A county can license short-term rentals without land use rules
A county can license short-term rentals without land use rules
2026-09-15 · Oregon · Courts
Nineteen short-term rental owners spent four years challenging Lincoln County's licensing program, and on August 12, 2026 the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld all of it — including the three provisions they had already won on at trial. Briggs v. Lincoln County, 352 Or App 150, is precedential.1
The disposition: “On appeal, affirmed; on cross-appeal, reversed and remanded.”
The core holding
The court framed it in the opening paragraph: “On plaintiffs' appeal, we conclude that the circuit court did not err and affirm. None of the statutes in ORS chapter 215 that plaintiffs rely on apply to the county's actions in this case because they were not land use decisions. On the county's cross-appeal, we conclude that the circuit court erred in invalidating the three provisions, and reverse and remand.”
Short-term rental licensing is business licensing, not land use. Everything follows from that.
No rezoning, and no nonconforming use protection
On ORS 215.503(9): “The circuit court did not err because there was no 'rezoning' of plaintiffs' property. Zoning (and 'rezoning') are terms of art that apply to specific types of land use decisions.” And: “Thus, under Akiyama, ORS 215.503(9) does not create a new or different category for 'rezoning' that falls outside existing land use decisions.”
On ORS 215.130(5), the nonconforming-use statute: “Because the county's actions did not rezone property and were not land use decisions, ORS 215.130(5) does not apply to the county's actions.”
A footnote makes the characterisation explicit: short-term rental licensing is “business or occupational licensing,” which is “not the sort of 'law' that is at issue when ORS 215.130(5) refers to 'lawful use of any building, structure or land.'”
The court relied on Akiyama v. Tillamook County, 333 Or App 315 (2024), and noted that LUBA had already held in unchallenged final orders that the ordinance and the subarea order were not land use decisions: “Past litigation before LUBA and this court has made clear that the county's challenged actions are not land use decisions.”
The three provisions the county got back
The trial court had struck three parts of the ordinance as unconstitutionally vague under Article I, section 20 of the Oregon Constitution, and one as an unlawful delegation under Article I, section 21. The Court of Appeals reversed all three.
The events prohibition — “Events, such as weddings, rehearsal dinners, and similar activities are prohibited”: “On its face, the Events provision clearly proscribes two types of events—weddings and rehearsal dinners. As such, it is not unconstitutionally vague in all its applications.” And: “Because the Events provision clearly proscribes some conduct, plaintiffs' speculation as to the wide range of events or activities that could be implicated by the prohibition does not provide a basis to conclude that the provision is unconstitutionally vague.”
The court also held the trial court erred in reading the provision in isolation rather than “in the context of other STR provisions, including the Findings and Purpose section.”
The complaint procedure and the delegation to county counsel: “The county's designation of a Hearings Officer is neither vague nor an unlawful delegation because the county has expressly retained the legislative authority to designate that person.” The ordinance “contain[s] procedural safeguards, including the hearing itself, the requirement of a written decision, and the opportunity to obtain judicial review of the decision by the circuit court.”1
One notable reservation: the court expressly assumed without deciding that Article I, section 21 even applies to a county's delegation of its own legislative authority, observing that it was “unaware of any Oregon case law that touches on application of Article I, section 21, to a county's ordinance as an unlawful delegation of the county's legislative authority over matters of county concern.” That is an open question, flagged.
Also worth noting for anyone reading the case as a template: plaintiffs brought their vagueness challenge only under the Oregon Constitution, so the court “do[es] not address any arguments regarding the lack of fair notice” — the federal due process theory was not before it.
What it means for the licences themselves
Lincoln County's program, adopted in February 2023, divided the county into seven geographic areas — five west of US-101 and two east — with a licence cap in each. The county's own current table shows 427 licences against 164 allowed across the seven regions, with just one region at or under its cap.2
The number falls by attrition, because a licence cannot be transferred when a property changes hands. Licences have already dropped from roughly 502 at adoption, and the design target is 181. There is a waiting list.
Fees: $900 for a new application, $650 for renewal, $75 for a contact change, $125 for reinspection after a second inspection, $200 for an appeal. The program is administered by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office with a 24-hour complaint line.
Where an association sits in this
Directly in the path, in at least one case. Press reporting on the cap's effect describes vacation rentals from Beaver Creek to the Alsea Bay bridge — including the Bayshore community north of Waldport — falling from 139 to 26 under the regional cap. Bayshore Beach Club is a homeowners association, and a county ordinance is removing rental rights from a substantial share of the lots inside it.3
That is the shape of the problem this case creates for Oregon associations. A board has no role in the county's licensing decision, no standing derived from its covenants, and no ability to preserve a member's licence. And because licences are not transferable on sale, the association's own turnover of ownership is the mechanism that reduces them.
It also means a board cannot rely on the county to enforce what its declaration permits or forbids. The two systems run independently: the county licenses the business, the association enforces the covenant. A member may hold a valid county licence and still breach the CC&Rs, or comply with the CC&Rs and be unable to get a licence. Our Oregon short-term rentals page covers the covenant side.
What to watch next
Whether it goes further. As of the most recent published disposition list, docket A183535 has not appeared in any petitions-for-review list — no petition allowed, none denied.
Watch also the second Oregon short-term-rental decision of the period, which cuts the same way from the federal side: in Panabaker v. City of Hood River the Ninth Circuit affirmed, on July 20, 2026, that a primary-residence condition on a short-term rental licence survives dormant Commerce Clause attack. Two courts, two theories, and the same answer: Oregon local governments have wide latitude to license these rentals out of existence.
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