Rezoning Protest Petitions Are Ripe for Reform

Originally published in January 2022

In 2021, Veterans Services USA, a nonprofit organization, applied for a rezoning of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to Veterans Services USA, the hotel closed after functioning at less than 40 percent capacity in 2019,[1] and the organization saw a new use for it. Veterans Services USA sought to renovate the building, operate floors 2 through 6 as a hotel, and rent floors 7 through 11 as housing for low-income veterans. Planning staff agreed that the changes were an upgrade and met an important need, and the planning commission voted six to four in favor of approval.[2] Unhappy institutional neighbors, however, including Oral Roberts University and Walmart, were able to block the plan by using an obscure state law.[3] The law allows neighbors to lodge formal objections to a rezoning, which are known as protest petitions. If a valid protest petition is filed, rezoning cannot proceed without the approval of a three-fourths supermajority on the local governing council.

Oklahoma is among 20 states that allow a small group of neighbors to formally protest a residential rezoning and raise the threshold for approval from a simple majority to a supermajority. The protest petition process exists to provide a check on city councils, which may listen too little to localized concerns. As currently implemented, however, the process gives too much power to a very small number of neighbors.

As the United States faces persistently high housing costs, many cities are gathering the political will to loosen zoning rules and allow greater housing supply in areas that have long been limited by strict zoning.[4] States with protest petition processes that can be activated by a small group of neighbors add an extra hurdle toward these important, city-led efforts to allow more housing. State legislators can support local efforts by reforming protest petition statutes to reflect broad neighborhood consensus and to better protect property rights.

In 2025, protest petitions received more attention than ever before from state legislatures. Montana repealed its petition statute. Texas exempted citywide rezonings and rezonings that enable more housing. And protest petition repeal passed both houses of the Connecticut and Wyoming legislatures, only to fall to a gubernatorial veto and a conference committee, respectively.

Rezoning and the Protest Petition Process

Most cities in the United States use zoning to limit the types of buildings and businesses allowed in each zoning district. Zoning districts are frequently small and intermingled, with neighboring properties subject to very different rules. A property owner or city planning staff can initiate a rezoning, or zoning amendment, to move one or more properties from one district to another. For example, a rezoning is often required to develop homes or businesses on former agricultural land.

When a rezoning is proposed, nearby residents and property owners are generally invited to give feedback. Research shows that only a few neighbors typically engage.[5] Those who do are usually opposed to rezoning and express concern about potential changes in property values, stormwater runoff, traffic, or community character. Although rezonings can be important for achieving citywide or regional goals, such as providing new homes and creating jobs, few rezonings attract broad community support. There is no way even to know who will eventually buy a home or find a job on a rezoned site, let alone to mobilize such stakeholders in support of rezoning.

Protest petitions give formal political power to property owners who want to prevent a rezoning. When a rezoning is proposed in a state with a protest petition statute, property owners within a certain distance of the proposed rezoning may sign a petition protesting the change. If enough neighbors sign the petition, state law dictates that the rezoning can be approved only if a supermajority of the city council, county council, or other legislative body votes in favor.[6]

Although it happens more rarely, property owners can also object to the rezoning of their own property. This situation is most likely if the city is imposing stricter regulation and thus taking economic value from the affected property owners.

The Where and How of Protest Petitions

Twenty-one states currently have state protest petition laws, as shown in figure 1.[7] Each state sets its own definition of  “nearby” property owners and its own threshold for what percentage of nearby private property must be owned by petitioners to make the protest petition valid.[8]

Iowa’s statute is typical: if 20 percent of land within 200 feet of a proposed rezoning is owned by signatories of the protest petition, the petition becomes valid and triggers a three-fourths supermajority requirement. Table 1 lists the basic parameters of protest petitions in the 21 states.

The most easily abused protest petition statutes are those, such as Michigan’s, that allow owners of only 20 percent of nearby land to trigger a supermajority requirement. For a small rezoning, often a single property owner has 20 percent of the nearby land and can trigger a supermajority requirement even if the rest of the neighbors favor the rezoning. As the Crowne Plaza hotel example shows, though, even Oklahoma’s relatively broad standards can leave substantial power in few hands. One property owner, Oral Roberts University, owns more than half the land within 300 feet of the site and could thus bring a protest petition on its own.

Data indicate that protest petitions occur regularly but not constantly. A 2006 University of North Carolina survey on petitions found that protest petitions were filed to oppose 8 percent of rezonings in the Tar Heel State.[9] The effect of the protest petition was to lower the rezoning approval rate between 5 and 25 percentage points.[10] Informed by the study, North Carolina repealed its protest petition statute in 2015.[11]

Ohio, West Virginia, and—for county zoning only—Michigan have a unique rezoning protest process: Rather than requiring supermajority votes, successful protests result in referendums on the proposed rezoning. This process has the virtue of accurately appraising local opinion but at a high administrative cost. Ohio builders have found it a barrier to housing growth and recently raised the threshold for triggering referenda.[12] We do not recommend that other states adopt the referendum approach.

Protest Petitions May Apply to Citywide Rezonings

In no state were protest petitions used more heavily than in Texas, and in no city more than in Austin.[13] Valid petitions, as they are known in Texas, were routinely threatened and filed against local rezonings. The issue came to a head in 2022 when a judge ruled that the notice requirements in Texas’s valid petition statute apply to citywide rezonings as well.[14] The City of Austin sent out citywide notices when it redid years of planning and zoning work.[15]

Faced with the prospect of uncertainty and expense attending every comprehensive rezoning in the state, legislators rewrote the valid petition statute in 2025:

• Comprehensive rezonings are exempt,
• Valid petitions against residential upzonings are expressive—they no longer trigger a supermajority vote requirement, but
• Valid petitions against nonresidential rezonings are unchanged.

Texas’ successful resolution should be a warning to states with similar notice and petition statutes. Legal researcher Caleb Hersh agrees that ‘“[c]onsistent with the law of other states, . . . all affected and abutting landowners had a right to protest the rezoning.”[16]

Private Property and the Presumption of Liberty

Government policies ought to err on the side of liberty. As John Stuart Mill writes, “[T]he onus of making a case always lies on the defenders of legal prohibitions.”[17] Although the limits of this principle have long been debated, few would argue that government ought to restrict freedoms without offering a plausible reason. F. A. Hayek argues for liberty in the face of limited human knowledge: “[W]e shall not achieve its ends if we confine liberty to the particular instances where we know it will do good.”[18]

In practice, the presumption in favor of liberty relies on the restraint of officials, checks on arbitrary decisions such as judicial review,[19] and structural biases in favor of liberty built into government decision-making. Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, and—at least for the moment—North Carolina have implemented such biases by making downzoning harder than upzoning.[20]

If implemented well, protest petitions can have a structural bias in favor of liberty, but when implemented poorly—and as written in many states today—protest petitions introduce the opposite bias, favoring restriction over liberty.

The protest petition process is notionally neutral—it can be used by either neighbors or the owners of rezoned property objecting to either tighter or looser zoning. In practice, though, neighbors use the petition process almost exclusively to prevent looser zoning. The interests of neighbors should not, of course, be ignored—but neither should a handful of neighbors be granted so much power over others’ property.

The section that follows outlines five models for reform that have the potential to tilt the protest petition process away from ever-tighter regulation and toward liberty.

Options for Reform

Several states have demonstrated possibilities for reforming the protest petition process to ensure that a few neighbors cannot speak for an entire community and to strengthen the presumption of liberty.

Montana, North Carolina, and Wisconsin: Repeal

States can entirely repeal the protest petition process, as Montana, Wisconsin, and North Carolina did recently.[21] In Wisconsin, some cities have chosen to keep protest petition ordinances, choosing to limit their own discretion.[22]

An even better option is to repeal the protest petition process only with respect to neighbors, leaving in place the rarely used ability to protest an unwanted rezoning of one’s own land.

However, we are sympathetic to the concerns that originally motivated protest petitions[23]—that city power is sometimes exercised without regard to local concerns. Retaining a mechanism for formal neighborhood resistance is reasonable, but that mechanism ought to be triggered only when a relatively broad and clearly representative group of neighbors protests.

Massachusetts: The Baker majority

Before 2021, any rezoning in Massachusetts required a two-thirds legislative majority. Governor Charlie Baker championed a reform that lowered the approval threshold to a simple majority but only for rezonings that would loosen regulations against housing.[24] Massachusetts law has thus institutionalized the presumption of liberty for housing supply. Municipalities now face a higher threshold for adding than removing regulation.

States can incorporate a Baker Majority by limiting or repealing the protest petition process only for an upzoning—that is, a rezoning that restores or expands property rights.[25] For example, a state could alter its statute so that a protest petition against an upzoning triggers a three-fifths supermajority requirement, whereas a protest petition against any other rezoning triggers a three-fourths supermajority requirement. A state could alternatively require a larger share of nearby owners’ signatures to validate a protest against an upzoning.

Oklahoma: 50 percent threshold, broader neighborhood

Despite the drama at the Crowne Plaza hotel, Oklahoma’s protest petition statute is among the most balanced. A valid protest petition must cover fully one-half of nearby property, guaranteeing that protests cannot be brought when owners of a majority of the neighborhood favor the project. At the same time, property owners enjoy strong protection: 20 percent can bring a petition against a rezoning, as in most other states.

In addition, Oklahoma has a relatively generous definition of nearby properties: those in the area extending 300 feet from the proposed rezoning. But 300 feet is still quite small. On a typical Tulsa street, house lots are 50 feet wide, so only the six nearest neighbors in each direction along a block are considered nearby. Lots are also much larger in nonresidential areas, so a small number of commercial or institutional owners easily constitute the neighborhood, as occurred around the Crowne Plaza.

For other states, adopting Oklahoma’s approach would eliminate most abuses of protest petitions while retaining neighbors’ collective power in the rezoning process. States could also extend the range of “nearby” to 500 or 1,000 feet, especially in nonurban areas. Oklahoma’s approach could be adjusted in areas with large lots. For instance, a protest petition could require a minimum of 50 or 100 residents within one-half mile of the rezoning site in addition to property owners covering 50 percent or more of property within the standard distance.

Texas: Exempt residential and comprehensive rezonings

As discussed above, other states could follow Texas 2025 law and exempt comprehensive rezonings and residential upzoning from petition statutes. New Hampshire also limits protest petitions to rezonings affecting less than one-third of a town’s area.

Arizona: Count people as well as land

The classic protest petition process is designed to protect property values, and each neighbor’s signature counts in proportion to the relevant land that individual owns. Arizona counts people in addition to land. It requires that a protest petition be signed by owners of at least 20 percent of the nearby “lots, tracts, and condominium units” as well as 20 percent of the nearby land area. Arizona’s 20 percent threshold, however, still allows a minority of neighbors to hold up popular changes.

States could go further by requiring signatures from residents of at least one-half of occupied housing units in addition to owners of the relevant land. Such a requirement would give renters a voice in protest petitions. However, the potential administrative cost is a reason to be cautious about adopting this approach.

Conclusion

States play an important role in the local exercise of zoning powers, setting the rules by which municipalities adopt and amend their zoning ordinances. States with protest petition processes have granted substantial veto power over zoning changes to small groups of neighbors, without any countervailing community power to hasten needed changes. This one-sided veto power makes adapting their zoning to changing needs harder for cities and dilutes property rights.

In the midst of a national housing crisis, some cities are building political will for reforms that enable expanded opportunities for housing supply. States should reform or repeal protest petition statutes to ensure that their cities can use the rezoning process without undue difficulty.

Appendix

About the Authors

Salim Furth is a senior research fellow and director of the Urbanity project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research focuses on housing production and land use regulation. He has published in scholarly journals and testified before several state legislatures as well as the US Senate and House of Representatives. Furth earned his PhD in economics from the University of Rochester.

Kelcie McKinley worked as a development associate at the Fund for American Studies and as an assistant at the Texas House of Representatives. Her research interests include urban policy and environmental policy. McKinley graduated from Texas Tech University with a BS in biology and earned an MA in economics from George Mason University.

Notes

[1] Rick Maranon, “Group Halts Plans for Rezoning South Tulsa Building into Mixed Affordable Housing,” FOX23 News, June 23, 2021.

[2] Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, “Minutes of Meeting No. 2841,” May 5, 2021, http://tulsaplanning.org/ tmapc/minutes/2021-05-05-TMAPC-Minutes.pdf. [3] Maranon, “Group Halts Plans for Rezoning.”

[3] Maranon, “Group Halts Plans for Rezoning.”

[4] Salim Furth and Philip Wharton, Zoning and Permitting Innovations Unlock Opportunity (Better Cities Project, 2021); Hannah Kearse, “Bozeman Commission Relaxes ADU Regulations,” NBC Montana, November 16, 2021; Alyssa Chen, “In landmark zoning reform, Cambridge votes to legalize four-story multifamily homes citywide (corrected),” Cambridge Day, February 10, 2025.

[5] Katherine Levine Einstein et al., Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

[6] For a comprehensive legal history of protest petitions, see Caleb Hersh, “The NIMBY Filibuster,” New York University Law Review 100, no. 1 (2025): 167–206.

[7] The original version of this brief did not take into account protest petition statutes in New Mexico and South Dakota; ChatGPT-4o found them in a “Deep Research” search. Salim Furth, “Deep Research: Supermajority Laws Around the States,” Market Urbanism, March 7, 2025.

[8] We are grateful to the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations for earlier research on state protest petition laws, which we verified and updated. Bill Terry et al., Community-Based Land-Use Decisions: Public Participation in the Rezoning Process (Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 2015).

[9] David W. Owens, “Zoning Amendments in North Carolina” (Special Series no. 24, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government, February 2008).

[10] Protested rezonings were 24 percentage points less likely to be approved than other rezonings (52 percent versus 76 percent), but that was mostly because protested rezonings received fewer votes, not because of the supermajority threshold. Only 5 percent of protested rezonings received a majority of votes but failed to receive a supermajority. Three interacting forces may explain the gap: (a) protested rezonings may generally be “worse” and would thus receive fewer affirmative votes in the absence of a formal process, (b) the protest may influence council votes, and (c) council members may strategically change their vote when they know a rezoning is doomed. Without quantifying those channels, one cannot precisely identify the impact of the supermajority requirement.

[11] John Moritz, “NC Legislature Approves Bill to End Protest Petitions,” Asheville Citizen-Times, July 15, 2015.

[12] Ohio REALTORS, “Operating Budget Signed into Law: What Made the Final Cut?,” The Buzz (blog), July 1, 2025.

[13] Salim Furth and C. Whit Ewen, “Mostly Invisible: The Cost of Valid Petitions in Texas” (Mercatus Policy Brief, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, February 2023).

[14] City of Austin v. Acuña, 651 S.W.3rd 474 (2022), https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tx-court-of-appeals/2166602.html.

[15] The City of Austin also used a loophole in Texas law that allows alternative means of notice when the planning commission and the city council hold a joint meeting. This belt-and-suspenders approach survived challenges, and multiple comprehensive rezonings have been enacted. Jo Clifton, “Council to Consider Joint Hearing with Planning Commission on Code Amendments,” Austin Monitor, September 20, 2023; Ella McCarthy, “Austin City Council Approves HOME Phase 2, Reducing Minimum Lot Size to Build One Unit,” Austin American-Statesman, May 17, 2024.

[16] Caleb Hersh, “The NIMBY Filibuster,” New York University Law Review 100, no 1 (2025): 189. Hersh also notes an Illinois case that was decided the other way: Athey v. City of Peru, 317 N.E.2d 294, 298 (Ill. App. Ct. 1974). Among the statutes reviewed for this brief, New Hampshire’s explicitly excludes townwide rezonings.

[17] John Stuart Mill, The Principles of Political Economy, vol. 3 of The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson (University of Toronto Press, 1977), 938.

[18] F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, vol. xvii of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, ed. Ronald Hamowy (Routledge, 2011), 83.

[19] Randy E. Barnett, “Judicial Engagement through the Lens of Lee Optical,” George Mason Law Review 19, no. 4 (2012): 845–60.

[20] Arizona: Christina Sandefur and Timothy Sandefur, “Protecting Private Property Rights: The Property Ownership Fairness Act” (Goldwater Institute Policy Paper, February 8, 2016); Florida: Amber L. Ketterer and Rafael E. Suarez-Rivas, “The Bert J. Harris, Jr., Private Property Rights Protection Act: An Overview, Recent Developments, and What the Future May Hold,” Florida Bar Journal 89, no. 8 (2015); Wisconsin: “Limitation on Development Regulation Authority,” Wis. Stat. 66.10015(3)(b) (2024); North Carolina: Salim Furth and Charles Gardner, “New NC Law Protects Property Rights by Limiting Local ‘Down-Zoning’,” Carolina Journal, January 8, 2025. Legislation has been proposed to repeal North Carolina’s ban on downzoning.

[21] See the status of Montana H.B. 713 (2025) at https://bills.legmt.gov/#/laws/bill/2/LC2267. For Wisconsin , see “Zoning FAQ 5,” League of Wisconsin Municipalities, revised August 2023, https://www.lwm-info.org/1135/Zoning-FAQ-5. For North Carolina, see Moritz, “NC Legislature Approves Bill.”

[22] For example, suburban Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, has done this. Evan Casey, “Wauwatosa Is Considering Taking Away ‘Protest Petitions’ for Residents Who Want to Block Rezoning for Certain Properties,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 15, 2021.

[23] Protest petitions were a feature of the first comprehensive US zoning ordinance, which Edward Bassett designed for New York City in 1916. David W. Owens, ‘“Protest Petitions,’” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government, May 2020, https://www.sog.unc.edu/resources/legal-summaries/protest-petitions.

[24] The reform also adjusted the protest petition process in Massachusetts, bringing it in line with Oklahoma’s.

[25] Defining an upzoning as a rezoning that restores or expands property rights is relatively easy. If all uses and intensities of the property that were allowed under the original zoning are allowed with no new restrictions or conditions after the rezoning, then the rezoning is an upzoning. For example, if a city wants to rezone an office district to allow multifamily housing, and if the city adds multifamily housing as a permitted use without removing other permitted uses, then the rezoning qualifies as an upzoning. If, instead, the city adds multifamily housing as a permitted use but in the same action lowers the building height limit, then the effect is mixed, and the rezoning would not qualify as an upzoning under this formal definition.