Local Florida Governments Sue DeSantis Over Laws That Block Climate Action

Want to guess what it takes for a county commissioner to be threatened with removal from public office in Florida? Let it be known that you’re considering measures meant to enhance disaster resilience on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Governor Ron DeSantis — the Republican who led the charge to remove references to climate change from all state governing documents — apprised the Manatee County commissioners that they were in violation of a new state law that took effect July 1: SB 180.

It’s not only the commissioners’ jobs that are in jeopardy. The DeSantis administration has also threatened to withhold funding from the county due to voter-approved comprehensive plan changes.

But all is not lost. The county is fighting back with litigation, and others are joining in. Manatee County is among 25 local governments from across the state that have now joined to sue the DeSantis administration over SB 180, which was supported by some of the largest builders in the state. Surprise.

“This is the largest intrusion into home-rule authority in the history of Florida since the current constitution was adopted in 1968,” said Jamie Cole, the lead attorney representing the local governments in the litigation. The legislation basically “freezes all local planning and zoning regulations in place,” and is retroactive to August 2024 — the beginning of a devastating hurricane season.

Development over Sustainability and Citizen Health, the DeSantis Way

On July 1, 2024, a piece of legislation that DeSantis signed into law allows the state government to ignore climate change when crafting energy policies. It prohibits the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and repeals state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy. It deletes requirements that state agencies use climate friendly products and purchase fuel efficient vehicles. It prevents any Florida city or town from restricting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance.

The law’s carefully constructed language even applies to last year’s hurricanes; it impacts every county and municipality in Florida. A last-minute amendment forbid local governments from enacting land development policies that were “more restrictive or burdensome.” Sustainability and resilience decisions were ripped out of the jurisdiction of local governments.

Senior CleanTechnica writer, Steve Hanley calls SB 180 “a big wet kiss for the methane gas and propane industries.”

It’s not that the sustainability additions to their comprehensive plan were new, after all — they’d been part of Manatee County planning for a long time. And they were widely supported amendments to the county’s comprehensive plan. What were these proposed actions, anyway?

• One goal surrounded protecting area wetlands. It was intended to guard against future flooding by prohibiting development within 50 feet of the marshes.
• The other objective looked at controlling sprawl — a real problem in many parts of Florida — by eliminating an exception in which development east of the county’s long-established urban boundary line was allowed.

“It’s incredibly difficult and frustrating because we want people to live here, but we want people to live here safely, and you’re tying our hands. You’re basically saying you all but have to allow for unlimited growth and development,” Commission Chairman George Kruse told Inside Climate News. “They’re not letting me say, ‘OK, let’s learn from our mistakes.’”

Fighting Back: Protecting the Environment is Constitutional

Last week 1000 Friends of Florida filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Senate Bill 180 (2025), a sweeping state law that the environmental advocacy group says “arbitrarily freezes in place local comprehensive planning across Florida.” The suit asks the court to declare SB 180 unconstitutional in whole or in part, and to enjoin the state from applying or enforcing it.

The Complaint alleges that SB 180 violates:

• the single-subject rule by bundling unrelated policy changes into an emergency management bill;
• is arbitrary and capricious because its prohibition on improved planning measures on environmental, public facility, and other issues is triggered by random unrelated hurricane events;
• is unconstitutionally vague by broadly prohibiting undefined “more restrictive or burdensome” planning measures; and,
• is inconsistent with the Florida Constitution’s “natural resources” clause by blocking local actions needed to protect air, water, and sensitive lands.

So far, more than a dozen local governments across Florida have received letters from the state’s land planning agency, the Department of Commerce, declaring their proposed planning or land-use policy changes are “null and void” under SB 180. In many cases, those local updates were designed to strengthen stormwater management, protect natural resources, or prevent urban sprawl.

“We’ve done everything right to protect our rural community, but the state’s actions are stripping away those safeguards,” said Rachel Hildebrand, an East Orange County resident and co-Plaintiff in the case whose neighborhood lies within the county’s Rural Boundary. “This fight is about ensuring our local voice is heard and that our children can inherit the safe, natural environment we’ve worked so hard to preserve.”

DeSantis’ Various Attempts to Dismantle Climate Action

After Hurricanes Helene and Milton, DeSantis wouldn’t hear of government prohibitions on rebuilding in areas repeatedly demolished by natural disasters. “The reality is, is people work their whole lives and work hard to be able to live in environments that are really, really nice, and they have a right to make those decisions with their property as they see fit,” DeSantis said in response to a question during a news conference in Bradenton Beach.

DeSantis is so out of touch with the environment that he and the Department of Environmental Protection announced last year that they would do something oddly non-environmental: the Great Outdoors Initiative would commercialize several of Florida’s largest state parks. The bill was quickly withdrawn, following an onslaught of protests and demands from citizens to protect their state parks.

Two years ago the Florida Department of Education announced that it would include standards by PragerU Kids. PragerU Kids is spreading climate denial information to Florida’s children, and its videos are dominated by right-wing commentary. Michael Mann, the renowned climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the irony in the decision by DeSantis’s administration to allow these climate denial videos “is that this gambit would make Goebbels himself blush.”

Earlier this year Miami-Dade was debating where to locate its new $1.5 billion trash incinerator. Other than the current site, four alternatives were in or near some of the county’s most diverse communities. Florida is one of 23 states that have petitioned the courts to nullify key protections of the Civil Rights that prohibit racial discrimination by organizations receiving federal funding and prevent polluting industries from overburdening communities of color.