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While the COVID-19 pandemic made 2020 a year most would prefer to keep in the rear view mirror, the courts kept fairly busy handing down precedents that hopefully provided us all with a better road map for navigating CEQA.  What follows is not a comprehensive review, but more of a brief trip down memory lane to review a “baker’s dozen” of last year’s case law highlights.
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Continue Reading 2020: A Look Back at the Year’s CEQA Case Law

In late September, Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-80-20 (“EO 80-20”), which, among other things, extends the protections of a handful of previously issued executive orders related to COVID-19.  As relevant to CEQA practitioners, EO 80-20 extends the previous suspension of CEQA’s requirements for filing of specified notices with the county clerk and the posting of such notices in the county clerk’s office.
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Continue Reading Governor Extends Conditional Suspension of Requirements Related to Posting CEQA Notices with County Clerks

A little over a year ago, I posted about the filing of a federal RICO (the federal “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act”; 18 U.S.C. § 1962 et seq.) lawsuit by developer Relevant Group, LLC and related entities (“Relevant”) alleging that defendants (Stephan “Saeed” Nourmand and Michael Nourmand and their business entities) filed and threatened frivolous CEQA suits solely to “shake down” and extort monetary settlements – without regard to environmental concerns – from economically vulnerable hotel project developers.  (See “CEQA Meets RICO:  True Stories Of Extortion and Litigation Abuse in Tinseltown,” posted July 12, 2019.)  Since then, the litigation has progressed significantly.  After surviving a robust motion to dismiss, the case has become “at issue” with defendants’ filing of an answer to plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”) on June 24, 2020, and the District Court filing a Scheduling and Case Management Order on July 24, 2020.
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Continue Reading CEQA Meets RICO: Round Two

On March 30, 2020, the publishers of the California Land Use Law & Policy Reporter and sponsoring law firms (including Miller Starr Regalia) will present the Sixth Annual California Land Use Law & Policy Conference at the Marriott City Center Hotel in Oakland.  The intensive one-day program will cover housing, coastal sea level rise, wetlands and endangered species regulation, and CEQA issues, and will feature a keynote address on legislative housing fixes by California Assemblyman David Chiu.  I’ll be speaking with my colleagues Jennifer Hernandez and Alisha Winterswyk on CEQA’s history, track record; and trends as our state’s signature environmental law turns 50 this year.  Further details on program content, faculty and registration can be found here.  Hope to see you there!
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Continue Reading Miller Starr Regalia Sponsors, Talks CEQA At Upcoming Sixth Annual California Land Use Law & Policy Conference In Oakland

Background

A long time ago, in a legal galaxy far, far away, Emperor Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) into law.  For many years, the “dark forces” that had wrought the adverse environmental impacts giving rise to CEQA – land developers and the public agencies granting their approvals – labored under its ever-expanding yoke.  Many litigation battles were fought, and many won by the heroic Jedi of the environmental plaintiffs’ bar and their NGO clients, firmly establishing the preeminence and vast reach of CEQA’s seemingly beneficent empire into the far-flung corners of the legal universe.  CEQA’s “force” was such that no project with the potential to effect a physical change in the environment, unless granted legislative or magisterial exemption, escaped its watchful eye and mitigating powers.

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Continue Reading CEQA Wars: The Developer Strikes Back (In Federal Court)

A lawsuit filed June 10, 2019, in the U.S. District Court for California’s Central District, and conspicuously reported on last month in Law360, takes dead aim at defendants who are alleged to have filed and threatened frivolous CEQA suits for the sole purpose of extorting monetary settlements – in this case, from plaintiffs alleging they are economically vulnerable Hollywood hotel project developers who were forced to capitulate to defendants’ extortionate demands.
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Continue Reading CEQA Meets RICO: True Stories Of Extortion And Litigation Abuse In Tinseltown

In a 38-page opinion filed on May 16, and belatedly ordered published on June 14, 2019, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment rejecting all of plaintiff/appellant Center for Biological Diversity’s (“CBD”) CEQA and statutory challenges to the EIR that the California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (“DOGGR”) was required by S.B. 4 (Stats. 2013, ch. 13, § 2) to prepare “pursuant to [CEQA], to provide the public with detailed information regarding any potential environmental impacts of well stimulation in the state.”  (Pub. Resources Code, § 3161(b)(3)(A).)  The Court’s opinion addresses and disposes of CBD’s CEQA and other challenges in a highly unusual, and even unprecedented, context – that of a statutorily required program EIR addressing the statewide impacts of oil and gas well-stimulation treatments (including the controversial treatment known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”) prepared in the absence of any “project” being approved or undertaken by the ostensible “lead agency” (DOGGR).  Center for Biological Diversity v. California Department of Conservation, Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, et al. (3d Dist. 2019) 36 Cal.App.5th 210.
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Continue Reading The Curious Case of the EIR Without A “Project”: Third District Rejects CEQA, Statutory Challenges To DOGGR’s “Unique” S.B. 4-Mandated EIR Analyzing Statewide Fracking/Well Stimulation Impacts

The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an important case we’ve been following involving CEQA’s definition of a “project” on the afternoon of June 4, 2019, and took the matter under submission.  The case – Union of Medical Marijuana Patients v. City of San Diego (California Coastal Commission, Real Party in Interest), No. S238563 – involves a City of San Diego ordinance authorizing (as a new use in industrial/commercial zones) and restricting the location and manner of operation of medical marijuana dispensaries within the City, and plaintiff’s challenge to the City’s determination that its adoption of the ordinance was not a “project” for purposes of having to undergo CEQA review.  The Court’s grant of review encompassed the issues whether the particular ordinance is a CEQA project and also whether zoning ordinances in general are CEQA projects.
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Continue Reading Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument In CEQA Project Definition Case