Key Points

  • The Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal, for lack of standing, of Outfront Media Group's suit challenging IKE Smart City's advertising-kiosk contract with Miami Beach.
  • Outfront conceded it had no special injury different in kind and degree from the public's, and it did not claim the IKE contract violated its own contract rights, including its 250-foot exclusivity zones.
  • The court declined to recognize 'competitor standing' and read Skaggs-Albertson's v. ABC Liquors narrowly as recognizing special-injury standing only for liquor stores challenging competitors placed in violation of distance regulations.
  • The majority said a declaratory judgment, though a broad remedy, is available only to a party with standing, and noted that Florida's law of standing may be in flux.
  • Judge Gooden, concurring specially, argued that standing rests on the state constitution's access-to-courts and separation-of-powers provisions and limits the judicial power itself.

A Florida appeals court on Wednesday upheld the dismissal of Outfront Media Group LLC's lawsuit against a rival's advertising-kiosk contract with the City of Miami Beach. The court held that a business competitor lacks standing to challenge another company's city contract when the competitor claims neither an injury distinct from the public's nor a violation of its own rights.

Judge Logue wrote the opinion for a three-judge panel of the Third District Court of Appeal, and Judge Lindsey joined it. Judge Gooden concurred specially in a separate opinion. The panel affirmed an order by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beatrice Butchko Sanchez dismissing Outfront's suit against the city and IKE Smart City LLC, a competing advertiser.

The ruling turned on standing, the doctrine that decides whether a litigant has a stake in a dispute sufficient to have a court resolve it. Outfront asked the court to recognize what it called "competitor standing." The panel declined. It read a 1978 Florida Supreme Court decision on which Outfront relied as protecting only liquor stores that challenge nearby competitors placed in violation of distance rules, not business rivals generally.

Outfront entered a 20-year contract with Miami Beach on Sept. 17, 2021, that authorized it to sell and display advertising on the city's bus shelters. In return, Outfront agreed to build and maintain the shelters and to make regular payments to the city. The contract barred freestanding advertising kiosks within 250 feet of any bus shelter.

IKE signed its own contract with the city on July 28, 2023, authorizing it to build up to 30 kiosks at its own expense, with certain revenue going to the city. That contract made IKE's kiosk locations expressly subject to the rights the city had granted Outfront.

Outfront sued IKE and the city on Nov. 4, 2024. It sought a declaratory judgment that "[d]igital advertising kiosks cannot be installed in the public right-of-way as a matter of state, county, and local law," citing four sections of the Florida Statutes, a Miami-Dade County ordinance and two Miami Beach ordinances. It also sought an injunction barring the city and IKE from performing the IKE contract.

The complaint never alleged that IKE's kiosks intruded on Outfront's 250-foot zones. "Significantly, Outfront did not claim that IKE's contract with the City violated any of Outfront's rights conveyed by its contract with the City or by state or federal law," Judge Logue wrote.

Outfront also conceded that it had no special injury, which the opinion described as an injury "different both in kind and degree from that suffered by the public at large." The panel added that the laws Outfront invoked "are not designed to protect Outfront from competition and do not authorize private rights of action."

On appeal, Outfront argued that competitor standing "allows regulated competitors . . . standing to challenge government conduct that confers an unlawful competitive advantage upon another similarly situated actor." It relied on Skaggs-Albertson's v. ABC Liquors, Inc., the 1978 Florida Supreme Court decision. "ABC Liquors, however, cannot be properly read to support such a broad proposition," Judge Logue wrote.

In ABC Liquors, the state high court held that a liquor store had standing to challenge a county's decision allowing a competing store nearby in violation of ordinances requiring distance between liquor stores. The panel said the store suffered a special injury "not because it was subject to competition – but because it was subject to loss of its license which might prove irreplaceable due to the stringent regulations to which liquor stores were subject."

"We therefore read ABC Liquors as narrowly recognizing special injury standing for liquor stores that challenge the decision to allow a competitor in a location that violates regulations prohibiting the operation of such businesses within certain distances of each other," Judge Logue wrote. The panel noted that the Fourth District Court of Appeal cited ABC Liquors in 2025 for the opposite of Outfront's position, quoting the Supreme Court's statement that "[l]oss of business from a potential competitor ordinarily cannot provide the existing proprietor with the requisite standing."

The majority explained that the Florida Constitution, unlike the federal one, has no clause limiting courts to cases or controversies, so the state's standing doctrine rests instead on the constitution's express separation-of-powers clause. The opinion cited a 2024 concurrence in which Justice Meredith Sasso of the Florida Supreme Court urged that court to reconsider its standing precedents. "So, Florida's law of standing may be in flux," Judge Logue wrote.

The panel also held that the breadth of Florida's declaratory judgment act could not supply standing by itself. "Declaratory judgments are a uniquely broad and powerful judicial remedy available to litigants," Judge Logue wrote. Even so, the opinion said, "the courts have the power to issue declaratory judgments only where the party requesting that the court grant the remedy has standing."

Judge Gooden's concurrence argued that standing derives from several constitutional provisions working together. The concurrence traced the state constitution's access-to-courts guarantee, which now promises "redress of any injury," back to Florida's 1838 constitution. Drawing on 19th-century dictionaries, Judge Gooden concluded that "an injury traditionally meant an invasion of a legally protected private interest."

"But judicial power is not a roving, general authority to resolve every question or dispute presented by anyone who asks," Judge Gooden wrote. A litigant without that kind of legal injury, the concurrence said, "is asking the judiciary to exercise its constitutional power where the Constitution does not authorize that exercise." Judge Gooden concluded that "standing serves as a limitation on the judicial power itself."

Lawyers for Outfront included Etan Mark of Mark Ferrer & Hayden. IKE was represented by Eugene E. Stearns of Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A. The Miami Beach city attorney's office represented the city.

The decision leaves the trial court's dismissal in place. According to a notice on the opinion, the ruling is not final until the court disposes of any timely filed motion for rehearing.