They couldn’t argue health.
So they argued disability.

The County's decision to accept the ADA framing was legally unprecedented and politically strategic. By not invoking health effects — the Telecom Act-prohibited rationale — and instead citing disability accommodation, the County found a legal hook that SBA Communications cannot easily rebut under federal wireless infrastructure law.

SBA's federal lawsuit is legally well-grounded — the Telecom Act's preemption is broad and the ADA end-run theory is novel and untested. But the litigation is now in novel legal territory. SBA faces the possibility of establishing adverse precedent if the court accepts the ADA framing, affecting tower deployments nationwide.

The EI community's legal sophistication is the key factor in this case. Rather than arguing health effects — which would trigger Telecom Act preemption — they argued disability accommodation under the ADA and Fair Housing Act. This legal pivot required legal counsel familiar with both federal wireless infrastructure law and disability rights law.

The EI community's attorney developed the ADA end-run theory that the County accepted. The theory is legally contested — EHS is not recognized as a disability by the FCC — but the County's acceptance of the argument creates a record that SBA must now litigate. The attorney's innovation may ultimately succeed or fail on appeal.

State telecom regulators are watching the federal litigation carefully. A ruling that the ADA can override Telecom Act preemption would create a nationwide template for EI communities opposing cell towers in rural areas where such communities have gathered. The implications extend far beyond Snowflake.

The court's resolution of the conflict between the Telecom Act's health-denial prohibition and the ADA's reasonable accommodation requirement is the central legal question. If the ADA claim survives preemption, every cell tower application near an EI community in the US faces a new legal risk that did not exist before this case.