Opinion ID: 2546361
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Illegal Restraint on Land Use

Text: [¶ 40] The plethora of stated causes of action in the landowners' complaint caused the district court some analytical confusion. The district court interpreted the illegal restraint issue as a question of substantive due process. In their appellate brief, however, the landowners have presented illegal restraint and substantive due process as separate issues. We will do likewise. [¶ 41] The gist of the landowners' illegal restraint argument is that the county's extensive conditional use permit system is the antithesis of zoning. In other words, instead of a conditional use permit system designed to consider land uses not specifically allowed in a particular zoning district, the county uses the special permit process to control all land uses, whether or not consistent with underlying zoning. We will not further address this issue, because the landowners have not analyzed the particulars of the county's planning and zoning resolutions within the context of this state's statutory planning and zoning construct. The landowners cite only one case, Rockhill v. Chesterfield Tp., Burlington County, 23 N.J. 117, 128 A.2d 473, 477-80 (1957), wherein the Supreme Court of New Jersey struck down a special use permit system where there was no underlying zoning district scheme, in violation of that state's constitutional and statutory zoning principles. [15] This is not sufficient analysis from which we can conclude that the county's dissimilar conditional use permit structure violates Wyoming's statutes or constitution. There is simply no showing in this case that a temporary work program containing special study areas designed to deal with urbanization, superimposed on an existing zoning scheme, is an illegal restraint on land use.