Sanimax USA, LLC v. City of S. St. Paul

95 F.4th 551

SANIMAX USA, LLC, Plaintiff - Appellant v. CITY OF SOUTH ST. PAUL, Defendant - Appellee

No. 23-1579

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit

Submitted: October 18, 2023

Filed: March 1, 2024

Appeal from United States District Court for the District of Minnesota

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellant and appeared on the brief was Matthew J. Salzman, of Mission Hills, KS. The following attorneys also appeared on the brief were Kimberly Dodd of Milwaukee, WI, Andrew Davis of Minneapolis, MN, and Logan Fancher of Kansas City, MO.

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellee and appeared on the brief was Katherine M. Swenson, of Minneapolis, MN. The following attorney also appeared on the brief was John M. Baker of Minneapolis, MN.

Before BENTON, SHEPHERD, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge.

Sanimax USA, LLC, sued the City of South Saint Paul, Minnesota, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, challenging the validity of a zoning ordinance that designated its business as a nonconforming use. Sanimax later filed a second § 1983 action against the City challenging the validity of an odor ordinance under which it had been cited and fined for noncompliance. In its first lawsuit, Sanimax raised a First Amendment retaliation claim and an Equal Protection class-of-one claim; in its second lawsuit, Sanimax advanced a void-for-vagueness claim and another First Amendment retaliation claim. The cases were consolidated, and the district court¹ granted the City's motion for summary judgment on all counts. Sanimax renews its claims on appeal, arguing that summary judgment is premature because a genuine dispute of material fact exists for each of its alleged constitutional injuries. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.

I.

For more than a century, South Saint Paul was the center of a vibrant livestock and meatpacking trade. Located in the City's Industrial zoning district along the Mississippi River, stockyards and packing facilities served as the backbone of the community's workforce, at one time employing more than 10,000 people. As conditions changed, however, many industry-related businesses closed, and the last stockyards shut their gates in 2008. Endeavoring to stimulate economic growth, the City redeveloped a portion of the Industrial district into the BridgePoint Business Park, which saw various light industrial firms and offices open in the area. But some businesses associated with the old meatpacking industry remained, including slaughtering, rendering, and hide-processing facilities.

It was against this backdrop that the City adopted its 2030 Comprehensive Plan setting forth future land use policies. The Comprehensive Plan aimed to create a "new image" for South Saint Paul and reaffirmed the City's commitment to developing BridgePoint as a "modern commerce" hub. It also identified Interstate 494, which bisects the Industrial district and forms the southern border of BridgePoint, as a "gateway to the community" and a corridor through which the City could showcase ongoing redevelopment efforts. To reflect the significant changes to the area that had already occurred, and to encourage aesthetic uniformity, the Comprehensive Plan prospectively guided land north and south of Interstate 494 from Industrial to Light Industrial.

The Comprehensive Plan also noted the City's ongoing battle with foul odors—a negative externality of the once-prodigious meatpacking industry—now perpetuated by the remaining establishments that continued to operate among the new crop of businesses that had opened in recent years. The presence of nuisance odors had stymied development in the area, the Comprehensive Plan found; accordingly, it was imperative that the City work with "holdover industries" to identify and mitigate odor issues moving forward.

Sanimax is one such holdover industry. For decades, it has operated a rendering plant in South Saint Paul that processes animal carcasses and organic byproducts for use in other goods. Sanimax's manufacturing processes emit pungent, foul odors that often drift beyond the boundaries of its property, drawing the ire of nearby residents and businesses. Sanimax is aware of its odor problem but maintains that the processing of organic materials is an inexorably malodorous task. In recent years, it has invested significant resources in odor-abatement technology and has, on several occasions, met with the City regarding the issue. Despite its proactive efforts, however, Sanimax has been the subject of numerous odor complaints lodged by disgruntled residents. As reflected in the Comprehensive Plan, addressing the pervasiveness of industrial odors in South Saint Paul, including those emanating from Sanimax's facility, was a priority for the City.

In 2014, the City enacted its first ordinance regulating odor pollution. Section 110-142 of the Ordinance prohibited odor emissions that: (1) "Create odors or smells which are offensive or obnoxious to another person within the City"; (2) "Create a detrimental effect on the property of another person in the City"; or (3) "Unreasonably interfere with the enjoyment of life, health, safety, peace, comfort, or property of another person in the City." The Ordinance also created an enforcement scheme under which properties identified as potential odor emitters would be required to submit to independent odor testing. Specifically, the testing requirement applied both to properties identified by a previous study as potential odor emitters and those that were the subject of seven "verifiable odor complaints" within a six-month period; a complaint was "verified" if the City Engineer confirmed that a property was the source of the emission that precipitated the complaint. The Ordinance also empowered the City Engineer, pursuant to the results of the odor testing, to designate a property as a "Significant Odor Generator" and require it to develop an odor management plan in consultation with the City detailing proposed operational changes, technologies, and monitoring efforts intended to mitigate future emissions.

The City retained Short Elliot Hendrickson, Inc. (SEH) to monitor the fugitive emissions of properties identified as potential designees under the Ordinance. Pursuant to SEH's testing recommendation, the City deemed Sanimax a Significant Odor Generator in 2015. Sanimax appealed, and the City agreed to rescind the designation upon securing Sanimax's commitment to, among other things, meet regularly with the City to discuss odor-abatement strategies. These collaborative efforts were apparently unfruitful because the City designated Sanimax as a Significant Odor Generator once more in 2016. Sanimax responded by filing a lawsuit challenging the Ordinance as unconstitutionally vague, but it voluntarily dismissed the action after the City agreed to rescind the second designation.

In 2017, the City enacted another odor ordinance amending the Significant Odor Generator designation criteria established by the 2014 Odor Ordinance. Whereas the 2014 Odor Ordinance empowered the City Engineer to designate a property as a Significant Odor Generator based solely on the results of independent odor testing, the 2017 Odor Ordinance additionally required that the property generate seven verifiable odor complaints within a six-month period before such a designation could be made. Moreover, to verify a complaint, the 2017 Odor Ordinance required the City Engineer to confirm both that the property was the source of the emission that precipitated the complaint, and that the property generated a dilution-to-threshold ratio of seven or more odor units, as measured using a Nasal Ranger olfactometer.²

The City also sought to implement zoning changes pursuant to the 2030 Comprehensive Plan. In 2017, it proposed an ordinance that would subdivide the existing Industrial district into I-1 Light Industrial, which encompassed Sanimax's property and most of the land north of Interstate 494, and I-2 Medium Industrial, which consisted of land south of Interstate 494. To reflect the shift from heavy industrial to light industrial uses in the BridgePoint area, the I-1 district prohibited the "processing of grease or organics into by-products" and the "rendering, reclaiming or processing of animals or meat by-products." Instead, such activities were to be permitted as conditional uses in the I-2 district. In a letter to City officials, Sanimax argued that the City lacked a rational basis on which to "target" its business, and the proposed 2017 Zoning Ordinance did not advance beyond the Planning Commission.

The City enacted Ordinance 1350 in 2019 (2019 Zoning Ordinance), which largely accomplished the objectives of the proposed 2017 Zoning Ordinance by creating a 115-parcel I-1 Light Industrial district. The I-1 district encompassed Sanimax's property, and it prohibited the same uses as those enumerated in the proposed 2017 Zoning Ordinance, but the geographic scope of the I-1 district was now narrower. Unlike the proposed 2017 Zoning Ordinance, in which the I-1 district spanned south of Interstate 494 to Richmond Street, the 2019 Zoning Ordinance instead used Interstate 494 as the district's southern boundary, leaving the remaining land south of the Interstate zoned Industrial. The 2019 Zoning Ordinance rendered Sanimax's business a legal nonconforming use, pursuant to which Sanimax could continue to operate—but could not expand—its business.

Meanwhile, the City found that its odor legislation, which created the Significant Odor Generator designation and concomitant odor management plan requirement, lacked an adequate enforcement mechanism to address fugitive emissions from businesses that were "not willing to take a collaborative approach and work with the City." Under the 2017 Odor Ordinance, for example, Significant Odor Generators that failed to comply with the Ordinance's requirements enjoyed a 12-month grace period before administrative...