JERSEY CITY -- Downtown Councilwoman Candice Osborne was the sole vote last night against the repeal of a law that limits where chain stores can open in Jersey City.

Osborne peppered Corporation Counsel Jeremy Farrell with questions about why the city, which pushed for the law two years ago, has suddenly found it may not hold up to strict legal scrutiny.

Farrell told Osborne the new planning director felt the city "needed to just tighten it up." He said another version of the law may come before the council in the future.

The law, passed by the council in 2015, restricts chain stores from taking up more than 30 percent of ground-floor commercial space in any lot in a swath of Downtown. At the time it was passed, Mayor Steve Fulop said it was necessary to protect the character of Downtown neighborhoods.

The city's move to repeal the law - the council needs to vote on it a second time before the repeal is adopted - comes one month after the city threatened to block a CVS from opening in 70 Hudson St., a 12-story building on the Waterfront.

City planners issued a memo to the council last week saying the chain store law could violate the commerce clause of the United States Constitution, which regulates interstate commerce. The city's law defines a chain store as any that has 10 or more locations in a 300-mile radius, which includes 13 states stretching as far north as Maine and as far south as Virginia.

"It may be permissible but it would have to survive strict scrutiny," Farrell said last night. "We felt like perhaps it needs to be a little bit more narrowly tailored."

An appeals court in California upheld a similar law in Coronado, a small city near San Diego, in 2003 after property owners sued saying the law violated the commerce clause.

Osborne told The Jersey Journal this fight is "not about property rights."

"Our law only deals with redevelopment plans and when developers receive generous zoning benefits local government has a well established right to require community benefit within those plans," she said. "It doesn't benefit the community to have retail sit empty for years while developers wait for a chain store to lock in for a long rent."

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.