Description: Challenge to rezoning of golf club property on Long Island in New York as a "Coastal Conservation District."
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WG Woodmere LLC v. Town of Hempstead
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 08/24/2020 Complaint Download Complaint filed. Owners of Private Golf Club Challenged Rezoning Described as Climate Change Adaptation Measure. The owners of a 118-acre property on Long Island in New York filed a lawsuit challenging a zoning ordinance that applied a “Coastal Conservation District” to the property. Until 2020, the property was used as a private golf club. The owners asserted that the establishment of the Coastal Conservation District—which reduced the number of permitted residential units from 284 to 59—violated their equal protection and due process rights, constituted an unconstitutional taking, constituted an unlawful and ultra vires exercise of zoning power, and unlawfully preempted the review process under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act. The plaintiffs alleged that “no comprehensive environmental, or other, study” supported adoption of the Coastal Conservation District, for which “the stated purpose recites as its principal rationale the need to manage ‘current and future physical climate risk changes due to sea level rise, storm surge and flooding.’” The plaintiffs alleged that the Expanded Environmental Assessment accompanying the District was “prepared entirely as a fig leaf to cover the naked land grab.”