Herman Corn, Cross-Appellee v. City of Lauderdale Lakes, Cross-Appellant

HATCHETT, Circuit Judge,

concurring specially.

I concur in the majority opinion, but write separately to emphasize that nothing in the opinion should be interpreted as creating a new rule of law that developers will always be unsuccessful in stating a substantive due process claim when a large number of citizens oppose a land use proposal. This is not a case where city council members voted on a zoning proposal after merely counting the number of citizens who opposed the proposal without any consideration of the merits of the proposal. To the contrary, we expressly recognize that “the district court properly rejected the argument that if the City Council blindly followed the will of its constituents *1394 who opposed the mini-warehouse project, its action was automatically valid.” Majority op. at p. 1387 (citing Corn v. City of Lauderdale Lakes, 771 F.Supp. 1557, 1569 (S.D.Fla.1991)).

Our reversal of the district court’s ruling that the city acted arbitrarily and capriciously, is based on the particular facts of this case which are set forth in considerable detail. After reviewing the evidence under the controlling principles articulated in Greenbriar v. City of Alabaster, we are convinced that the city council members in this case did evaluate the “merits” of Corn’s site plan in addition to the legitimate general welfare concerns of their constituents. See Greenbriar v. City of Alabaster, 881 F.2d 1570 , 1579 (11th Cir.1989) (holding that “Council members who evaluate a proposal in light of their constituents’ preferences do not necessarily overlook what [a substantive due .process plaintiff] contends to be the ‘merits’ of a particular zoning plan.”). This is not the case where city council members rejected a land use proposal following one or more orchestrated public hearings where a large number of citizens showed up and mouthed the magic words “noise,” “traffic,” “congestion,” “safety,” “aesthetics,” “valuation of adjoining land,” and “effect on city services.” Instead, the record reflects that city council members voted to deny Corn’s site plan after finding a rational basis for the general welfare concerns that citizens expressed during the public meetings. See Greenbriar, 881 F.2d at 1579-80 (concluding that a developer failed to show that city council members acted irrationally or arbitrarily in rejecting a land use plan, where council members undertook their own evaluation of the proposal and the record indicated a rational basis for citizens’ concerns about the effect on surrounding neighborhoods and for their concerns about traffic problems). Moreover, as in Greenbriar, we find no indication that the city council members’ attention to citizens’ concerns in evaluating Corn’s site plan deprived their decision of a rational basis. See Greenbriar, 881 F.2d at 1579.

Therefore, even though we do not hold that local governments will always prevail in defending substantive due process claims whenever their zoning decision follows public meetings where citizens express general welfare concerns, we conclude that in this case the city’s denial of Corn’s land use proposal was' not arbitrary and capricious because the record reflects a rational basis for the expressed general welfare concerns.