Land Use

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On September 13, 2025, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 79 (“SB 79), authored by Senator Scott Wiener, representing one of the most important land use reforms of the 2025 legislative session, one that is aimed at accelerating housing production in areas served by public transit. Building on Senator Wiener’s record of advancing transit-oriented development (TOD) and housing legislation, and as discussed in greater detail below, SB 79 provides new zoning standards, height and density allowances, and streamlining measures that aim to reduce barriers to housing construction within proximity to rail, bus rapid transit, and other major transit stops.

Although the Governor has not yet taken action on SB 79 and it has garnered opposition from some municipalities due to its restrictions on local land use authority and control, the measure would appear to align squarely with Newsom’s broader housing agenda and policy priorities. The administration has emphasized the need for bold, statewide interventions to accelerate housing production, particularly in infill and transit-rich locations. SB 79’s combination of statewide TOD entitlements, affordability mandates, anti-displacement protections, and enforcement mechanisms would appear to fit directly within those goals.Continue Reading California Legislature Enacts SB 79 Expanding Housing Opportunities Near Public Transit, Streamlining Transit-Oriented Development, and Providing For SB 35 Ministerial Approval Process That Would Avoid CEQA Review

On June 30, 2025, Governor Newsom signed AB 130 and SB 131 into immediately effective law as budget trailer bills, marking a historic effort to accelerate housing production and to reform the CEQA review process that has been stifling housing and other essential projects across California. These landmark laws effect substantial changes intended to streamline the approval process for infill housing and essential infrastructure projects by establishing clearer timelines, reducing procedural hurdles, and expanding CEQA exemptions tailored to support sustainable development. While AB 130 largely focuses on improving and clarifying the entitlement process for housing projects, SB 131 adds CEQA exemptions and streamlining for a diverse set of projects and actions.Continue Reading State Budget Bill Includes Landmark CEQA and Housing Law Changes

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

In an opinion filed May 14, and later ordered published on June 11, 2025, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 3) affirmed a judgment dismissing a CEQA action challenging an approval for a City parking lot redevelopment/affordable housing project due to the Petitioner’s failure to timely join the necessary and indispensable real party developer of the project’s housing component.  Citizens for a Better Eureka v. City of Eureka (Wiyot Tribe, Real Party in Interest) (2025) 111 Cal.App.5th 1114.Continue Reading First District Affirms Judgment Dismissing CEQA Action Based On Petitioner’s Failure To Join Indispensable Real Party Developer Within Statute of Limitations Period

Like a gift to land use lawyers that never stops giving, the strange and wondrous interrelationship between CEQA and the Permit Streamlining Act (“PSA”; Gov. Code, § 65920 et seq) continues to inspire litigation and require judicial explication.  In a terse 8-page published opinion filed May 30, 2025, the Third District Court of Appeal explained the finer points of the rules governing PSA-required permit submittal checklists and completeness determinations and how they interact with CEQA when the latter applies to the permit at issue.  Old Golden Oaks LLC v. County of Amador (2025) 111 Cal.App.5th 794.  (And, it can be noted, CEQA should virtually always apply to “development projects” subject to the PSA, which do not include ministerial projects.  (Gov. Code § 65928).)Continue Reading Third District Holds County Could Require Supplemental Environmental Information From Grading Permit Applicant As Condition of Application Completeness Determination Where Permit Submittal Checklist Alerted Applicant CEQA Compliance Would Be Required

In a published opinion filed March 14, 2025, the First District Court of Appeal (Div. 2) reversed the trial court’s judgment upholding a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) for a four-story, 75-room hotel/meeting hall/parking lot project on a 2.8-acre parcel in the City of Clearlake (“City”), due to the City’s failure to lawfully conduct a tribal cultural resources consultation with plaintiff and appellant Koi Nation of Northern California as required by AB 52.  Koi Nation of Northern California v. City of Clearlake (2025) 109 Cal.App.5th 815.Continue Reading First District Voids Clearlake Hotel Project MND for City’s Failure to Conduct Adequate CEQA AB 52 Tribal Cultural Resources Consultation

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 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 bill would add three new, and amend two existing, statutory sections of CEQA, as discussed below.Continue Reading Is Robust and Disruptive CEQA Reform Possible?  Senator Scott Wiener Wants to Find Out – His Proposed SB 607 Would Exempt Rezonings Consistent With Approved Housing Elements, Limit The Scope of EIRs for Qualifying “Nearly-Exempt” Projects, and Greatly Strengthen Negative Declarations and Categorical and Statutory Exemptions

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 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.)Continue Reading Following Up Earlier Order Suspending CEQA Review and Coastal Act Permitting Requirements To Facilitate Rebuilding After LA/Ventura County Fires, Governor Issues Executive Order N-14-25 To Quash “Legally Erroneous” Coastal Commission Guidance