Bill that would make it harder to sue against developments tabled for further workshopping

Among a slate of bills lawmakers introduced this year to address housing stock and affordability issues was House Bill 447 by Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax. It aimed to curb people filing lawsuits to stall housing developments by fine-tuning requirements for legal challenges against local government land use decisions. 

“The bill itself was to try and limit the abilities of vexatious NIMBYs,” Simon said, a reference to the term “not in my backyard,” which is used to describe people who oppose developments. “That’s the sort of bad action we’re trying to stop.”

When legal challenges to developments occur, it can delay approval or construction processes. With a noted shortage of housing in Virginia, lawmakers have sifted through a variety of proposals this year to try to boost supply and drive down costs for renters, owners and developers. 

But Simon’s bill, should it become law, could have unintended consequences, a local civil rights groups said. 

The Hanover County NAACP said the law would have undermined their push back against a Wegman’s distribution center in the historic Brown Grove neighborhood. The group and community members challenged the Wegman’s facility in a five-year legal battle that argued the approval process by county supervisors occurred without proper public feedback periods. 

The NAACP also advocated against the facility due to environmental racism concerns, as it was planned, and now sits in, a small, rural, historic Black community.

They framed it as ,more than a local land use dispute, tying the Wegmans introduction in the community to industrial encroachment that has occurred around Virginia in historically Black neighborhoods throughout the state’s history. 

Other examples include how Charlottesville’s city council voted to raze the Vinegar Hill neighborhood in the 1960s or how I-95 was built through Richmond’s Jackson Ward — once known as the “Black Wall Street” in the South. This same type of industrial development had halved the Brown Grove neighborhood long before Wegmans. 

Hanover NAACP President Patricia Hunter-Jordan said Simon’s bill would have taken away the rights of organizations like hers to take a stand against further erosion of historic Black areas. Overall, she said she understands and supports how the bill was meant to address affordable housing issues. 

“We have nothing against the need to create affordable housing,” she said. “But beyond that, you’ve got to think about the other aspects of it. And I think that is what he may have missed at first.”

When the Hanover County NAACP reached out to Simon to relay their concerns he agreed with them that the bill needed some further deliberation. 

She also described how the bill could fit into growing conversations about data centers. Virginia lawmakers have been in discussion in recent months on how to regulate the rapidly growing infrastructure while supporting consumer and environmental protections. 

Hunter-Jordan questioned whether local residents would have the ability to push back against certain data center developments in their neighborhoods if Simon’s original bill had become law. 

For now, Simon anticipates workshopping his bill outside of the legislative session to get it into shape for next year. 

“We want to take the off season as looking at if there’s a better approach — whether that means narrowing who we deny standing to, or whether we go for a different route, maybe we have some sort of an expedited appeal process or expedited docketing system so (developments) don’t get tied up in court for years and years,” he said.

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