The Telecommunications Act of 1996: the policy's impact on southeastern jurisdictions that had lawsuits overturn public hearing decisions

This study examines fourteen southeastern Telecommunication Act of 1996 lawsuits, which occurred between February 1996 and September 1998. In order for the lawsuit to be analyzed it had to involve a situation where a telecommunication company had been denied a permit to erect a new tower. The applicable cases analyzed situations where a local-level government had been denied a tower permit through an administrative decision, variance, special use permit hearing, conditional use permit hearing, or moratorium.

Additional research was conducted on the seven local-level jurisdictions that had a Telecommunication Act of 1996 lawsuit overturn one of their decisions. The purpose of this research was to verify if tower ordinances or tower approval rates would change in a specific jurisdiction after a lawsuit had reversed a decision.

This research should be extremely interesting to planners and telecommunication companies because it gives insight into what kinds of cases have been reversed and what kind of cases have been upheld.