From Permits to Penalties: A Deep Dive Into Coastal Development Law
Navigating Environmental Restrictions on Alternative Project Delivery for Complex Infrastructure Projects
On-Demand Webinar | Charting a Course for Offshore Wind Energy in California
[WEBINAR] Update on the California Environmental Quality Act: What’s New for 2018
[WEBINAR] Building a Solar Energy Project in 2018
How Trump's Infrastructure Plan Impacts the Energy Industry
BB&K's Charity Schiller Discusses CEQA Baseline
Following up on our earlier coverage of the new California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption passed as part of budget trailer bill AB 130, another significant CEQA pathway was created through its companion...more
In a partially published 102-page opinion filed June 26, 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 7) resolved cross-appeals by affirming the trial court’s judgment invalidating Los Angeles County’s 2019 EIR...more
On June 30, 2025, Governor Newsom signed two budget trailer bills into law: Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131, which reform the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) effective immediately. As explained by the...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
On January 21, 2025, Coblentz litigation partner Skye Langs presented for the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Real Property section on the following real estate and land use cases from 2024...more
Los Angeles County - Executive Order Streamlines Path to Rebuild Homes, Businesses, and Communities Destroyed by Los Angeles Firestorms - In response to the multiple firestorms in Los Angeles County that started on January 7,...more
The California Court of Appeal’s recent decision in V Lions Farming, LLC v. County of Kern provides important clarity on the use of agricultural conservation easements (ACEs) for mitigating the conversion of agricultural land...more
In Center for Biological Diversity v. County of San Benito (2024) 104 Cal.App.5th 22, the Court of Appeal held that the statute of limitations for two CEQA challenges did not begin to run until the Board of Supervisors had...more
In Westside Los Angeles Neighbors Network v. City of Los Angeles (2024) 104 Cal.App.5th 223, the Second District held that the City of Los Angeles Planning Commission (“Commission”) was a decision-making body authorized to...more
On November 22, 2024, the First District Court of Appeal’s (Div. 4) partially-published opinion in People of the State of California ex rel. Bonta v. County of Lake (Lotusland Investment Holdings, Inc., et al. Real Parties in...more
In People ex rel. Bonta v. County of Lake (2024) 105 Cal.App.5th 1222, the First District Court of Appeal held that the Final EIR (“FEIR”) and associated errata for a proposed mixed-use development project, located in a rural...more
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 to...more
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
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas. In a published decision filed October 7, 2024, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment...more
In Westside Los Angeles Neighbors Network v. City of Los Angeles, the Second District Court of Appeals considered and upheld the City of Los Angeles’s (“City”) actions associated with the approval of the Westside Mobility...more
In an opinion filed on July 24, and later ordered published on August 19, 2024, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 4) affirmed the trial court’s judgment denying a writ petition challenging actions taken by the Los...more
The Sixth District Court of Appeal filed on July 24, and later certified for publication on August 6, 2024, its opinion in Center for Biological Diversity et al. v. County of San Benito, et al. (2024) __ Cal.App.5th __. The...more
City of Los Angeles - Increase to Planning Applications and Affordable Housing Linkage Fees - On July 1, 2024, the fee for planning and land use applications increased by 3.5% based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban...more
The California Supreme Court held that under newly enacted Assembly Bill 1307, the environmental impact report prepared for UC Berkeley housing and longer-term development was not inadequate for failing to consider social...more
The California Supreme Court recently upheld the Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”) for the Long Range Development Plan (“LRDP”) for the University of California Berkeley (“UC Berkeley”) and a controversial housing project...more
So-called “social noise”—i.e., noise created by human voices—is not an environmental impact required by the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) to be analyzed for residential projects, the California Supreme Court...more
An appellate court interpreted a writ that ordered an agency to vacate certification of an EIR in part and file a final return to the writ “upon certification of a revised EIR” to require an assessment of the adequacy of the...more
On May 8th, 2024, the Little Hoover Commission released its much-anticipated report, “CEQA: Targeted Reform for California’s Core Environmental Law” putting forth recommendations to improve the functioning of the California...more