This course is approved for 1.00 Illinois MCLE general credit hour. Only the live stream of the session is eligible for Illinois MCLE.
Comprehensive planning involves many tradeoffs, such as Euclidean districts of very similar uses vs. mixed uses, and growth into rural areas to keep up with demand vs. steering growth toward areas where the infrastructure is already sufficient to support it. Among the many consequences of those choices may be different environmental impacts. In states that have adopted environmental rights acts, a rarely-used but broadly-stated type of claim can in theory be used to override certain outcomes of comprehensive planning based on a court’s conclusions about their environmental impact. Awakening planners to this prospect can be the starting point to discussions about how comprehensive planning can avoid violating statutory environmental rights, while at the same time being equitable across litigious and non-litigious groups of stakeholders.
Through a divided presentation, two speakers – one experienced comprehensive planner and environmental lawyer, and one experienced land use litigator – will explain how environmental rights statutes differ from environmental review statutes and environmental regulations, provide the background of litigation about Minneapolis’s well-known 2040 comprehensive plan (and how it became the target of a MERA suit), and discuss how the court rulings may impose a new framework and decision-maker for planning decisions with likely environmental impacts.
Awaken (or re-awaken) planners to half-century-old state statutes that empower citizens to ask judges to scrutinize decisions, including planning decisions, that are likely to materially adversely affect the environment
Demonstrate how Minnesota’s Environmental Rights Act (MERA) has enabled a trial-court judge, in part with appellate courts’ blessing, to override important parts of the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
Imagine how planning can further a community’s vision, in a legal environment where stakeholders can use potential environmental impacts to convince a judge to impose their a different vision.
