Here in America, we have a housing affordability crisis. Note, I didn't say a housing stock crisis, as we have plenty of houses for each and every American. That's a myth I've debunked numerous times when it comes to public land sell-offs.
But one way of mitigating the housing affordability crisis is tossing around new homes and subdivisions further and further out of central hubs. It's cheaper to build new places away from the places you want to live, forcing you to commute to and from those main areas to have cheaper homes. That, however, tends to lead to conflict among the new and old residents, and it leads to conflicts between those who set up shop ages ago, before anyone in a white SUV arrived with their caramel frappes.
And the issue that we've paid attention to in recent years is the growing animosity between the new residents and suburban Homeowners Associations and race track officials who've been operating without issue for decades. Basically, it comes down to the new residents not liking that race tracks are, in fact, noisy, and that the noise is apparently affecting their calm, suburban want for everything to be perfect despite them moving in right next to a damn race track.
Fights have been waged across the country about this, with HOAs and Karens going to war with mom and pop racetracks. It's been a steady stream of news on the front, with the annoying HOAs mostly winning. But Kansas just passed the Motorsports Venue Protection Act, which is the sort of common-sense law you'd hope would come out of the government, but rarely does.
As mentioned, the law is called the Motorsports Venue Protection Act, and is designed to shield racetracks of noise complaints from new residents or homeowners having just moved in to new developments. According to the press release, "Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) signed HB 2416, granting Right-to-Race protections to racetracks throughout Kansas," which "grant[s] protections for pre-existing racetracks from nuisance claims."
The campaign to get the act in front of the Governor was spearheaded by the American Motorcycle Association (AMA), the Performance Racing Industry (PRI), and SEMA, the latter of which has an odd track record of sometimes supporting good policy, while often ignoring the larger implications of what it's doing or who it's supporting. SEMA currently supports Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who called Americans who don't want public land sales "financially illiterate," and when pressed on their support of the likely next director of the Bureau of Land Management, Steve Pearce, who's been vocal about his support for land sales, they ghosted RideApart's questions on the subject.
According to the Act's actual text, "AN ACT concerning civil actions; relating to motorsports venues; creating the Kansas motorsports venue protection act; providing immunity to motorsports venues from civil actions for nuisance, taking or other similar legal theories under certain conditions," adding, "A racing facility or racetrack shall be immune from liability in any civil action that is based on nuisance, taking or similar legal theories if the racing facility or racetrack was located and established in Kansas before a surrounding property owner either: (1) Purchased or otherwise acquired such surrounding property owner's real property; or (2) constructed improvements {buildings used for residential or commercial purposes} on such surrounding property owner's real property."
The wording of the text makes it clear, those who move into a home, town, or residential area where a racetrack was already present have no legal standing to complain about noise or nuisance, as they knew what they were doing ahead of time, i.e., kick rocks, Phil, no one cares what two-stroke music does to your calm.
Hopefully, more states adopt such laws, as it's absolute horseshit that racetracks have to put up with such cockamamie annoyances. You moved there using your own free will. It's on you to select a spot that works for your needs, not the spot to cater to you.
