Bal Harbour Shops has sued its home municipality over officials’ efforts to block a plan by the luxury mall’s owners that would add high-rise hotel and residential towers, including workforce housing, under a controversial new state law.

In a lawsuit filed in Miami Dade Circuit Court on Tuesday, the mall’s owners contend the actions by the village of Bal Harbour violate the Live Local Act, a 2023 law that overrides local zoning controls in commercial districts to foster dense housing development. The act requires local governments to approve developments that meet certain criteria, including construction of housing renting at lower than market rates, without public hearings or public vetting.

The suit comes a week after the Bal Harbour council said it would consider a moratorium on all new development in the affluent village of about 3,000 people to stop the expansion proposed by the mall’s owners, Whitman Family Development. The council’s vote came in response to a furious public outcry over the impact of the proposed expansion, which envisions four towers that at 25 stories or so would be five times taller than existing height limits allow.

Critics, including Bal Harbour Mayor Jeffrey Freimark, complain the Whitmans are using the Live Local Act to force the village and its residents to accept high-rise development at the three-story mall property that’s been repeatedly rejected by elected officials and voters. In a 2021 referendum, 90 percent of voters rejected a proposal that would have allowed the mall to exceed current height limits.

The mall’s suit claims the village has effectively blocked affordable housing development over decades to protect its image of affluence and accuses its voters of “clear bias” against Bal Harbour Shops.

Other municipalities, including Doral and Miami Beach, have successfully stalled Live Local Act proposals and won reductions from developers in proposed project height and scale, but Bal Harbour Shops is the first to sue.

Miami Beach and Bal Harbour have both cited a loophole in Live Local that doesn’t require local officials to increase limits on a measure, called floor-area ratio or FAR, that governs how much volume a developer can build on a lot. Without the extra FAR capacity, developers planning a Live Local project can’t reach the height and density the act encourages.

A “glitch” bill filed in the current legislative session would bar local officials from using FAR limits to block a Live Local proposal.

The Whitmans and their attorneys insist their Live Local plan already meets all criteria needed to move forward, including a minimum of 40 percent of the proposed 600 housing units set aside as affordable to people making up to 120 percent of Miami-Dade County’s median household income — currently around $90,000.