Land Use: Attorney Tells Will County Panel High Court Will Review Solar Standard

Will County Land Use & Development Committee | October 1, 2026

Article Summary: An attorney for a Green Garden Township landowner told the Will County Board Land Use & Development Committee on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026, that the Illinois Supreme Court had granted leave to appeal the previous day in a case that could determine whether county boards may weigh traditional zoning factors in commercial solar applications — and asserted that the advice the committee has been operating under may be wrong. A second speaker countered that the appellate decision binding in Will County says they may not.

Solar Review Standard Key Points:

• Will County staff reports state that under Equity Solar Illinois v. County of Grundy, 2026 IL App (3d) 250289, the special use criteria known as the LaSalle-Sinclair factors do not apply to commercial solar energy facilities.
• Attorney Steve Becker said the Fourth District Appellate Court reached the opposite conclusion in a case he identified as Tate Road Solar, and that the Illinois Supreme Court granted a petition for leave to appeal “just yesterday.”
• A speaker the chairman addressed as “Matt,” whose role the record does not state, said the Fourth District is not controlling in Will County and that Third District law is binding.
• Becker also lodged constitutional objections to the state solar statute and to the Land Use Department’s practice of deferring wetland determinations to the building permit stage.

WILL COUNTY — The legal standard the Will County Board Land Use & Development Committee applies to commercial solar applications may be headed for review by the Illinois Supreme Court, an attorney told the committee during public comment on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2026.

The point matters at every solar hearing the county holds. Staff reports in the cases on Thursday’s agenda state plainly that because of Equity Solar Illinois v. County of Grundy, 2026 IL App (3d) 250289, decided March 10, 2026, “the special use permit criteria (applicable LaSalle-Sinclair Factors) identified in section 155-16.40(I) are not applicable to commercial solar energy facilities,” and that staff therefore did not review the solar requests against those criteria. The same reports note that Illinois Public Acts 102-1123 and 103-0580 provide that where a proposed facility satisfies applicable state and local requirements, the county is required to approve the application.

Steve Becker, appearing for an adjoining landowner in the Green Garden Township case, told the committee a different appellate district had read the statute the other way. In a case he identified as Tate Road Solar, he said, the Fourth District Appellate Court ruled “that in fact you do have a right as members of the LUDC or the board to make decisions about how these kind of projects actually affect the local land owners,” and a right to rule on the traditional zoning factors.

“And significantly, the court also ruled that the decision in Equity Solar was wrongfully decided,” Becker said. He said the concurring judge in that case wrote that the Third District “basically got it completely wrong because they wrote out the public hearing aspect of the state solar statute.”

“The reason this is significant today is because just yesterday the Illinois Supreme Court granted petition for leave to appeal in the Tate Road Solar case,” Becker said. “That means now that the Illinois Supreme Court will be able to determine, after briefing, which one of these interpretations of the state solar statute is accurate.” If the Fourth District’s view is upheld, he said, “that means all the advice you have been given so far about not being able to consider the factors in all of these solar cases has been wrong.”

A speaker the chairman addressed as Matt responded immediately. “As Mr. Becker is fully well aware, the Fourth District is not controlling here in Will County,” he said. “The Third District, the law is clear, and it is binding in Will County. And so I’m going to stick with that.” He added that it was the Fourth District case the Supreme Court had taken up, “not the other case that says that everything that the county is doing here in Will County is correct,” and called that an interesting point. The chairman cut off further exchange: “We’re not going to get into an argument here.”

The recording contains no response from county staff or counsel on the question.

The point matters because members of the committee have repeatedly said during solar cases that state law narrows what they may weigh. Board member Raquel Mitchell told residents in a separate case that “Springfield is the one that’s made the decision to take away our right to say no,” and board member Sherry Newquist, in voting to recommend the Green Garden project, said she sympathized with objectors “but until the law’s changed, I’m a yes.”

Two Constitutional Objections

Becker also placed two broader objections on the record. He said the state solar statute as it applies to counties “is unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates due process, equal protection, and the separation of powers.”

Separately, he challenged what he described as the Will County Land Use Department’s policy and practice of deferring requirements — including delineation of all wetlands needed for a complete application — to the building permit stage.

“Here they basically defer everything for these corporations and these developers until the building permit stage,” Becker said. “The difficulty from a legal perspective is that violates the rights of my client here, because we go through the PZC and yet there is no determination actually of the proper status of the water resources.” He said the practice “also eliminates the ability of the county board fully to vote on a complete application,” and stressed the objection was “not a comment on any of the individual land use members that are present, but on a policy.” He said he understood Will County’s policy differs from other counties’.

Becker tied those arguments to the specific site, telling the committee that an intermittent stream and multiple wetlands on the Green Garden parcel drain into Fork Creek on adjoining property, and that no U.S. Army Corps determination has issued. He said he had won a case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois “in the last week and a half” involving a property roughly a mile from the site, in which a federal judge found the creek to be a water of the United States and sustained a Clean Water Act claim over pollution reaching it through a wetland. He also cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett for the proposition that wetlands directly connected by land to a protected water are themselves protected.

Becker said the landowner acknowledged under cross-examination at the Planning and Zoning Commission hearing that the land was never left fallow and is still being farmed, which he argued made it impossible to properly identify farmed wetlands on the parcel.

The applicant, Elijah Mitchell of US Solar, told the committee later in the hearing that the project’s wetland impact under the current design is 0.06 acres at a single culvert crossing, below the one-tenth-acre threshold he attributed to the Army Corps, and that panels and their posts are not considered impact under Corps guidelines.

No motion was made on any of Becker’s points, and the committee took no action on the legal question. Its votes on the four solar and battery requests before it Thursday are recommendations to the full County Board. The underlying Green Garden permit failed 2-4.