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In Georgia Electronic Life Safety & System Ass’n v. City of Sandy Springs, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit addressed the constitutionality of a city ordinance that imposes a fine on alarm companies for false alarms. Affirming the lower court’s ruling, the Eleventh Circuit deemed the city ordinance constitutional because “[i]mposing a fine on . . . alarm companies is rationally related to the City’s strong interests in reducing the number of false alarms that heavily burden its police and fire departments and waste public resources.” In deeming the Ordinance constitutional, the Eleventh Circuit demonstrated that it will not interfere in a municipality’s regulation of economic behavior when that municipality can establish that the regulation is rationally related to the governmental interest.
