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 the emergency. (See, Gov. Code, § 8571.) The new EO followed (by two weeks) an earlier order, Executive Order N-4-25, which suspended CEQA review and Coastal Act permitting requirements to facilitate rapid rebuilding after the disastrous LA/Ventura County wildfires. (I blogged on the earlier Executive Order here.)
The new EO, a copy of which can be found here, squarely takes aim at “legally erroneous” California Coastal Commission guidance purporting to apply statutory Coastal Act permit exemption provisions and procedures Governor Newsom had intended to suspend with his earlier order; it further suspends tenant-protection statutes that would otherwise operate to deem emergency-displaced residents utilizing hotels, motels and short-term rentals to be non-transient, permanent “tenants,” so as not to deter the provision of such much-needed temporary housing beyond 30 days.
The new EO’s recitals state that, despite the Governor’s earlier executive orders, “the California Coastal Commission has nonetheless issued guidance that purports to apply the California Coastal Act’s statutory permit exemption provision, which generally triggers additional local approval procedures and potential appeals, to projects covered by the suspensions in Executive Orders N-4-25 and N-9-25, and purports to impose conditions beyond those specified in the Executive Orders to such projects, including the requirement in Public Resources Code section 30610(g) that a “replacement structure shall conform to applicable existing zoning requirements”[.]” The recitals further call the guidance’s suggestion that the Coastal Act’s permit exemption process would continue to apply to the subject rebuilds “legally erroneous” and state it “risks creating confusion and delay in rebuilding efforts for impacted communities[.]”
Accordingly, the Governor’s new EO orders “[a]ll [Coastal Act] statutory exemption criteria, appeal or review periods, procedures for seeking an exemption, and all other [submission] requirements … suspended for any [covered rebuild] project … to the extent they were not already suspended by [the previous executive orders].” It further pointedly directs the Coastal Commission “to avoid taking any action that interferes with achievement of the purposes of [the prior EO’s]” – i.e., “allowing property owners to rebuild swiftly, without needing to undertake permitting or other procedures under the California Coastal Act – including but not limited to actions and written or oral guidance suggesting that any permitting-related procedure under the Act continues to apply not withstanding [the Governor’s executive orders].”
What does it all mean? It had previously been questioned whether the Governor’s Executive Order N-4-25 had any practical effect on otherwise applicable Coastal Act provisions and procedures in light of the Act’s existing rebuild exemption; the Governor’s new Executive Order N-14-25 emphatically affirms that it does. Notably, the new above-quoted EO’s recitals can also be read to suggest that covered rebuilds within the parameters of EO N-4-25 do not even need to conform to the requirements of applicable zoning – which would be a significant exemption, indeed, in situations where a property’s zoning may have materially changed in the time period after the fire-destroyed structure was originally built.
Questions? Please contact Arthur F. Coon of Miller Starr Regalia. Miller Starr Regalia has had a well-established reputation as a leading real estate law firm for more than fifty years. For nearly all that time, the firm also has written Miller & Starr, California Real Estate 4th, a 12-volume treatise on California real estate law. “The Book” is the most widely used and judicially recognized real estate treatise in California and is cited by practicing attorneys and courts throughout the state. The firm has expertise in all real property matters, including full-service litigation and dispute resolution services, transactions, acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, financing, common interest development, construction, management, eminent domain and inverse condemnation, title insurance, environmental law and land use. For more information, visit www.msrlegal.com.