Deadline Extended in 5th Circuit Appeal of Judgment for Crown Castle

The 5th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court on Monday granted Pasadena, Texas, its deadline extension request to Nov. 9 to file briefing papers in its appeal of the Aug. 2 final judgment in which U.S. District Judge David Hittner for Southern Texas in Houston granted Crown Castle’s motion for summary judgment in its wireless infrastructure legal battle with the city. Pasadena’s 5th Circuit filing deadline previously was Wednesday (docket 22-20454). Hittner’s order (docket 4:20-cv-03369) also permanently enjoined Pasadena from enforcing sections of its design manual for the purposes of preventing Crown Castle from installing new small nodes and node support poles in public rights of way. Crown Castle’s September 2020 complaint alleged that Pasadena, under the “guise” of its design manual, implemented a restriction that requires network nodes and supporting poles in a public right of way to be located at least 300 feet away from all existing utility or other node support poles. The spacing restriction is “so onerous” it effectively prohibits Crown Castle from deploying a distributed antenna system network in Pasadena because the spacing requirement eliminates the necessary node locations, alleged the complaint.