Welcome to “CEQA News You Can Use,” a quarterly production of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP’s Natural Resources lawyers. This publication provides quick, useful bites of CEQA news, which we hope can be a resource for your real-time business decisions. That said, it is not and cannot be construed to be legal advice. Enjoy!
CEQA requires joinder of real parties in interest, even from post-writ project approvals
In Citizens for a Better Eureka v. City of Eureka (2025) 111 Cal.App.5th 1114, petitioners faced the consequences of failing to comply with CEQA’s bright-line requirement to name real parties in interest in CEQA litigation. Citizens for a Better Eureka (“Citizens”) filed a writ petition challenging the City of Eureka’s decision to modify a parking lot for future development as affordable housing units. While that was pending, the city also approved the Wiyot Tribe’s selection as the affordable housing developer and listed the tribe as a real-party-in interest on a CEQA notice of exemption. Unfortunately for Citizens, they failed to then join the tribe in the writ action. Despite Citizen’s arguments that the writ petition only challenged the initial parking lot decision, the court relied on statements from Citizens’ writ petition to determine that the “project” under CEQA included the affordable housing development. Given CEQA’s requirement to name as real parties entities listed in the notice of exemption or who have permits related to a project, the court held that Citizens was obligated to join the tribe when it was awarded the development rights. The court noted the statute of limitations barred joinder at that point and that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding the tribe was an indispensable party. Therefore, dismissal was appropriate.
Permit application’s “catch-all” provision cannot satisfy requirements of Permit Streamlining Act
In Old Golden Oaks LLC v. County of Amador (2025) 111 Cal.App.5th 794, Amador County denied a residential subdivision developer’s applications for grading and encroachment permits on the basis that the applications did not contain sufficient environmental information. On appeal to the Third Appellate District, the developer contended the “catch-all provision” in the county’s encroachment permit submittal checklist was inconsistent with the Permit Streamlining Act (“Act”), which requires public agencies to maintain lists specifying, in detail, information required from any applicant for a development project. (Gov. Code, § 65940(a).) The court of appeal agreed that the catch-all provision in the county’s encroachment permit submittal checklist violated the Act because it did not specify, in detail, the information required to be submitted with a permit application. While the Act and CEQA allow an agency to seek information needed for environmental evaluation during the permit application process, nothing in either statute allows a public agency to condition the completeness of the application on environmental information that is not part of the submittal checklist. Conversely, the county’s criteria for issuance of a grading permit did comply with the Act’s mandate by expressly stating that CEQA compliance was required. (A petition for certiorari has been filed in this case with the California Supreme Court. See Supreme Court Case No. S291821.)
Massive development of the historic Tejon Ranch paused for now
In Center for Biological Diversity v. County of Los Angeles (2025) ___ Cal.App.5th ___, 2025 WL 1766368, the Second District upheld the lower court’s finding that the EIR certified by the County of Los Angeles violated CEQA by minimizing the project’s actual environmental impact. The case involves the Centennial project, a 12,323-acre residential and commercial development project in the Antelope Valley. To address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the project, the EIR proposed to mitigate them through the purchase of cap-and-trade allowances. On appeal, the court held that the EIR was prejudicially misleading by relying on the state’s cap-and-trade program to offset the project’s estimated unmitigated GHG emissions. Specifically, the court found the project did not qualify as a covered entity under the cap-and-trade program because it did not meet the definition of an energy producer or industrial facility. As a result, the EIR could not rely on the cap-and-trade program as an appropriate basis for determining the impact of the project’s GHG emissions. In addition, the court noted that CEQA’s additionality requirement prohibits the use of GHG emissions reductions that are already legally required for other entities to offset a project’s environmental impacts. Put differently, mitigation measures under CEQA must result in new, project-specific reductions as opposed to relying on reductions that have already been accounted for. The court ordered that the EIR be decertified until the GHG analysis is corrected. (As of publication, the time to petition for certiorari to the California Supreme Court had not yet run.)
Lots of legislative updates associated with budget bills AB 130 and SB 131
In case you missed it, Brownstein has been busy publishing a series of alerts on the ramifications of budget bills AB 130 and SB 131, which took effect June 30, 2025. Together, these bills create major changes to both CEQA and California housing law. You can find all of our alerts—as well as forthcoming ones—here.
CEQA News celebrates its 10th year!
All year we’ll be celebrating 10 years of CEQA News, our quarterly newsletter designed to bring bite-sized, digestible chunks of CEQA updates to a broad readership. To celebrate, we’ll be peppering our CEQA News issues with opportunities to win prizes, giveaways, quizzes and other fun stuff.
