Florida/Georgia Personal Injury & Workers Compensation

...After the Commission rejected their request the Scurlocks brought this suit in federal court, claiming that portions of the City's municipal code violated their rights to substantive due process and equal protection under the fourteenth amendment and were preempted by the Act, the HUD regulations, and sections 320.827 and 320.8285 of the Florida Statutes....

...See 42 U.S.C. Sec. 5403 (d) (authorizing states to establish regulations identical to the federal standards); Fla.Stat. Sec. 320.823. Florida also has expressly reserved to municipalities the right to enact zoning regulations that affect mobile homes. Section 320.8285(5) of the state's motor vehicle code provides that "[t]he Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles shall enforce every provision of this section and the regulations adopted pursuant hereto, except that local land use and zoning requirements ......

...egulations and others must be reasonable, uniformly applied, and enforced without distinctions as to whether such housing is manufactured, located in a mobile home park or a mobile home subdivision, or built in a conventional manner." Fla.Stat. Sec. 320.8285(5) (emphasis added). According to the Scurlocks, the Lynn Haven zoning regulation conflicts with these restrictions. 20 The question of whether the City's ordinance as applied to the Scurlocks' mobile home conflicts with section 320.8285(5) is a difficult one....

...by the decision therein. See Allen v. A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., 606 F.2d 84, 87 (5th Cir.1979); see also Bradbury v. Wainwright, 718 F.2d 1538, 1540 (11th Cir.1983). Second, we give substantial weight to the local district court's interpretation of section 320.8285(5)....

...na Avenue lot. As the district court found, because site-built homes and manufactured buildings could be located there, the ordinance seems to exclude only products or techniques used in constructing mobile homes, in contradiction of that portion of section 320.8285(5) requiring localities to enforce regulations "without distinctions as to whether such housing is manufactured ......

...he maximum velocity for which manufacturers must construct mobile homes under the HUD regulations. Under the Campbell analysis, the showing might justify Lynn Haven's decision not to allow the Scurlocks to site their home on Montana Avenue. However, section 320.8285(5) goes even further than the statute discussed in Campbell. Under section 320.8285(5), localities must also enforce ordinances "without distinctions as to whether such housing is ......

...requirements in order to be sited outside of these parks; to do so would make distinctions as to whether the homes were or were not located within mobile home parks. Because the Lynn Haven zoning ordinance as applied to the Scurlocks conflicts with section 320.8285(5), it cannot be used to prohibit them from locating their mobile home on the Montana Avenue property....

zoning regulations that affect mobile homes. Section 320.8285(5) of the state’s motor vehicle code provides