BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell filed a lawsuit Thursday morning against nine towns out of compliance with the MBTA Communities Law.

The lawsuit names the towns of Dracut, East Bridgewater, Halifax, Holden, Marblehead, Middleton, Tewksbury, Wilmington and Winthrop, all of which have resisted complying with the state law passed in 2021. The law covers 177 total towns in eastern Massachusetts, requiring them to create a new zoning overlay for multifamily housing as a way to address the housing crisis. To date, 165 of those communities have come into compliance.

The towns of Carver, Rehoboth and Freetown are also out of compliance, but they were not named in this lawsuit, which Campbell said in a remote press conference Thursday was because Freetown has a zoning meeting on the matter coming up soon, and the deadline for Carver and Rehoboth, as adjacent small towns, only just passed with the new year.

While speaking to the media, Campbell said “it is no secret Massachusetts has a housing crisis and our commonwealth is unaffordable.” Seniors on fixed incomes are struggling to keep their homes, she said, while younger people who grew up in the state can’t afford to stay here.

With most of the communities covered under the law having already enacted their own zoning, Campbell said more than 7,000 new homes are being built in these zones in 34 communities.

“When a handful of communities challenged the law, the judges were clear, the MBTA Communities Law is enforceable,” Campbell said during the press conference Thursday.

“When local communities refuse to allow new housing, housing prices everywhere across the commonwealth increase and thwart the ability for families to access the benefits stable housing provides,” she said later.

Responding to questions from reporters, Campbell said her office would work with the noncompliant communities, as they did with the town of Milton last year, to bring them into compliance with new zoning.

“If any town passes compliant zoning, the lawsuit goes away,” Campbell said.

In a phone call Thursday afternoon, Tewksbury Town Manager John Curran said he had seen the lawsuit and would pass it along to the Select Board and the town’s legal counsel to decide what the town should do next.

“I have my own personal opinions, but the town has made a decision for where they are, and I can only tell them the pros and cons of the choices they have,” said Curran.

Dracut Town Manager Kate Hodges told The Sun Thursday she was aware of the lawsuit but the town had not been formally served with it. Dracut Select Board Chair Josh Taylor, who also chairs the Zoning Bylaw Review Committee, said the ZBRC is working on a new MBTA Communities zoning proposal to present to the town with an information meeting expected in February.

The plan under consideration by Dracut’s ZBRC would include Tennis Plaza Road, which intersects Lakeview Avenue just beyond the Dracut education complex. This road, which is already home to condominiums, was part of the original proposal that was loudly rejected at two Town Meetings. Also under consideration in this new plan is the Cascades Condominium property at 100 Merrimack Ave., which was not part of the original rejected proposal.

Wilmington Town Manager Eric Slagle said in a phone call Thursday the lawsuit was expected, and the town had been communicating with Campbell’s office in the second half of 2025 after the zoning failed to pass at Town Meeting last year.

“They asked if we planned to put it on another Town Meeting agenda, but there was no appetite on the Select Board for that,” said Slagle.

For now, Slagle said Wilmington is in a “wait-and-see mode” as the complaint filed by Campbell’s office did not specify how a judge should force compliance with the MBTA Communities Law. A discussion on the matter is expected to take place in executive session in the next Wilmington Select Board meeting, Slagle said.

The zoning plans for Dracut, Tewksbury and Wilmington were each rejected in their respective Town Meetings in the last two years, while all three — along with the other six communities in the lawsuit — faced a deadline of Dec. 31, 2024 to comply. That deadline was later extended to July 14, 2025.

Dracut’s zoning was placed on a special Town Meeting warrant on Nov. 18, 2024, and again on the annual Town Meeting warrant on June 2, 2025, failing to pass in both instances. Similarly, Tewksbury’s annual Town Meeting voted overwhelmingly to reject its zoning on May 6, 2024, and the Tewksbury Planning Board blocked an attempt to bring it back to Town Meeting the following year by voting to recommend against it.

Wilmington’s zoning was on the annual Town Meeting warrant for May 4, 2024, but after heavy debate the voters chose to refer it back to the Planning Board, delaying a vote until a special Town Meeting later that year on Dec. 9, where the zoning was rejected. A third attempt in Wilmington’s annual Town Meeting in 2025 resulted in another rejection by the voters.

While speaking to the press, Campbell stopped short of naming any specific consequences beyond the lawsuit for towns that continue the route of noncompliance. Towns that have pushed back against complying with the law in the past have been threatened with a loss of state grant funding, and with the possible imposition of a special master that would create their own zoning without the town’s input.

In the lawsuit, Campbell is looking for the court to declare the defendant towns to be out of compliance with the MBTA Communities Law and make them impose compliant zoning.

Correspondent Prudence Brighton contributed to this report.