A district court has ruled in favor of Fort Worth in a 2023 lawsuit challenging the city’s short-term rental regulations.
The decision means Fort Worth may continue enforcing the regulations City Council members voted unanimously to adopt in February 2023. The vote essentially made it illegal to operate short-term rentals such as Airbnbs in residential areas and tightened regulations for such rentals operating in commercial and mixed-use areas.
In June 2023, 114 Tarrant-based short-term rental operators and members of the Fort Worth Short Term Rental Alliance challenged the regulations with a lawsuit, alleging that city officials violated their constitutional right to lease their properties.
The verdict, delivered March 6 by Republican Judge Josh Burgess of the 352nd District Court, ruled that the city acted within its authority to implement the regulations. The case was initially under Republican Judge Tom Lowe of the 236th Judicial District Court, who heard arguments from both parties in December before ultimately recusing himself from the case.
“The issue before the court is not whether the court would have implemented the same zoning ordinance as the city. The issue is whether the city had the authority to make the decision it made,” Burgess stated in the ruling. “After considering the motion, the plaintiffs’ response to the motion, the evidence, any reply filed by city, the pleadings on file and applying the applicable legal standard, the court is of the opinion that city’s motion should be, and is hereby, GRANTED.”
Reyne Telles, the city’s chief communications officer, did not immediately return a request for comment on the verdict.
The Fort Worth Short Term Rental Alliance declined to comment on the ruling March 11, citing a need to speak with the group of plaintiffs before making public comments. Graigory Fancher, an attorney with Bourland Wall & Wenzel, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately return a request for comment.
City has spent $450K to defend regulations
The city hired law firm Kelly Hart & Hallman as legal counsel with a $150,000 contract in 2023 before tripling the contract amount for a total of $450,000 in November 2024. The funding increase was allocated from the risk financing fund for the city’s human resources department.
At the time, the Fort Worth Short Term Rental Alliance described the funding increase as an abuse of taxpayer dollars, adding that those dollars could have been used to “drive positive change elsewhere.”
Both the plaintiffs and city requested summary judgments on the case in October 2024 and argued that the opposite party should pay their legal fees. Motions for summary judgements ask the court to decide the case without going to trial, arguing that there are no genuine disputes about the material facts and that the law favors the requester’s side.
After the case was transferred to Burgess, he met with both parties in January for a status conference on the case, at which point he agreed to hear the submitted motions for summary judgment. Burgess’ ruling does not detail who is responsible for legal fees in the case.
In their motion for a summary judgment, the city’s attorneys argued that the plaintiffs do not have a vested right to lease their properties for less than 30 days; short-term rental ordinances are “rationally related” to a legitimate government purpose; and the ordinances are not so burdensome as to be oppressive.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued in their motion that the operators’ right to lease their properties is “fundamental, vested, settled and not restricted in duration or location.” They argued that the short-term rental ordinances are not rationally related to any legitimate government purpose and are so burdensome as to be oppressive.
At the Dec. 19 court hearing Lowe presided over, Fancher argued that there is no evidence proving short-term rentals pose harm to the city. Previously existing city ordinances regulating parking, noise and litter concerns were enough to manage the common concerns surrounding short-term rentals without banning the rentals themselves, he said.
“We believe that the facts of this case show that there is absolutely no harm to the city from these short-term rentals, that it encourages a police state, that it encourages snooping and spying upon the neighbors, and that there is absolutely no evidence to show that these are any more harmful or less harmful than the population at large,” Fancher said at the court hearing.
Joe Greenhill, an attorney with Kelly Hart & Hallman, argued that short-term rentals harm the character of Fort Worth neighborhoods.
“The only question the court has to answer is, ‘Was it rational for the city to believe, based on the public comment and the studies that we had done, to think that restricting (short-term rentals) from residential neighborhoods would promote the public health and welfare?’” Greenhill said during the hearing. “The answer to that question is absolutely yes.”
Short term rental opponents welcome decision
David Schwarte, co-founder of the TX Neighborhood Coalition that opposes widespread use of short-term rentals, said in an emailed statement to media that the coalition welcomes the court’s decision. He described the ruling as “great news for the residents of Fort Worth” and “the absolute right decision based on the law and the facts.”
“These unstaffed mini-hotels are completely incompatible with the nature and character of residential neighborhoods,” Schwarte said. “They supplant long-term residents with a revolving door of strangers. The transient nature of (short-term rental) users destroys the sense of security, safety and community that is the very reason why people buy homes in residential neighborhoods.”
The plaintiffs have 30 days after the verdict to appeal the judge’s ruling.
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org or @bycecilialenzen.
Disclosure: Marianne Auld, a member of the Fort Worth Report board of directors, is the managing partner of Kelly Hart & Hallman. Kelly Hart has also been a financial supporter of the Report. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.