SJC again upholds MBTA Communities housing law

THE STATE’S HIGHEST court has swatted away a second challenge to the sweeping and controversial MBTA Communities housing law. In a brisk, unanimous — and widely expected decision — the Supreme Judicial Court rejected the town of Marshfield’s bid to avoid compliance with the law on every argument it raised.

Marshfield failed to show the 2021 law, which requires cities and towns near the MBTA system to zone for multifamily housing, cost the town anything beyond ordinary administrative work. And as it relates to the patchwork of local powers and other state regulations on housing, the court declared the act to be a “valid general law.”

In a 22-page decision upholding a lower court’s dismissal of Marshfield’s claims, Justice Serge Georges, Jr. wrote that the town’s complaint “does not plausibly allege” that the act or its regulations imposed an “unfunded local mandate” – the principal argument put forward by the town. Marshfield and its select board also lacked standing to bring a constitutional claim on behalf of town meeting voters, the court wrote.

Lawmakers are not allowed to create mandates for cities and towns that would create substantial expenses without also providing a funding source for those expenses. But the court decided Marshfield did not offer specifics that would show that the MBTA zoning law imposed an impermissible unfunded mandate on the town.

As most cities and towns got into compliance with the housing law — eagerly or dragging their feet along the way — a few dozen holdouts were hoping that the state’s high court would rule that they did not have to rezone. It was a longshot bid, after the SJC already upheld the law as enforceable by the attorney general’s office in early 2025.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Attorney General Andrea Campbell applauded the ruling.

“Massachusetts has a housing crisis, and it’s impacting everything from our ability to grow our workforce to the everyday cost of living,” she said. “Today’s decision by the SJC rejects Marshfield’s claim that the MBTA Communities Law is an unfunded mandate and reaffirms that the law is constitutional and compliance is mandatory.”

The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The law emerged as part of a 2021 economic development bill signed by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker. His successor, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, has embraced it as a showpiece policy to tackle the state’s dire housing crunch, while Republican gubernatorial hopeful Mike Minogue has castigated the policy as an offensive intrusion into local control that he plans to eliminate.

After Campbell took the town of Milton to court over its refusal to comply, and secured a ruling from the SJC backing the law last year, the path for resistance narrowed.

Methuen, Middleborough, and Wrentham asked the state auditor’s division of local mandates for an assessment on whether the law was an unfunded mandate. In February, the office sent letters concluding that it was, because it imposed more than incidental local administration expenses on municipalities.

A group of municipalities, including Marshfield, took their case against the state and its housing office to Superior Court, arguing that implementing the law had created new costs and would lead to future cost burdens. Marshfield also claimed the law and its regulations infringed on town meeting voters’ constitutional rights, exceeded the Legislature’s authority under the Home Rule Amendment, and conflicted with the state’s Zoning Act.

A Superior Court judge dismissed the case in June, determining that the towns failed to show that the MBTA Communities law imposed an unfunded local mandate, nor did it unlawfully interfere with the town’s authority to develop and enforce zoning bylaws.

The Supreme Judicial Court took the case up directly late last year.

Justices seemed skeptical during oral arguments in March, with Justice Dalila Wendlandt prodding the town’s attorney to concede Marshfield could have complied at essentially no cost by simply opening every zoning district to multifamily housing.

Though the town argued it had to bear costs from evaluating, preparing, and presenting proposed zoning amendments, the high court concluded that Marshfield did not offer proof that those costs were involuntary or anything more than “incidental local administration expenses.”

As to arguments that the town would suffer future direct costs because of the housing law — either because of future rezoning efforts or possible infrastructure strain like increased students in need of local schools — the court said the claims were “too conclusory and speculative” to support that reading.

The SJC gave little weight to the auditor’s office determination.

It never identified any Marshfield-specific costs, and its conclusion doesn’t bind the court anyway, Georges wrote. The “ultimate legal question” on whether the town offers facts that establish an unfunded mandate “is one for the court,” he wrote.

The town also argued that the law’s zoning requirement infringes on the constitutional voting rights of Town Meeting voters. But the high court concluded that because Marshfield is just a subdivision of the state, it cannot bring a constitutional challenge on behalf of town voters.

Jake Love, general counsel for policy at the Citizens’ Housing & Planning Association, which was one of the housing groups backing the state in this suit, said that this ruling “all but slams the door on continued legal challenges” to the law.

“Zoning has for many years been left exclusively to the domain of municipalities and has resulted in Massachusetts just not producing enough homes,” he said, “which is the primary cause of the affordable housing shortage we have now.”

The state approach, “which requires cities and towns to do their part,” is “clearly working,” Love said.

As of August 31, 168 out of 177 MBTA Communities have submitted zoning plans to the state. Officials have determined 159 of them, including Marshfield, are fully or conditionally compliant, and say about 10,000 units are in the housing pipeline as a result of the transit-oriented housing law.

In an email after the ruling, Marshfield Select Board vice chair Eric Kelley said that he felt the town’s argument “was not effective on unfunded mandates.”

The way the state has approached urging cities and towns into compliance was frustrating, he said. In his opinion, based on the way former Gov. Baker talked about zoning policy, the grants conditioned on the MBTA Communities law “were to be used as carrots for the community to accept and not as a stick to beat down the community to accept” and the law itself remains painfully “convoluted.”

Beyond Marshfield’s particular circumstances, the high court reaffirmed its position on the law’s legitimacy.

Justices rejected the suit’s claim that the MBTA law deprived municipalities of meaningful authority to adopt or amend zoning bylaws, unless they adopted one that complies with MBTA Communities.

The state’s Home Rule Amendment does give municipal authority over local matters, Georges wrote, but “it does not prevent the Legislature, through a valid general law addressing a matter of statewide concern, from imposing substantive requirements that municipalities must implement through existing local procedures.”

This law is aimed at addressing the state’s housing crisis, he wrote — a matter of serious public interest not tied to any one city or town that “falls squarely” within the Legislature’s authority.

Nor does it violate procedure for local adoption or amendment of zoning laws, the court ruled. Marshfield had argued that the state Zoning Act sets out a system where the town amends its zoning through Town Meeting, but because the MBTA law requires compliant zoning it effectively forces the voters at Town Meeting to “vote yes” and approve the zoning.

The SJC again rejected the argument. Town meeting voters “retain the authority to debate, amend, approve, or reject any proposal placed before them,” Georges wrote. Rejecting one just means noncompliance.

“That authority,” he wrote, “does not include the power to exempt the town from an obligation imposed by a valid state law.”

This story was updated September 18, 1:45 p.m.