Legislation and Litigation

RYAM is conducting a three-pronged assault on the City of Fernandina Beach’s Comprehensive Plan(Comp Plan) and Land Development Code(LDC) to force the City into allowing the construction of its ethanol chemical manufacturing facility on the Island. The first is a legislative campaign to pass legislation that would override the Comp Plan and LDC; the second a State lawsuit seeking declaratory relief; and third, a Federal lawsuit declaring the City’s actions discriminatory.

Legislation

During the Florida State 2025 Legislative Session (Session), a proposed amendment to Senate Bill 1118, (SB1118 - see lines 112 -119)was filed by Senator Stan McClain which included language redefining “chemical manufacturing” to exclude ethanol production and passed the Senate and was sent to the House of Representatives for consideration. After a Committee substitute, CS/SB 1080 (CS/SB1080) was passed by the House adopting SB1080 with the ethanol exclusion, a proposed amendment to CS/SB 1080 was filed by Representative Tobin Oberdorf, striking the ethanol exclusion language and passed by the House. The bill was returned to the Senate for consideration and passed without the ethanol exclusion language on June 1, 2025.

SB1080 was the first bill scheduled to be heard on March 17, 2025, before the Senate Community Affairs Committee with Senator McClain as the Chairman of the Committee. No Ethanol Fernandina mounted a strong effort to inform residents of the hearing and the urgent need to contact the Committee members and Fernandina Beach’s legislators, including providing contact information and suggested talking points. Fernandina Beach’s residents rose to the occasion and bombarded the Committee members and legislators with literally hundreds of phone calls and emails. Franklin Hileman, as a member of the Board of Directors for No Ethanol Fernandina, traveled to Tallahassee and visited every Committee members office and confirmed that the members were definitely getting the message and he subsequently testified in opposition to the proposed amendment before the Committee. Passage of the bill was a foregone conclusion as the Committee Chairman, Senator McClain was the bill sponsor, but a number of Committee members did raise concerns with the language redefining chemical manufacturing to exclude ethanol production. SB1080 was ultimately completed the Senate Committee process and passed by the Senate and sent to the House of Representatives on April 28, 2025.

In the House, our lobbying team became aware of the proposed amendment to be filed by Representative Overdorf. The lobbying team arranged a conference call between the members of the No Ethanol Fernandina Board of Directors and Representative Overdorf and argued our opposition to the ethanol language. No Ethanol Fernandina Board members Len Kreger and Julie Feriera and the lobbying team separately met with Fernandina Beach’s representative, Black and we believe he played a pivotal role in convincing Representative to proceed with the proposed amendment. HB CS/SB 1080 ultimately passed with Representative Overdorf’s amendment striking the ethanol exclusion language and returned to the Senate where it passed without the ethanol production exclusion language on June 1, 2025.

The Legislature officially ended on June 16, 2025, without passing any legislation including the redefining of “chemical manufacturing” and the legislation was dead.

No Ethanol Fernandina and our lobbying team believe there is a very good likelihood, and almost a certainty, that legislation will again be filed during the 2026 Legislative Session to somehow allow RYAM to build the ethanol manufacturing facility and we are already monitoring the issue. We are also considering a more proactive approach to the 2026 Legislative Session so we are not crawling our way out of a ditch as we did in 2025.

State Litigation

RYAM filed a five Count Amended Complaint against the CITY seeking Declaratory and Injunctive Relief. Essentially RYAM is alleging that the CITY violated the CITY’S Code and procedures for the review of RYAM’S building permit application. RYAM is asking the Court to find that as a result of these violations the CITY wrongfully denied the building permit application and should be required to issue the Permit and authorize RYAM to build the ethanol manufacturing facility.

The CITY has filed an Answer and Affirmative Defenses asserting its actions were lawful and some of RYAM’S allegations are not sufficient to state a cause of action.

The essence of the status is the case is it is procedurally ready for trial and accordingly has been scheduled for trial on August 31, 2025. On June 9, 2025, the Court entered a standard case management order which requires the parties to meet and establish the issues for trial and submit a Joint Pretrial Memorandum. The parties must meet on July 22, 2025 or alternatively submit a written Memorandum agreeing to the issues to be tried at least 7 days prior to July 22nd.

Although this Order sets the date, the discovery process has just begun. Discovery is essentially a fact finding process by both sides. Each side is filing Requests for Production, Interrogatories and setting depositions and performing other discovery. These filings require both parties to produce documents, answer the written questions in the Interrogatories and witnesses appear to provide sworn testimony to questions from the other party’s attorney. This can be a long process that will likely delay the actual trial. It will likely be an extended period before the matter goes to trial

Federal Litigation

On March 28, 2025, RYAM filed RAYONIER PERFORMANCE FIBERS, LLC., vs. FERNANDINA BEACH, FLORIDA, Case 3:25-cv-00343-WWB-PDB.

On June 18, 2025, the City of Fernandina Beach (“City”) filed a Motion to Dismiss essentially alleging that RYAM’s case is simply a refiling of the State case and is an improper “splitting of claims, and should be dismissed with no recourse to refile in Federal court.

The City’s Motion to Dismiss specifically alleges that RYAM’s case is “an improper refiling of a state court action in which Plaintiff, Rayonier Performance Fibers, LLC (“Plaintiff”) sued the City asserting several counts for declaratory and injunctive relief and seeking monetary damages as supplemental relief, arising from the same events at issue herein. See Case No. 2025-CA-60 (Fla. 4th Cir. Ct. 2025) (“State Court Action”).

The events at issue are the same in both the operative Complaint before this Court and the State. Accordingly, on motion to dismiss for claim-splitting, “[a] Court may take judicial notice of the

documents in the first case ‘which were public records that were ‘not subject to reasonable dispute’ because they were ‘capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy could not reasonably be questioned.

Plaintiff wrongly filed this action in federal court, improperly multiplying the proceedings arising from the same occurrence and involving the same parties and seeking the same monetary damages in different venues in direct violation of the rule against claim splitting. Accordingly, Plaintiff’s Complaint should be dismissed with prejudice.”

The City’s Motion to Dismiss is still pending and no date has been set for the Court to hear arguments from both sides. The Court, upon hearing the Motion has two options:

The Court could grant the City’s Motion and dismiss RYAM’S case with prejudice and the case would be over and could not be refiled in Federal court. This would not have any impact on the pending State case which would continue.

The Court could grant the Motion “with leave to amend” which would mean RYAM’s case is dismissed but RYAM could file an amended complaint in an effort to state a cause of action. This would create serious problems for RYAM to continue as they would have to allege a claim not arising from the allegations pending in the State case.

It is difficult to predict how the Judge will rule on the Motion. There is a general legal principal that a Court should not prevent a claimant from pursuing legal redress, but in this case the Judge could find that RYAM has a recognizable alternative to pursue legal redress and that is in the State court action already pending.