ruling is a win for property owners. Local zoning ordinances are often imprecise and ambiguous, creating the risk that elected officials and municipal staff will enforce and interpret the laws differently for different projects. In this environment, even sophisticated landowners may find it difficult to determine what they need to do to obtain development approvals.

Schooldev exemplifies the need for predictable standards. The case arose out of a charter school developer’s application for development permits needed to build a new K-12 school. The developer established at a public hearing that it met the applicable standards set out in the Town ordinances, including a school sidewalk ordinance that Town staff determined did not apply. After the close of the public hearing, the Town Board of Commissioners reinterpreted the Town’s school sidewalk ordinance. The Board then voted to deny the permits because Schooldev did not propose enough sidewalks to satisfy the Board’s new interpretation of the school sidewalk ordinance.

"The problem with that argument is that at no point prior to the close of the evidentiary hearing in this quasi-judicial case did anybody tell Schooldev that [more sidewalks were] required by the sidewalk ordinance," Toby said during oral arguments in the case. "In fact, nobody from the town mentioned the sidewalk ordinance during the evidentiary hearing."

The Schooldev decision calls for clearer zoning laws to help eliminate local regulatory uncertainty from the land development process.

"If local governments adopt ordinances that interfere with property rights, they owe it to property owners to use plain language," Justice Allen wrote in the majority decision. "Property owners should not need law degrees to figure out what local governments allow them to do with their land."