When airports accept federal money through the FAA's Airport Improvement Program, they agree to a set of conditions known as grant assurances. These include requirements to keep the airport open, to allow reasonable public access, and to avoid discriminating among categories of aircraft users. The assurances typically last for 20 years after the most recent grant is accepted.

East Hampton stopped accepting new federal grants, and the Town's grant-assurance obligations expired in late September 2021. This was a deliberate strategy: by letting the grants lapse, the Town hoped to free itself from the federal grant-assurance obligations and regain the ability to set local rules.

An additional complication was the enduring reach of the Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 (ANCA). This federal law requires any public airport proprietor to follow specific procedures before imposing noise or access restrictions — including conducting a detailed study, providing public notice, and, in some cases, obtaining FAA approval. The critical question was whether ANCA applied even after grant assurances expired.

The answer came in November 2016, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in Friends of the East Hampton Airport v. Town of East Hampton that ANCA's procedural requirements apply to all public airport proprietors, regardless of whether they receive federal funding. The Town appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case in 2017.

This ruling had immediate consequences. The Town had enacted a set of restrictions in 2015 — including an overnight curfew, an extended curfew for noisier aircraft, and a limit of one trip per week for designated “noisy” aircraft during the summer months. The Second Circuit's decision effectively rendered all three of those laws unenforceable unless and until the Town complied with ANCA's procedural requirements.

After years of legal setbacks, the Town pursued a different strategy. On January 20, 2022, the Town Board voted to deactivate the airport as a public-use facility and, days later, to reopen it as a new private-use airport operating under a “prior permission required” (PPR) framework. (After the FAA raised concerns, the Town pushed the planned deactivation to May 17, 2022, with reopening on May 19.) The Town's legal theory was that closing the public-use airport and reopening it as a private-use facility would let it impose operating restrictions that could not be applied — or would be legally vulnerable — at a public-use airport, on the view that ANCA's procedural requirements govern public-use airports.

The planned restrictions were significant. Takeoffs and landings would have been permitted only from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday through Sunday and on federal holidays. Commercial and fractional operators, along with aircraft classified as “noisy,” would have been limited to one round trip per day. In contrast, owners of small general-aviation aircraft would have retained largely unrestricted access within those hours.

The plan immediately drew legal challenges. Blade Air Mobility (which operates helicopter and seaplane service between Manhattan and the Hamptons), East End Hangars, and the Coalition to Keep East Hampton Airport Open each filed suit in New York State Supreme Court, contending that the Town had violated both New York's State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and ANCA. The National Business Aviation Association, which had been among the plaintiffs in the 2015 litigation, separately challenged the 2022 plan in federal court; it later voluntarily dismissed that action without prejudice once the state-court rulings had blocked the closure.

On May 16, 2022 — one day before the planned closure — Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Paul Baisley Jr. issued a temporary restraining order halting the Town. The airport continued operating as a public-use facility. Still, the FAA had already processed the identifier change from HTO to JPX on its own charting timeline, creating a confusing situation in which the field's charts and databases displayed the new private-use designation even though it remained open to the public.

On October 19, 2022, Justice Baisley granted a preliminary injunction and denied the Town's motion to dismiss, finding that the Town had neither completed the SEQRA-required environmental review nor complied with ANCA's procedures.

The dispute intensified over the next two years. In May 2023, Justice Baisley found the Town in civil contempt for violating the restraining order and ordered it to pay the plaintiffs $250,000, a $1,000-per-day fine for continued noncompliance, and the plaintiffs' attorneys' fees.

In March 2024, the Appellate Division, Second Department, issued a mixed ruling. It affirmed that the Town had failed to comply with ANCA's procedural requirements — confirming that the Town could not use closure-and-reopening to bypass them — and it left the finding of civil contempt in place. At the same time, it vacated the $250,000 sanction and the $1,000-per-day fine, holding that the plaintiffs had not established actual damages and had not been given proper notice that those penalties could be imposed. It returned the matter to the trial court for reconsideration of allowable costs, fees, and any statutory fine. The court made clear that the Town cannot rely on closure and reopening to avoid ANCA's requirements; to impose restrictions, it must complete ANCA's formal procedures.