Plaintiffs’ Consolidated Reply in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction
Read: Plaintiffs’ Consolidated Reply in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction (filed Nov. 9, 2023)
Defendants refer to the “cultural benefits” and “economic benefits” the Venue will supposedly produce. Yet these arguments are more appropriate for the state legislature, not this Court. The legislature, through the NPL, has already decided the public interest issue, putting its thumb on the scale to protect public health and stop noise pollution. Noise-polluting activities often do produce certain benefits—profits to owners, tax revenues for cities, etc. But through the NPL, the legislature has determined that these shall not carry the day, that these interests must give way to the higher interests of protecting public health and promoting community life. Defendants would have nearby residents suffer the adverse effects of noise pollution—night after night and year after year—out of a notion of the “greater good.” But the NPL does not permit defendants to rebalance the public interest in this way. Indeed, the statute empowers even a single state resident to perpetually enjoin noise pollution that exceeds state-law limits. C.R.S. § 25-12-104.
The City is surely correct that “elected representatives are more appropriately situated than the courts to determine what is in the public interest” (p.12). That is why this Court must adhere to the NPL—a democratically enacted set of statewide standards to protect the public welfare, coupled with a preemption provision that prohibits local authorities from relaxing the statute’s protections. Unfortunately, relaxing these protections is what some City officials have been trying to do, both in this case and in other situations. As Plaintiffs explain in their Consolidated Response, the City’s behind-the-scenes “blanket permit” policy entirely bypasses the public and the people’s elected representatives in City Council. The policy is a bureaucratic scheme designed to circumvent the NPL, undermine the public interest, and serve a narrow class of big businesses.