Court: Cellular antennas cannot be blocked because they’re ugly

SAN FRANCISCO
January 18, 2006 7:08am

Reacting to pressure from local governments, cellular phone companies have gone to unusual lengths to disguise their towers, sometimes designing them to look like trees to better blend into the scenery.

Now a federal court says they don’t have to do that.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says California cities cannot deny a telecommunications company a permit to construct and to install a wireless antenna based on aesthetic considerations.

Sprint PCS Assets, L.L.C., which is owned by Sprint Telephony PCS, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership, had sued the city of La Canada Flintridge after the city blocked its efforts to install cell phone towers, saying in part that they would be just too, too, “unsightly” for the neighborhood.

The appeals court says local tastes are trumped by state law which would permit the towers to be built.

“By the plain text of the statute, the only substantive restriction on telephone companies is that they may not “incommode the public use” of roads,” the three-judge appeals panel says in its ruling. It does concede, however, that it is “possible that extremely severe aesthetic objections could conceivably incommode the use of the roads.”

In siding with the phone company over the city, the court notes that “it is unlikely that local authorities could deny permits based on aesthetics without an independent justification rooted in interference with the function of the road.”