Federal Lawsuit Alleges Beaver Township Selectively Used Zoning Enforcement to Shut Down Longstanding Family Business While Allowing Similar Local Businesses to Continue Operating

A new federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan alleges that Beaver Township violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by selectively using its zoning enforcement powers to force the closure of a longtime family-owned business while knowingly allowing other similarly situated commercial operations to continue.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Paul Satkowiak, Prizza Satkowiak, and P&P Contracting, Inc. against Beaver Township, Township Supervisor Nick Tomczak, Township Trustee Tom Meier, additional Township Board members, and the Township’s Zoning Administrator in his official capacity.

Unlike many zoning disputes, the complaint does not seek to relitigate whether portions of the Satkowiaks’ decades old business operations ran contrary to the Township’s overdone zoning ordinance. Instead, it alleges that Beaver Township chose to use those long ignored violations—and the resulting municipal judgment—as a weapon against one family while declining to pursue materially similar violating businesses operating throughout the Township.

“The Constitution requires all governments to treat similarly situated people equally,” said attorney Philip L. Ellison of Outside Legal Counsel PLC, who represents the Plaintiffs. “This lawsuit asks a simple question: If Beaver Township believed long-time commercial activities violated its zoning ordinance, why was one family driven out of business while others operating under similar ways were left alone?”

According to the complaint, the Satkowiak family openly operated lawn care, snow removal, excavation, and contracting businesses from their River Road property for more than two decades. During that time, Beaver Township themselves hired the business to provide services for its own projects. However, the Township eventually ticketed the owner and obtained a municipal judgment and later pursued contempt proceedings that allegedly forced the family to cease virtually all substantive business operations at the rural property.

Critically, the lawsuit alleges that, during the same period, numerous other commercial businesses continued operating within Beaver Township without facing comparable enforcement, including businesses allegedly engaged in same business of landscaping, truck repair, excavation, drainage, welding, and fabrication.

The complaint further alleges that personal hostility toward the Satkowiak family influenced the Township’s enforcement decisions and that Township officials intentionally escalated enforcement through permit revocation, litigation, judgment enforcement, and contempt proceedings while declining to take similar action against comparable businesses.

The Plaintiffs seek compensatory damages as well as  punitive damages against the individual sued township officials.

The lawsuit follows another successful constitutional enforcement action brought by Outside Legal Counsel PLC against a Michigan township and one of its officials in Tamm v Nerad out of Newaygo County. In that case, a federal jury found, after a three day trial, that the township violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights through unlawful selective enforcement and retaliation, returning a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs and awarding both compensatory and punitive damages. The case underscores that local governments may not use their enforcement authority in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner.

The case has been assigned to Judge Matthew F. Leitman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. 

Outside Legal Counsel PLC is a Michigan litigation firm concentrating on constitutional law, property rights, civil rights litigation, First Amendment law, and governmental accountability. The firm has represented clients in numerous published appellate decisions, including cases before the United States Supreme Court, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Michigan Supreme Court.