Local
Rehoboth Beach sued over refusal to approve theater buildings
Clear Space says permit revocation violates laws

A lawsuit filed on Aug. 13 by the Clear Space Theatre Company in Rehoboth Beach, Del., charges the city’s mayor and Board of Commissioners with violating local and state law by refusing to approve its plans to build a larger theater and an adjacent rehearsal theater in a new location.
Clear Space filed its lawsuit in the Superior Court of Delaware six weeks after the Board of Commissioners, which acts like a city council, and Rehoboth Mayor Stan Mills, who’s a member of the board, voted for the second time in eight months to overturn a decision by the city’s Planning Commission to approve plans for the two new theater buildings.
Supporters of the theater project, including many of Rehoboth’s LGBTQ residents and summer visitors, expressed strong opposition to the Board of Commissioners’ and mayor’s decision. Supporters have said the action was based on opposition to the theaters by a small but vocal minority of homeowners and renters who don’t want the theater buildings near their homes, even though they would be built on Rehoboth Avenue, which serves as the city’s main business and commercial boulevard.
The opponents have said the back walls of the two proposed theater buildings would face a residential street lined with houses and would create excessive noise and parking problems among other adverse effects. Wesley Paulson, the Clear Space Theatre executive director, has said steps have been taken to minimize noise and parking related issues and that the plans for the two theaters were in full compliance with zoning and building codes.
“We have worked patiently and respectfully through an arduous process for the past several years to obtain permits to build two new buildings on Rehoboth Avenue,” Clear Space says in a statement announcing the filing of the lawsuit. “Our permits were twice approved by the town building inspector and the Planning Commission – and is broadly supported by residents and the local business community,” the statement says.
“We were left with no choice but to file a petition with the courts,” Paulson said in the statement. “We are simply asking the city to follow the law and allow us to build a new theater at our property just down the street,” Paulson said.
Clear Space Theatre is currently located on Baltimore Avenue near the boardwalk and beach. The nonprofit theater company, which for many years has produced Broadway plays and musical performances that have attracted audiences from throughout the state and the mid-Atlantic region, said it has outgrown its current building and was hoping to move into its planned new buildings on Rehoboth Avenue.
The lawsuit was filed on the theater’s behalf by attorneys from the Wilmington law firm Barnes & Thornburg. It states that the vote by the mayor and city commissioners denying the theater’s building plans was in “legal error for multiple reasons.”
Among other things, the lawsuit says the mayor and commissioners incorrectly cite as one of their reasons for turning down the theater’s building plans was that the Planning Commission approved the smaller of the two buildings to be used for educational purposes such as theater classes. Opponents of the theater’s plans have pointed out that allowing the building to be used for educational purposes would violate the zoning law unless Clear Space provides a large number of parking spaces on the site of the two theater buildings, something Clear Space was not able to do.
But the lawsuit says the theater’s official application for its new buildings does not call for an educational use of the buildings and that it was the Planning Commission that added that provision to its approval of the plans on its own as an “accessory” use of the buildings. According to the lawsuit, “the Mayor and City Commissioners do not possess jurisdiction to decide what is or is not an accessory use.” That function is the responsibility of the Rehoboth Beach Board of Adjustment, the lawsuit says.
“The Mayor and City Commissioner’s decision erroneously conflates the Applications’ site plans, which were before the Planning Commission for approval, with the Applications’ building plans, which were not,” the lawsuit says. It calls on the court to reverse the mayor and city commissioners’ decision to overturn the Planning Commission’s approval of the building project.
Rehoboth City Manager Sharon Lynn, who often acts as the city’s official spokesperson, declined to comment on the lawsuit other than to say the city usually does not comment on pending legal matters, according to a report by the Cape Gazette, the local Rehoboth area newspaper.
Under court rules, the mayor and commissioners must respond to the lawsuit within 20 days after they are served legal papers informing them of the suit.
Gay D.C. attorney Harvey Shulman, who owns a home in Rehoboth and is one of the leaders of the opponents of the theater’s building plan, expressed strong doubts about the merits of the lawsuit, which he said was “grasping at straws, and even the straws aren’t there.”
Shulman has said that at least 15 percent of the 63 Rehoboth homeowners or renters who signed on as official “appellants” to oppose the Clear Space building plans are gay.
D.C. gay activist Peter Rosenstein, who also owns a home in the Rehoboth area and supports the theater’s building project, said he believes the overwhelming majority of Rehoboth’s large LGBTQ community supports the theater’s building plans.
District of Columbia
Norton reintroduces bill to ban discrimination against LGBTQ jurors in D.C. Superior Court
Congresswoman notes Congress controls local court system

D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) on Friday, June 20, reintroduced her bill to ban discrimination against LGBTQ D.C. residents in the process for selecting people to serve as jurors in D.C. Superior Court.
“The bill would clarify that D.C. residents may not be excluded or disqualified from jury service in the local D.C. trial court, the D.C. Superior Court, based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” Norton said in a statement.
“Specifically, this bill would clarify that the term ‘sex,’ which is a protected class under the nondiscrimination law that applies to jurors in the D.C. Superior Court includes sexual orientation and gender identity,” Norton said.
She points out in her statement that under the D.C. Home Rule Act approved by Congress that created D.C.’s local government, including an elected mayor and City Council, the federal government retained control over the local court system.
“Therefore, until D.C. is given authority to amend Title 11 of the D.C. Code, which one of my bills would do, an act of Congress is required to clarify that LGBTQ+ jurors in the D.C. Superior Court are protected from discrimination,” according to her statement.
A spokesperson for Norton couldn’t immediately be reached to determine whether Norton is aware of specific instances where residents were denied jury service because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Online records of congressional action on Norton’s juror nondiscrimination bill show she had introduced it in 2019, 2021, and 2023, when it died in committee each year, except for the 117th Congress in 2022, when it was approved by a committee but died in the full House.
“During Pride month we are reminded of the many contributions of the LGBTQ+ community,” Norton said in her June 20 statement. “Nobody, including D.C. jurors, should be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, and D.C. juries should not be deprived of the service of LGBTQ residents,” she added.

The Washington Blade’s second day of Pride on the Pier at The Wharf DC ended with a fireworks show on Saturday, June 7. The fireworks show was presented by the Leonard-Litz LGBTQ Foundation.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

















State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D-Chesterfield) will face John Reid in the race to become Virginia’s next lieutenant governor.
Hashmi won the Democratic primary with 27.49 percent of the vote. She defeated former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, state Sen. Aaron Rouse (D-Virginia Beach), Babur Lateef, Victor Salgado and Alexander Bastani.
“Tonight, Virginians made history,” said Hashmi in a statement. “We didn’t just win a primary, we sent a clear message that we won’t be bullied, broken, or dragged backward by the chaos in Washington.”
Reid, a gay conservative talk show host, in April won the Republican nomination to succeed Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who is running to succeed Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The incumbent governor days after Reid secured the nomination called for him to withdraw his candidacy amid reports that a social media account with his username included “pornographic content.” Reid, who would become the first openly gay person elected to statewide office in Virginia if he wins in November, has strongly denied the reports.
Former state Del. Jay Jones defeated Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor in Democratic attorney general primary. Jones will face Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares in November.
Youngkin cannot run for a second, consecutive term.
Former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger will face off against Earle-Sears in November. The winner will make history as the first woman elected governor in the state’s history.