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On December 30, 2025, one day after Chief Justice Guerrero recused herself, the California Supreme Court issued an order denying the depublication request and petition for review of Defendant and Respondent City of San Diego in Save Our Access v. City of San Diego (2025) 115 Cal.App.5th 388 (Supreme Court Case No. S293971). The Court’s action leaves intact the Fourth District’s published opinion invalidating the Supplemental EIR for the second City-sponsored ballot measure to remove a long-standing 30-foot building height limit in its Midway-Pacific Highway Community Planning area; it represents yet another setback for the City in its years-long quest to update its zoning regulations in a key urban area by removing the 50-year-old restriction. In my opinion, the decision to deny review also represents a missed opportunity for the high court to weigh in and provide much needed guidance and clarity on CEQA’s standards for analyzing large-scale planning actions at the plan or “program” level. (For those interested in a detailed summary of the litigation’s history and the Court of Appeal’s opinion, as well as my own thoughts on the CEQA issues involved, see my October 27, 2025 post here.) With judicial relief from the adverse appellate decision not forthcoming, perhaps the beleaguered City can pursue a different legal playbook in 2026 and seek and obtain a legislative solution removing the CEQA roadblock to its important planning efforts.

Continue Reading Supreme Court Denies City of San Diego’s Petition for Review and Depublication Request In CEQA Action Invalidating Supplemental EIR For City’s 30-Foot Coastal Height Limit Removal Initiative

The Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (“LCI”) has announced it is extending the public comment period through December 31, 2025, for a proposed rulemaking to increase the application fee for projects (excluding exempt housing projects) applying for judicial streamlining benefits under CEQA from $39,000 to $100,000.  Pursuant to LCI’s initial October 17, 2025 notice of the rulemaking, the public comment period would have closed on December 1, 2025.  LCI will not hold a public hearing on the proposed rulemaking unless an interested person requests the same at least 15 days prior to the close of the public comment period.Continue Reading The Price of CEQA Judicial Streamlining Benefits Is Going Up:  Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation Extends Public Comment Period On Proposal to Raise Application Fee for SB 7 (Leadership) and SB 149 (Infrastructure) Project Certifications to $100,000

As we approach the end of the month and the Thanksgiving holiday, without a new published CEQA precedent (yet, anyway) to write about, I thought I’d put together a brief “news roundup” of recent items that could be of interest to readers.Continue Reading CEQA Roundup: November 2025

In a published opinion filed October 17, 2025, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) reversed the trial court’s judgment and directed it to grant a writ of mandate invalidating the City of San Diego’s (“City”) Supplemental EIR (“SEIR”) prepared for its second City-sponsored ballot measure to exclude the Midway-Pacific Highway Community Planning area (“MPH area”) from its Coastal Height Limit Overlay Zone, which generally limits building heights to 30 feet.  The Court held the SEIR violated CEQA because it failed to analyze potential significant environmental impacts of this significant plan update other than views and neighborhood character, omitting what it deemed required analysis of noise, air quality, biological resources, geological conditions, and other impacts, and improperly deferring analysis to future site-specific projects.  Save Our Access v. City of San Diego (2025) 115 Cal.App.5th 388.Continue Reading High Rise Anxiety: Fourth District Holds San Diego’s Supplemental EIR for Second City Initiative to Update Midway-Pacific Community Plan Violated CEQA By Failing to Adequately Analyze Numerous Potential Impacts of Removing 30-foot Coastal Height Limit

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 certification and project approvals for the Centennial Specific Plan, a 12,323-acre development on the historic Tejon Ranch in the County’s Antelope Valley Area south of Kern County.  Center for Biological Diversity v. County of Los Angeles (Centennial Founders, LLC, et al., Real Parties in Interest) (2025) 112 Cal.App.5th 317.  The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial court in all respects, holding the EIR’s GHG and off-site wildfire impacts analyses were deficient, while rejecting challenges to its analyses, discussion, and mitigation for wildlife movement corridors and native vegetation and to its alternatives analysis.  (Per this blog’s standard practice, this post will discuss only the published portion of the opinion, which addressed only the GHG issues.)Continue Reading “Double Counting” or Redundant Mitigation?  Second District Holds CEQA Guidelines’ Additionality Requirement Precludes Applying Upstream Energy or Fuel Providers’ Obligatory Cap-and-Trade Compliance To Offset Land Use Project’s Estimated GHG Emissions, Invalidates “Prejudicially Misleading” EIR For Massive LA County Centennial Project On That And Other Grounds

On May 14, 2025, Senator Scott Wiener issued a press release stating that, on that morning, “Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he supports the strongest ever reforms of [CEQA],” referring to Newsom’s proposal to include in the budget both Wiener’s SB 607 (which proposes several significant reforms to reduce CEQA abuse, and which I previously blogged on in this March 4, 2025 post) and Wicks’ AB 609 (which proposes a broad CEQA exemption for infill housing projects).  Senator Wiener’s release also mentions the California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform Final Report, authored by Wicks, which I also blogged on in this March 17, 2025 post.  The full text of Senator Wiener’s press release, which contains both his and Wicks’ statements, along with summaries of their bills, is well worth a read by those interested in CEQA and permitting reform, and can be found here.Continue Reading Senator Wiener and Assembly member Wicks Applaud Governor Newsom’s Support of Their CEQA Reform Bills

In a published opinion filed March 27, 2025, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (Div. 1) reversed the trial court’s judgment denying a writ petition, and held that two screening thresholds of significance for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) impacts adopted by the County of San Diego as part of its 2022 Transportation Study Guide were invalid because they were unsupported by any substantial evidence.  Cleveland National Forest Foundation, et al. v. County of San Diego (2025) 109 Cal.App.5th 1257.Continue Reading Fourth District Invalidates San Diego County’s “Infill” And “Small Project” VMT Screening Thresholds As Lacking Substantial Evidence Support

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 permitting” if it is to have any hope of addressing its interconnected housing and climate crises.  Citing a housing shortage of 2.5 million units, 200,000 homeless persons, unaffordable rents, and increasing temperatures, droughts, flooding, and wildfires, the 35-page Report observes that “California will need to facilitate new construction [of housing, clean energy generation, storage and transmission infrastructure, and climate resiliency projects] at an unprecedented scale” – something achievable “only if governments consistently issue permits in a manner that is timely, transparent, consistent, and outcomes-oriented[.]”Continue Reading CEQA Identified By Assembly Select Committee Report As Among Obstacles To Permitting Reform Needed To Meet State’s Housing and Climate Goals

On February 13, 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal (Div. 7) filed its 71-page published opinion affirming the trial court’s judgment rejecting CEQA safety hazard and cumulative impacts analysis challenges – as well as Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) and generic “arbitrary and capricious” writ challenges – to the California Air Resources Board’s (“CARB”) August 2020 decision adopting the “Control Measure For Ocean-Going Vessels At Berth” (the “Regulation,” codified at 17 Cal. Code Regs. § 93130 et seq).  Western States Petroleum Association v. California Air Resources Board (2025) 108 Cal.App.5th 938.Continue Reading Second District Affirms Judgment Rejecting CEQA And Other Challenges To CARB’s “Technology-Forcing” Emissions-Control Regulation For At-Berth Tanker And Other Ships

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 Interest) (2024) 105 Cal.App.5th 1222 (No. A165677) became final.  The published part of the decision addresses several significant CEQA topic areas, including the adequacy of an EIR’s discussions of impacts related to a large rural resort development project’s wildfire risks and water supply impacts, and the propriety of a lead agency’s condition of approval imposing a carbon credit purchase obligation to potentially mitigate the project’s significant and unavoidable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in light of acknowledged uncertainty as to whether such credits would be available.  (As a matter of disclosure, Respondent County of Lake was represented in the trial and appellate proceedings in this case by this post’s authors, Miller Starr Regalia attorneys Arthur Coon and Matthew Henderson.)Continue Reading First District Addresses Significant CEQA Issues Relating to Wildfire Risk, GHG Emissions, and Water Supply Impacts in Lake County Resort Development Case