Measure T trial date set for day before Thanksgiving
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The measure prohibiting vacation home rentals in residential areas will once again be heard in the El Dorado County Superior Court of California. A trial is scheduled on Nov. 27 on issues a higher court sent back.
Measure T has been the subject of litigation since not long after voters passed the citizen initiated ballot measure in November 2018. The South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group sued the City of South Lake Tahoe in December 2018, arguing that Measure T violates property owner constitutional rights.
A series of years-long court proceedings led to South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group appealing the trial court’s decision, taking the measure to the Third Appellate District Court of California.
That appeal’s court largely ruled in the city’s favor by affirming the trial court’s decisions, except for certain issues it remanded back to the trial court in June 2023.
Various motions and hearings in the lower court since bring both parties to trial the day before Thanksgiving on three issues, according to city attorney, Heather Stroud.
The first issue is whether the plaintiff, South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group, has standing to maintain this lawsuit, and whether South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group is a valid unincorporated association.
The second is whether Measure T’s discrimination in favor of permanent residents in its Qualified Vacation Home Rental provisions advances a legitimate local purpose that cannot be adequately served by reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives, and whether the city has exhausted all of the reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives that have been identified. The Qualified Vacation Home Rental provisions allow permanent residents an exception to rent their properties for up to 30 days per year in residential zones, where the measure otherwise bans short term home rentals.
If the court cannot make this finding, then the court will have to decide a third issue of whether the Qualified Vacation Home Rental Provisions are severable from the remainder of Measure T.
The trial is estimated to take one day.
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