Primeco Personal Communications, Limited Partnership, D/B/A Verizon Wireless v. City of Mequon, Cross-Appellee

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

One of the concerns that led up to the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. §§ 151 et seq., was that zoning decisions by local governments were unreasonably retarding the growth of cellphone and other wireless services. Congress decided not to preempt local regulation entirely, but instead (so far as bears on this case) to require that the denial by a zoning board or other state or local government body of a permit to construct “personal wireless service facilities,” such as an antenna high enough to be in the line of sight of cellphone users, as…