Supreme Court decision to help cities block new cellphone towers

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it easier yesterday for cities to say no to new cellphone towers in their neighborhoods.

In a 9-0 ruling, the justices said the federal law that was designed to encourage the growth of the telecommunications industry does not allow cities to be sued for damages for refusing to permit a cellphone tower.

In the past decade, 140,000 cellphone towers have sprouted throughout the United States, but the phone industry says it needs more to eliminate "dead spots."

The court's decision will take some pressure off local governments to approve permits for new cellphone towers, although it does not mean they can refuse all of them.

The ruling was one of three yesterday in which the court overturned decisions of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco.

In a 5-3 decision, the court restored a death sentence for an Orange County, Calif., murderer who became a devout Christian after he went to prison. The 9th Circuit, in a 6-5 decision, had reversed William Payton's death sentence because jurors might have thought they could not consider his behind-bars conversion to Christianity. A prosecutor had argued that only the crime counts, not what happens after the convict goes to prison.

The Supreme Court disagreed and said the jury almost surely weighed Payton's religious conversion but decided he deserved to die anyway.

And in a 5-4 decision, the court said police in Los Angeles' Simi Valley did not use excessive force when they handcuffed for nearly three hours all the occupants of a house that was raided, even though they quickly learned the people who were at home were innocent.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the police are free to handcuff everyone when carrying out such a raid to protect themselves. In this case, police were looking for a violent gang member, he said, and therefore, had reason to be cautious.

The ruling on cellphone towers will affect disputes across the country. It arose from an unusual dispute between a ham-radio operator and Rancho Palos Verdes near Los Angeles.

Mark Abrams, the radio operator, erected a 52-foot radio tower on his property. City officials objected in 1998 when they learned Abrams was using the tower for commercial broadcasts, and they denied him a permit to broadcast from the tower.

He sued the city in federal court, seeking an order that would allow him to keep the tower and money damages and attorneys fees. When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for Abrams, the Supreme Court took up the dispute to decide whether the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allows such damage claims against cities.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said Congress did not intend local governments to be liable for huge money verdicts in such disputes. It could have "a particularly severe impact" on small towns and rural communities across the nation if the giants of the cellphone industry could seek money damages and lawyers fees, he said.

Cities must give their reasons for refusing to permit new phone towers, Scalia pointed out, and disappointed applicants may go to court to challenge a city's decision. But that is all, he concluded. They may not seek monetary damages from the city, even if officials wrongly denied the permit, he said.