On December 14, 2016, the California Supreme Court denied review and ordered depublished the Sixth District Court of Appeal’s opinion in Bay Area Clean Environment, Inc. v. Santa Clara County, which was previously filed on August 31, 2016 and published at 2 Cal.App.5th 1197.  (See, Supreme Court’s Orders of 12/14 and 12/21/16 in Case No. S237709.)  Accordingly, the result in the case remains the same and is final and binding on the parties, but the Court of Appeal’s opinion is no longer published or citable as precedent in other cases.

My blog post on the Sixth District’s now unpublished and unciteable decision can be found here, for the benefit of those who enjoy post-mortems and reading judicial tea leaves to try to discern why the Supreme Court decides to erase particular CEQA precedents.  (While the high court’s reasons for depublication are obviously anybody’s guess, my own here is that this was perceived as an “overall right result/wrong reasoning” decision, particularly with respect to its holdings on the scope of required findings of overriding considerations, and possibly its messy facts as to record augmentation.)

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