Florida’s Gun Noise Nuisance Ruling Charts Paths in Other States

At least 29 states have adopted laws shielding sport shooting ranges from liability for noise-based nuisance actions by neighboring landowners. But in one of the first successful challenges of such statutes in the country, a Florida appellate court last month struck the state’s noise-based nuisance immunity statute as unconstitutional, holding that its application to neighbors of a shooting range denied them from exercising rights of access to courts protected by the Florida Constitution.

By stripping shooting ranges of statutory protection from neighbors disgruntled by noise, Gartman v. Southern Tactical Range, LLC may open the door to lawsuits against shooting ranges that aren’t located in Florida’s diminishing rural areas lying beyond earshot of neighbors. The opinion also provides a blueprint for similar constitutional challenges of other states’ noise-based nuisance immunity statutes.

In Gartman, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal analyzed the impact and constitutionality of a provision of Florida Statutes Section 823.16, which governs public nuisances on the rights of neighbors adversely affected by the noise of gun ranges.

Specifically, Section 823.16 provides that operators or users of “sport shooting range[s are] not subject to an action for nuisance, and a court of this state shall not enjoin the use or operation of a sport shooting range on the basis of noise or noise pollution, if the range is in compliance with any noise control laws or ordinances that applied to the range and its operation at the time of construction or initial operation of the range.”

The Gartmans, who live in a county that has no noise-control ordinances, filed suit seeking both damages and a permanent injunction against a neighboring civilian and military gun range, alleging that the noise created by its patrons constituted a nuisance that significantly interfered with their daily lives and activities.

When the shooting range sought summary judgment based on Fla. Stat. Section 823.16, the Gartmans argued that Section 823.16 unconstitutionally deprived them of rights afforded under the Florida Constitution. Although the trial court disagreed with the Gartmans and granted summary judgment in favor of the gun range, the appellate court reversed by holding that Section 823.16 violates the Florida Constitution because it prohibits the Gartmans’ ability to bring a noise-based nuisance claim against the range “without a ‘reasonable alternative’ in place or ‘an overpowering public necessity’ to do so.”

Under the test adopted by the Supreme Court of Florida, the state legislature may not adopt laws abridging its citizens’ rights to judicial relief “without providing a reasonable alternative to protect the rights of the people of the State to redress for injuries, unless the Legislature can show an overpowering public necessity for the abolishment of such right” or that “an alternative method of meeting such public necessity” exists.

The appellate court began by noting that Florida courts have long protected “the right to enjoy one’s property without interference” and have recognized “that excessive noise pollution caused by the activities of one property owner provides an adjacent property owners with the right to seek the common-law action of nuisance.”

The case then turned on the breadth of Section 823.16 and the failure by the Florida Legislature to include declarations of public policy concerns in its enacting legislation. The appellate court noted that “Section 823.16 is silent as to any legislative findings or any other justification for abolishing nuisance causes of action against sport shooting ranges,” and added that the legislature must present such a case, without which Section 823.16 fails the overpowering public necessity prong.

The appellate court also considered whether Section 823.16 provides a reasonable alternative to the Gartmans’ rights to court access by analogizing the immunity afforded by Section 823.16 to workers compensation immunity and no-fault automobile insurance immunity—both are accompanied by statutory schemes with alternative remedies to tort liability. “These systems provide parties with ‘adequate, sufficient, and even preferable safeguards,’ satisfying [the] ‘reasonable alternative’ requirement. We find no similar reasonable alternative here,” the court stated.

Few other courts have questioned the constitutionality of similar statutes in other states that shield shooting ranges from liability for noise-based nuisance claims.

In 2019, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held in Goldstein v. Peacemaker Properties, LLC that West Virginia’s statute shielding shooting ranges from noise-based nuisance claims unconstitutionally violated neighboring landowners’ rights to procedural due process and rights under “the certain remedy provision of Article III, Section 17 of the West Virginia Constitution,” as well as rights of procedural due process afforded under the state and federal constitutions.

But even there, the West Virginia court limited its holding to the neighboring landowners’ noise-based action for damages, on grounds that the statute deprived neighboring landowners of “a vested property right” in monetary damages for such nuisances. It upheld the validity of statutory immunity for actions seeking injunctions against noise-based nuisances.

The Florida appellate court’s decision in Gartman found Florida’s statute unconstitutional as to all types of noise-based nuisance actions by neighbors. Gartman could therefore have ripple effects in other states if plaintiffs with similar complaints urge courts in their states to invalidate their noise-based nuisance immunity statutes on similar grounds.

The case is Gartman v. Southern Tactical Range, LLC, Fla. Dist. Ct. App., 1st Dist., No. 1D2022-3567, decided 7/23/25.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

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Robert L. Rogers is a construction and commercial litigator at Kirwin Norris.

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