On June 30, 2025, Governor Newsom signed AB 130 and SB 131 into immediately effective law as budget trailer bills, marking a historic effort to accelerate housing production and to reform the CEQA review process that has been...more
In a published opinion filed March 14, 2025, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 2) reversed the trial court’s judgment upholding a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) for a four-story, 75-room hotel/meeting...more
The “California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform Final Report – March 2025” (the “Report”), published earlier this month, sounds an alarm bell regarding the need to overhaul the state’s “failed approach to...more
On February 20, 2025, Senator Scott Wiener introduced Senate Bill No. 607 (SB 607), a proposed law that is relatively short in text length, but which would engender major CEQA reforms if enacted as currently drafted. The...more
3/6/2025
/ Administrative Record ,
Affordable Housing ,
California ,
CEQA ,
Environmental Impact Report (EIR) ,
Housing Developers ,
Infill Development ,
Real Estate Development ,
Regulatory Reform ,
State and Local Government ,
Urban Planning & Development ,
Zoning Laws
On January 27, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-14-25 (the “EO”) pursuant to his statutory powers to suspend regulatory statutes during a state of emergency that would impede mitigation of the effects of...more
2/6/2025
/ Affordable Housing ,
California ,
CEQA ,
Coastal Real Estate ,
Environmental Policies ,
Executive Orders ,
Real Estate Development ,
Regulatory Requirements ,
Urban Planning & Development ,
Wildfires ,
Zoning Laws
In a published opinion filed October 21, 2024, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 7) reversed a judgment entered after the trial court granted without leave a real party developer’s motion for judgment on the...more
11/1/2024
/ California ,
CEQA ,
Conditional Use Permit ,
Construction Project ,
Environmental Impact Report (EIR) ,
Real Estate Development ,
Statute of Limitations ,
Subdivision ,
Subdivision Map Act ,
Urban Planning & Development ,
Zoning Laws
In a sprawling, 123-page published opinion filed on February 14, 2022, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed in part, and reversed in part, judgments in consolidated CEQA actions challenging Placer County’s EIR for its...more
In an August 27,2020 opinion, the California Supreme Court provided important guidance to local agencies regarding the classification of permit decisions based on ordinances that include both ministerial and discretionary...more
In an opinion originally filed on July 31, and belatedly ordered published on August 22, 2019, the Second District Court of Appeal (Division 3) affirmed a judgment granting a CEQA writ petition invalidating the final EIR and...more
Introduction And Overview -
On August 19, 2019, the California Supreme Court issued its unanimous 38-page opinion, authored by Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye, in the CEQA “project definition” case we’ve been tracking with...more
8/24/2019
/ CA Supreme Court ,
CEQA ,
City Planning Departments ,
Dispensaries ,
Environmental Impact Report (EIR) ,
Local Ordinance ,
Marijuana ,
Marijuana Cultivation ,
Marijuana Related Businesses ,
State and Local Government ,
Zoning Laws
In a 30-page opinion originally filed July 3, and certified for publication on July 18, 2019, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment denying a writ petition challenging, on zoning law and CEQA...more
The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an important case we’ve been following involving CEQA’s definition of a “project” on the afternoon of June 4, 2019, and took the matter under submission. ...more
On May 15, 2019, the California Supreme Court announced it would hear oral argument in Union of Medical Marijuana Patients v. City of San Diego (California Coastal Commission), Case No. S238563, on June 4, 2019, at 2:00...more
Save Lafayette Trees Litigation Update: The Beat Goes On -
We last posted on this decision (currently published as Save Lafayette Trees v. City of Lafayette (Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Real Party in Interest) (1st...more
In a lengthy opinion filed February 22, and belatedly ordered published on March 25, 2019, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) affirmed the trial court’s judgment denying a petition for writ of mandate challenging the...more
Spring now being practically “in the air,” a bit of CEQA “spring cleaning” seems appropriate – so here’s a brief look at the status of some significant CEQA-related cases that are now pending before our Supreme Court, or in...more
In a partially published opinion filed January 30, 2019, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) affirmed a judgment denying a writ petition challenging the City of Berkeley’s approval of use permits for three...more
In an opinion filed December 18, 2018, and later ordered published on January 10, 2019, the First District Court of Appeal affirmed a judgment denying appellant citizen groups’ writ petition challenging the City of St....more
As we draw near the close of another year, a number of recent CEQA developments bear noting.
New SB 35 Implementing Regulations -
Senate Bill 35, more colloquially known as “SB 35,” was signed into law by Governor Brown...more
In a lengthy published opinion filed August 23, 2018, the Second District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s judgment, and upheld the City of Los Angeles’ addendum to a prior project-level EIR for a Target Superstore...more
As we move into a brand new year of tracking CEQA developments, it seems like an appropriate time to survey and briefly recap some of the many significant published case law developments that occurred over the past...more
AB 890 (Medina – D), recently sent to Governor Brown for action by October 15, seeks to amend Government Code § 65867.5 and to add §§ 65363 and 65850.10 to prevent development agreements and certain types of land use planning...more
Like the fable of the blind men and the elephant, CEQA’s prohibition on “piecemealing” of environmental review is animated by a basic recognition that the “whole” of an action under review is greater than its individual parts...more
On January 11, 2017, the California Supreme Court by unanimous order granted review in yet another CEQA case, Union of Medical Marijuana Patients, Inc. v. City of San Diego (2016) 4 Cal.App.4th 103, Supreme Court Case No....more
In a 29-page published opinion filed October 14, 2016, the Fourth District Court of Appeal dispensed some good news to municipalities desiring to reasonably regulate retail medical marijuana facilities within their...more